Dark Knight HAGS x TWSS: Aromatic Fougere Shave Soap and Aftershave Review
HAGS Artisan Shaving Products works out of Athens, Greece, and the maker teamed up with The Wet Shaving Store on a soap-and-aftershave pairing called Dark Knight. Both halves are built around HAGS’s own interpretation of Parfums de Marly Percival, a niche aromatic fragrance with a devoted following.
The label leans into storm-and-shadow imagery, honor and quiet power and a protector born of thunder. The note list runs lighter than that pitch. Dark Knight HAGS x TWSS opens with lavender, citrus, and geranium, settles into a soft floral-spice heart, and dries down warm rather than dark. It reads as a clean aromatic fougere, the kind of scent you wear to an office, not a fragrance built to brood.
The Dark Knight HAGS x TWSS aftershave carries the same fragrance in an alcohol-free witch hazel base, so the two layer cleanly instead of fighting each other. Both are stocked at The Wet Shaving Store.
Scent profile
Top: lavender, mandarin orange, bergamot, geranium. Heart: hedione, violet, coriander, jasmine, cinnamon. Base: ambroxan, amberwood, balsam fir, musk, clearwood.
The opening is the loudest part of the scent, herbal lavender next to sweet mandarin and bergamot, with geranium adding a green, slightly rosy edge. The heart is where the cinnamon and coriander turn up, but they stay restrained, reading as warmth more than spice, with hedione keeping everything airy. The base is the closest the scent gets to the name, ambroxan and amberwood and musk giving the dry-down a soft, skin-close warmth, with a thread of balsam fir holding it back from going fully sweet. It lands as an aromatic fougere in the modern designer mold, and an opening this bright makes it an easy daytime, three-season pick.
The Dark Knight shave soap
HAGS builds this one on its HATHOR base, a soft soap, close to a croap, that comes in a 4 ounce (114 gram) jar. The base is potassium-only with no sodium hydroxide, and HAGS makes it with a hot-process method, then enriches it after the cook so the richer ingredients stay unsaponified. The ingredients list opens with potassium stearate, distilled water, potassium castor seed oil, donkey milk, and glycerin, and the post-cook additions include murumuru seed butter, jojoba seed oil, and evening primrose oil.
HAGS describes the Hathor base as a close, comfortable shave with plush cushioning, glassy glide, and lingering slickness, with skin left soft and moisturized rather than tacky. Donkey milk is the ingredient HAGS leans on for skin feel; it is an old-school soapmaking addition that has come back into favor for its vitamin and mineral content.
Loading is soft-soap simple. HAGS says not to bloom it; swirl a damp brush on the surface for around ten seconds and build the lather in a bowl or on your face, adding water gradually. The Hathor base takes a lot of water before it breaks down, so do not be shy with it.
HAGS does not make a brush, so the TWSS Black G5 is the in-house pairing here, a synthetic knot that loads a soft croap quickly and releases lather without a long break-in. Any boar or synthetic brush in the 22 to 26mm range works as an alternative.
The Dark Knight aftershave
The matching aftershave uses HAGS’s Tesseract base, an alcohol-free formula built on witch hazel, in a 3.4 ounce (100 ml) bottle. Because there is no alcohol, it does not sting, and it behaves more like a hydrating toner than a bracing splash. The ingredient list is mostly flower and leaf waters, aloe, witch hazel, calendula, chamomile, and rose, with sodium hyaluronate and allantoin added for moisture and skin comfort.
To use it, shake the bottle, dispense five to seven drops into your palm, rub your hands together, and pat it over freshly shaved skin. Give it a few seconds to absorb before layering anything else on top. An alcohol-free aftershave like this one suits most skin types, and it can double as a face toner outside of shaving.
The scent on the aftershave is stronger than on the soap, which is normal for an artisan splash. This is a post-shave step that leaves a clean, close trail rather than a cologne, so do not count on all-day projection from it.
A routine built around the Dark Knight pair
A full setup around the pair stays simple:
- Razor: mild to medium. The Merkur 34C is the classic starter pick and works well with a soft, slick soap.
- Blade: a sharp platinum-coated daily driver. The Gillette 365 sampler is a low-friction default.
- Brush: the TWSS Black G5 synthetic is the in-house pairing. Most boar or synthetic brushes in the 22 to 26mm range work as alternatives.
- Soap: the Dark Knight HAGS x TWSS puck above.
- After shave: the matching Dark Knight aftershave.
If you already have a razor and brush you like, the pair is a small addition to an existing setup. Starting from zero, a 34C, a sampler of blades, a synthetic brush, and the soap and aftershave land in the range of a normal starter kit.
Who is this scent for?
Most soap shelves already carry a bay rum, something in the Old Spice family, and maybe a tobacco or a barbershop fougere. Dark Knight fills a different slot, the polished daytime aromatic, the designer-style scent you reach for when you want to smell put-together rather than nostalgic or rugged. If that lane is empty in your rotation, this is a clean way to fill it.
The collaboration is part of the appeal. HAGS Artisan handled the formulation and the scent, working from its interpretation of Parfums de Marly Percival, and The Wet Shaving Store put its name on the result. HAGS named the soap base Hathor after the Egyptian goddess of joy and nurture, which suits a soap built around donkey milk and butters more than it suits the stormy Dark Knight artwork. The two ideas do not entirely line up, and that mismatch is a good part of what makes the release fun to try.
If a polished aromatic is the gap on your soap shelf, the Dark Knight pair is worth a look the next time you put in an order.
Happy shaving.