SMALL PRINT:GENTLEMEN, HAVE you ever yearned while shaving for a grooming instrument that finally harnessed "expertise in fields as varied as rocket-engine manufacturing, nanotechnology, and particle physics"?
Of course you have.
Ladies, perhaps you have pondered endlessly on what gift you might bestow upon the impossible-to-buy-for man who has everything?
Fret no longer, for just such a product now exists.
Following three years of research, the Zafirro Iridium razor is here. It is constructed of ultra-durable, hypoallergenic sapphire blades and a handle of 99.95 per cent pure iridium, a dense metal mainly derived from meteorites.
All this will cost the customer of discernment a mere $100,000 (a trifling €69,588 at the current exchange rate).
Form an orderly queue now.
Bright Light Ventures, a firm based in Portland, Oregon, has developed the product. It is limited to a run of 99, reflecting the companys view that there exists a market comprising at least 99 billionaires of sufficient mental derangement to spend the price of a luxury car on a manual shaver.
Perhaps to differentiate it from knock-off razors merely purporting to be constructed from meteorites, the Iridium is engraved with a serial number to ensure authenticity. Naturally, it may also be monogrammed to the buyers specifications.
The blade edges are less than 100 atoms across, or 5,000 times thinner than a human hair. It is no wonder, then, that the products website calls the advent of the Iridium not an incremental step forward, but a quantum leap, comparing its development to the advance from vacuum tubes to transistors, CB radios to the iPhone. Which puts the Gillette Fusion Proglide in its place.
Rather unhygienically, the Zafirro Iridium is designed to last for generations.
Quick calculation reveals that it would need to last for about 60 of them to represent any kind of value for money.
