The Promise: “One Blade Better”

In 1971, the first twin-blade cartridge razor launched with a bold claim: two blades were better than one. It set off a question that has shaped the category ever since. For how long can shaving keep getting "one blade better"?

From Engineering to a Marketing Story

The justification for a second blade took the form of what became known as the "hysteresis effect." The idea: the first blade stretches the whisker, the second cuts it before it retracts, for a closer shave. Easy to describe, difficult to disprove, and just plausible enough to sit inside a patent. The hysteresis effect has never been proven, and yet it shaped decades of razors.

The Limits of Complexity

The clinical reality never quite matched the marketing. Dermatology literature consistently shows that increasing blade count does not linearly improve comfort. Multi-blade systems can actually increase irritation and ingrown hairs, cutting hair progressively below the skin surface, where regrowing hairs meet resistance beneath the epidermis.

The Simplest Answer

That is why a counter-movement has been growing. Single-blade shaving, whether traditional or modern, reduces skin trauma by avoiding repeated passes over the same area in a single stroke. Not a closer shave by force of complexity, but a more controlled cut by simplifying. In a category that spent decades adding blades, the most stable solution may have been the one that changed the least.