STYLE
BEAUTY
LIFE
T R AV E L
C U LT U R E
SUMMER 2018
52
DUJOUR.COM
Mane Event
Could customized shampoos, conditioners and other hair-care treatments spell the end of bad hair days forever? BY KARI MOLVAR
S
itting at my laptop, I placed my order by checking off things like gluten-free, vegan and my preferred farm-fresh ingredients. I felt like I was ordering a salad when, in fact, I was picking out my shampoo from Prose, a new customized hair-care line that lets devotees build natural, eco-certified products from scratch. In five days, I would receive my kit, complete with a gentle cleansing shampoo (no silicone, please), a color-protective conditioner (hold the heavy oils) and a volumizing mask, all tailored to my exact hair type and climate conditions, infused with my preferred violet scent and stamped with my name on the bottles. Welcome to the world of personalized hair-care, a rapidly expanding market filled with smart-tech brands that want to radically transform the traditional one-size-fits-all approach. In the era of customized everything (sneakers, vitamins, lipstick), one could argue that hair-care has lagged sorely behind. Whether in the drugstore or at the salon, the range of formulas only speaks to pre-determined hair types and needs, the ingredients may contain outdated chemicals or animal by-products, and the search for a suitable match usually involves a lot of time, trial-and-error and half-empty bottles in your bathroom. And frankly, women—and men—are over it. “I realized how unhappy people were with the products [out there],” says Zahir Dossa, the co-founder of Function of Beauty, a customized hair-care brand based in New York. Most companies, she contends, “don’t have the ability to target each person as an individual,” a problem that she solved by building a team of cosmetic scientists, MIT engineers and developers. That team devised a proprietary algorithm that delves into strand structure, scalp moisture and 17 different hair goals (from fixing split ends to de-
fining curls) to blend shampoos and conditioners precisely calibrated for each client. “No two formulas are ever the same,” she says—literally, there are “more formulas than there are humans on earth.” Similarly, Prose analyzes 85 data points, including your diet (vegetarian? low calorie?), where you workout (indoors or out?) and if you color (permanent or semi-permanent dye?) to devise its bespoke blends, which are made from a pantry-like lab filled with 76 natural ingredients and scents sourced from Provence. Getting this personal allows brands to directly zero in on those whose hair needs have been largely ignored or underserved until now. Form, for example, speaks to women from all different ethnic backgrounds who have a variety of textures. Online consultations touch on how you cleanse (perhaps with conditioner, co-wash, oils or nothing at all), what styles you wear (extensions, weaves, wigs), if you chemically treat your hair (with straightening, for example, or if you’re transitioning off it) and if you have braids or locs, among other factors. After probing this data, Form gives you a cu-
