In Search of Shampoo

I wore my hair in an inch-long blond frizz with a few spiky bangs hanging over my forehead. I showered with nothing but a bottle of Ivory dish soap in hand, and I usually finished with a handful of goo from some vat of off-brand, industrial-strength stiffening gel. I didn’t worry about product build-up because I was in the habit of scalping myself every couple of weeks. Bad hair-care products actually served me well, as the more damage I did to my ‘80s college hair, the stiffer on end it stood.

About the time Boy George went into rehab, I started using real shampoo. I had a job and could afford it, my hair had gained a length of three or four inches, and the dish detergent method left it with the texture of fiberglass insulation. Still, I used whatever shampoo was lying around--once my uncle, a traveling furniture salesman, gave me a garbage bag full of miniature hotel shampoos he’d collected on the road, and I used those for at least a year. When those ran out, I began using my boyfriend’s Head & Shoulders and a very large bottle of Infusium 23--the castor oil of conditioners--from Costco daily. Why? Because they were there.

Then came the epiphany. One day I procured a free sample of Bumble and Bumble’s Alojoba Shampoo. The difference between Head & Shoulders and Bumble and Bumble is roughly the difference between digging in a rotten log for grubs and dining on truffle-laced foie gras at L’Orangerie. I breathlessly called up Bumble and Bumble to ask them just what kind of butterfly sweat and elf earwax went into this amazing stuff. “The Alojoba was developed for virgin damaged hair, so you’re my target,” product manager Frederic Pignault said. I had lucked upon the correct formula for my long, sun-damaged natural blondness--a good thing, since Pignault said half the battle is in getting the right shampoo for your hair.

If I’d had color-treated hair, he explained, I would have needed the Gentle Shampoo. Fine, limp hair, and I would have needed the Thickening Shampoo. (I know he’s right, because I tried the Thickening Shampoo just to test him, and it gave my hair a slightly funny texture.)

The Alojoba, which sells for $16 a bottle, contains common shampoo ingredients: aloe and jojoba. “A lot of people claim these ingredients, and they can because they’re in there, but not enough to see the effects. The problem has always been that if you put too much of them in, they sink to the bottom of the bottle. We created a base that could hold these ingredients at a higher level,” Pignault explained.

Here’s the good news: having found your perfect shampoo, you never have to change. “Hair getting ‘tired’ of a shampoo, that is a myth,” Pignault said. I asked him about the effectiveness of my Costco conditioner. “I call those conditioners the tricky quick fix,” he said. “The consumer gets an instant result. When you touch your hair, you’re going to get a soft feel, but that’s just a coating. It’s like painting a wall that has rot on the inside. It looks good at first, but the rot will eventually show through.” That would be bad, should I ever want to have my hair appraised. I probably won’t, but I’d still better lose the Costco vat.

However, if I were to go for the quality of hair that cries out to be insured by Lloyd’s of London, I’d probably have to see Laurent D., who takes care of Uma Thurman’s golden locks at his Prive salon on Beverly Boulevard. There he has introduced his own line of Prive “formule aux herbes” products. Laurent is a jolly elf of a Frenchman. “I just came back from doing the runway shows, and you’re going to see lots of sexy hair!” he exclaims. “We’re going back to lots of curls. Even straight hair has body, movement. For this it must be in very good condition. But not too much heavy conditioner--it’s like making a souffle.”

Laurent is an unabashed sensualist. For him, scent and texture are the most important elements of a good shampoo. “It’s like clothes,” he says. “You pay a lot for the best fabric.” Laurent’s formulas start with an aqueous blend of rosemary, sage, white ginger, nettle and clove. The orchid and aloe perfume of Prive’s Reparative shampoo is so overpowering that you risk getting lightheaded on the fumes. (Best to lather up lying down in the bathtub to let your hair steep for a good long time.) And the Prive products are surprisingly generous in portion: A 500-milliliter apothecary bottle costs $24 and will last several months.

By this time I was determined to try every exotic shampoo I could get my hands on. The Japanese have Sayuri, a shampoo and conditioner containing Camellia Oil, the ingredient historically favored by the geishas of Japan. For the heroine of Arthur Golden’s “Memoirs of a Geisha,” whose name is also Sayuri, a young geisha’s first shampoo was not the luxurious scalp massage we like to imagine, but a brutal, scalp-reddening ordeal endured as a rite of passage. The Sayuri shampoo, however, is not at all painful to use, and for straight, heavy Asian hair, this is reputedly the stuff. Camellias, one of the main ingredients, are an odorless flower, and the hair products are almost without scent--a welcome characteristic when you don’t want your hair competing with your Chanel No. 5. The French company Phytologie has an extensive botanical product line with a cult-like following. Phytologie uses plant extracts as the source of their ingredients instead of the cheaper, more plentiful synthetic compounds most other companies use. Their Phytocypres Exfoliating Shampoo comes in a glass bottle to better preserve its contents, which include weeping willow, a rich natural source of salicylic acid and an ingredient in many dandruff shampoos. This stuff soothes the scalp and leaves behind a cypress scent that is both reassuringly medicinal and exotic.

Phytologie also has a line called Phyto Plage--or beachwear for the hair. The Sun Shampoo lathers up even in saltwater. This is essential beach gear for California sun-bunnies who wish to remain succulent throughout the year.

Swimmers can benefit from Paul Labrecque Clearly Silk After Swim Shampoo, with ingredients that break down the residues left behind by chlorine (you can also wash your bikini in it!). And curly haired folk even have their own product line, Ouidad, which has its own curly hair-care Web site.

Then there is Leonor Greyl, or what I like to think of as the Holy Greyl of shampoos. Greyl’s American ambassador, Madeline Johnson, says that even in France, where hair care is a “lifestyle,” Leonor Greyl is the balm to end all others--a magical ointment so potent that, in large enough quantities, it could probably revive the dead. Not that any mortal could afford large quantities of this stuff. Twenty-five dollars for a modest tube of shampoo? And $38 for a mere 200 milliliters of conditioner?

Here’s the bad news: It’s worth it. Their Creme Moelle de Bambou shampoo is more of a velvety cream custard filling than a shampoo. This unctuous semi-liquid didn’t even foam up when I massaged it into my head. “It contains no sodium lauryl sulfate, which is the surfactant in drugstore shampoo,” Johnson says. “So you don’t get what I call the ‘Suave lather effect’ that just roughs up the cuticle. But you have to get used to it.” Instead, the stuff just bathed my head like warm butter, then rinsed out clean and slick. Afterward, even blown dry, my hair was so moist and fluid that touching it was like dipping your fingers into a stream of falling water.

At my insistence, my boyfriend has given up his Head & Shoulders, to which his hair had likely become “addicted.” According to Bumble and Bumble’s Pignault, it can take two or three weeks for hair to detox and your scalp to rebound from bad shampoo, and the recovery process is a lot like eliminating sugar from one’s diet. While “bad” shampoo is not always synonymous with cheap, most low-end shampoos contain harsher detergents, such as sodium lauryl sulfate, which can strip the hair of its natural oils. (If your budget lacks body, look for one that uses the milder sodium laureth sulfate instead.) I now have my boyfriend on a steady ration of Bumble and Bumble’s particularly expensive, scalp-friendly Tonic Shampoo, which has tea tree oil as its main active ingredient--and a lot of tea tree oil, which is a pricey ingredient. It’s costing me, but after all, I’m the one who has to run my fingers through his hair.

Every once in a while I have to stop and ask myself what could be more ridiculous than a $25 bottle of shampoo? (Maybe a $10 pack of chewing gum, though as far as I know, there is no such thing.) But let me put it this way. I drive a pickup truck and wear a Casio wristwatch, but my hair is as soft as mist and as shiny as molten gold, and it smells like a million bucks.