Curaprox Toothbrushes

 
by Eric Twardzik
The greatest luxury is beauty—seeing it, surrounding yourself with it, having the ability to create it, or simply enjoying it.
— Charlotte Moss

It’s a poverty of our modern lexicon that “luxury” and “expensive” are practically synonyms. As the renowned interior designer Charlotte Moss alludes, luxury has everything to do with feeling—and nothing to do with price tag.

Case in point: The CS 5460 toothbrush from Swiss maker Curaprox. Each costs a mere $6.95, but in our minds it’s as beautiful as some of the Swiss timepieces ringing in at several thousand times that amount.

The humble hygienic device is a testament to the out-of-the-box engineering the neutral nation is famous for. Its octagonal handle ensures the most advantageous brushing angle, and it manages to pack in 5,460 filaments (those would be the tiny threads that do all the brushing), each of which is just 0.1 millimeters in diameter.

But its technical merits are only half the story. The brush is beautiful. It’s considered. It’s fun. It’s designed with the whimsy of a Caran d’Ache fountain pen or a Swatch watch. Offered in 26 different color combinations, juxtaposing handles and bristles colored orange, lime green, magenta, and much more. It’s like brushing with an Ellsworth Kelly.

The art of living well begins in the minutiae and the mundane—right down to the requisite ritual of brushing before bed. And an object as beautiful and simple as a Curaprox toothbrush may help us remember to enjoy it while doing so.