I feel ashamed even as I write this but……I want Kardashian hair (Or alternatively the hair of a young Indian girl that was cut off and sewed onto the Kardashians head but we will ignore this point for the moment). I want big, lustrous, flowing, shiny, amazing Kardashian hair. I don’t envy other parts of their life as I already have enough siblings of my own and I really don’t want their distended, alien, bulbous, weird arses or their very insular, self obsessed, distorted views on the world…….but I want their hair. However I also do not want silicon, chemicals, or a whole host of other hideous things on my hair or near my body. I know, I’m not asking for much am I!! I want to use ethical, natural, organic, sustainable products where hopefully the profit goes to people who deserve it and really care for what they produce. Again…..not much to ask i know!
Now I understand compromises have to be made and often I still use certain products I probably shouldn’t but the old adage is that if you at least try then maybe you will make a difference. For so long I used products that I wouldn’t even look at these days and not that long ago I absolutely destroyed my hair for the longest time after having a ‘brasilian blow dry’ something I still regret every time I look at the ends of my hair. Since those fateful days I have since started really taking care of my hair and either using products that I believed to be very good in the regards I mentioned above or making my own products from scratch (which has done wonders for the state of my hair and anyone around me who I made some for too). My hair has grown dramatically and become so much stronger and healthier (I am going to cover all of this in a future post soon and go into much more detail of my hair journey). So one of my continual searches is for a brilliant natural shampoo that I can use all the time and doesn’t cost the earth, both literally and metaphorically. For this post I am going to go over three that I have been testing recently (and have even forced my boyfriend to try too as he has so many issues with his skin that he is probably the best/worst test subject ever!). So here goes……..
Shampooing Doux A L’Hamamelis
Now I have to start with by admitting something that is a bit naughty here when trying to do fair, equal and impartial reviews, this is actually my second bottle of this shampoo…..so you can probably already guess from that what my feelings are about it! Fleurance Nature is a French brand and they offer a range of certified organic beauty products alongside a good range of products focussed on health and well-being too. I like the Fleurance natural E-Shop in general and I like this product a lot too. Nearly everything I have bought from their shop I have had positive results with and this shampoo is no different. It gently washes my fine hair, foams nicely, and rinses really well. The scent is light and pleasant and it makes my hair really soft. This is probably thanks to the Hamamelis flower water (Witch Hazel) which is known for its softening properties. It also contains wheat proteins with protective properties which contribute to reinvigorating the hair fibre. It is a simple composition with not many ingredients but it’s still really effective, something I often find to be the case with good products. It really does its primary function well, which is to clean, and only costs €10.30. As I am sure you all know, for a certified organic product, this is a very reasonable price! I will also give you guys a little tip that if you are interested in trying it the Fleurance Nature website does promotions quite often so I would advise keeping an eye out for that and checking back once in awhile for a deal. The only real drawback I had throughout the whole customer experience was that because I live in London the delivery charges were pretty high but hopefully if I can persuade more Londoners to buy it then that fee might drop soon enough!^^
Le Shampooing Hydra-Purifiant 2 Moss
So this time it’s a genuine virgin product that I have never tried before and I really wanted to like this product as I love their conditioner so much. In fact I have even written a previous post here on my blog stating that this conditioner is the best I have ever tried. From that I postulated that the shampoo must be astoundingly good too and so was making any excuse I could to test it (short of pouring my other shampoos down the drain). The first point you will notice is the price, €31 euros is a big chunk of change to spend on a shampoo so my expectations were swelling like a balloon. As is often the case as soon as I used the product the balloon burst or perhaps a better description would be that it fizzled out and was left limp and lifeless……a bit like my hair was! There was absolutely nothing special about this shampoo and it fell at the first hurdle not even managing to clean my hair well. If a shampoo does nothing else I expect it to manage this one simple feat. I even ended up shampooing my hair three times in succession to get to the point where my hair felt clean. On the plus side it did appear to give a little bit of volume but that’s where the positives ended. I used up half of the bottle and had a hard time to going back to try and finish it as there were so few redeeming features. The claims from the brand are that it purifies, re-balances oily scalp and regulates sebum secretion but as I didn’t see any differences and my hair was only just cleaned I am not entirely sure about their claims.
Andalou Naturals Sunflower & Citrus
I really liked this shampoo and sometimes I find it hard to say much more than that about a product when there are no strong negatives. It even cleaned oil masks really well off my hair when lots of natural shampoos find this a really difficult task. It smelled lovely. My hair felt light and bouncy. I was really pleased that it contained certified organic ingredients particularly as Aloe Vera was the most prevalent. Aloe vera keeps hair hydrated by locking moisture in. The shampoo also contained Sunflower Oil which nourishes and conditions hair and minimizes frizz. A third ingredient that caught my attention was Black cumin oil which is great for conditioning damaged hair as well as adding shine. The shampoo was reasonably priced at £6.99 and all in all gets a huge thumbs up from me. However there is one caveat i want to make, my boyfriend wanted to try it too as it was all natural but this is where things became a little more complicated. He has psoriasis and so can barely tolerate any chemicals, especially perfumes and most scents, so runs a mile from nearly every product on the market. He washes his hair with a specially formulated shampoo from La Roche Posay (not the standard L’Oreal range but the actual medicinal range from the spa town). He tried the shampoo and everything was great whilst using it, no bad reactions to any of the ingredients, however as soon as his hair dried his scalp dried too and he was a walking dandruff machine after every wash. He has very particular needs but from this I can only assume that this product dries your skin out quite a lot? That might not be the case at all but i just wanted to add this little note for any people who have super sensitive skin, don’t use this when you are going on a big night out without testing it out beforehand. All in all from me though, a great product at a great price and as we didn’t do a scientific test of the other shampoos on my boyfriend we can’t even add any bad marks there.
Have you tried any of these shampoos? If you have any natural Shampoo recommendations that you think i should compare with these three then please leave a comment.
