The Itch, the Wax and the Awkward In-Between: Keeping a Movember Tache Alive Until December

The Itch, the Wax and the Awkward In-Between

There's a specific week in November when every Movember tache turns on its owner. It's usually somewhere between day ten and day seventeen. The novelty has gone, the hair is long enough to catch on your lip but not long enough to sit down properly, and the skin underneath has started to complain. Half the lads who come in for a trim around now are ready to bin it off.

Don't. You're closer to a decent tache than you think. Here's what I tell anyone who asks me mid-month, in the order it actually matters.

The itch is not an allergy, and it is temporary

Nearly every message I get in mid-November says the same thing: 'my face is on fire under it.' Nine times out of ten it's nothing dramatic. New, coarser hair is pushing through skin that has never had hair on it for this long, sebum is pooling under the growth, and dead skin has nowhere to go. That's the itch.

What actually helps:

• Wash your face properly, twice a day. A gentle cleanser, worked under the hair with your fingertips, not a scrub. Rinse warm, not hot.
• Exfoliate lightly twice a week. A soft face scrub or a flannel with a bit of texture. Anything aggressive will make it worse.
• Oil at night, not wax in the morning. A few drops of beard or moustache oil worked into the skin under the hair, not the hair itself. Give it twenty minutes before bed.
• Pat, don't scratch. Scratching leaves micro-tears and the itch comes back angrier.

If it's genuinely red and flaking, back off the product entirely for a few days and just cleanse and moisturise. Almost everything settles by week four.

Trim dry, and trim less than you want to

This is where most home attempts go wrong. Two rules.

One: never trim a wet moustache. Wet hair hangs longer than dry hair, so you take off more than you meant to, and then it dries and shrinks and you're left with a stub above your lip. Comb it dry, straight down, and snip only what crosses the lip line.

Two: work in small cuts with the tips of the scissors. Not a big bite across the middle. Little crumbs, check, repeat. If you're using a beard trimmer for bulk, put a guard on it — a four or five — and go against the growth direction gently. Never freehand a trimmer near the philtrum, the gap under your nose. That's how people end up with a bald stripe they can't explain.

Decide about the philtrum now

The gap under your nose is the single most argued-about square centimetre in barbering. Two acceptable answers: keep it clean-shaven for a crisp, deliberate look, or let it grow and commit. What doesn't work is letting it grow in patches and hoping nobody notices. Pick one on day one and stay with it, because shaving it later means starting that bit from scratch.

Same goes for the ends. Trim the tips square if you want a tidy English tache. Leave them alone if you're going for a curl. Don't do both.

Wax or balm? Depends what you're asking it to do

A quick rule of thumb, because the marketing on these tubs is nonsense:

• Balm is soft, conditioning and slightly waxy. It tames a tache without making it look wet, and it helps with the itch. Use it daily.
• Wax is firm. It's for holding a shape — a curl, a handlebar, a bit of a lift. Use it for occasions, not every morning, or you'll end up looking like you've dipped your face in a chip pan.
• Cream or light putty sits in between and is fine for most people.

Whatever you choose, use less than you think. Warm a pea-sized bit between your fingers until it's clear, then work it through from the middle outwards. Comb through after. A moustache comb costs three quid and is the best money you'll spend all month.

Eating and drinking without embarrassment

Not a grooming tip, but you'll thank me. Drink from the side of the glass. Soup is a commitment, not a snack. With a pint, use the glass, not the foam. And keep a napkin nearby at work lunches for the first fortnight, because nobody wants to find out about the coffee from a colleague.

The 1 December exit plan

Do not shave it off at midnight in a huff. Give yourself one of three clean exits.

Full reset. The simplest. Book a chair for the first week of December — that week is always rammed, so book now — and have it taken off properly with a bit of shaping around the jaw so it doesn't look like a schoolboy experiment ended.

Down to stubble. Trim the whole face with a number two or three guard, then blend the tache into it so there's no hard shelf above the lip. You'll look intentional rather than interrupted.

Keep it and grow a beard. Genuinely the easiest route. Let the rest come through for three weeks and keep the tache trimmed and neat so it leads the shape instead of flopping over it. The messy fortnight is unavoidable; wear a lot of jumpers.

One last thing: pop in. If you've grown it this far, a five-minute tidy costs nothing and it's the difference between a moustache and a mess.