Thursday, December 9, 2010

Remarkably Effective, Ridiculously Expensive: How A Great Product Gets Downrated - Catwalk's Curls Rock Leave-in Moisturizer!




The Good: Works like a miracle elixir for hair
The Bad: Not cone free, With only 8.5 oz. per container, this is insanely expensive.
The Basics: An amazing product, Curls Rock Leave-In Moisturizer is very expensive and is not cone free, making it a tough sell to those who have less expensive alternatives.


For those who do not look at the bigger picture or see patterns in such things, outside my recent Best Picture Project, I follow a very specific order for my reviews so I don't overwhelm any one category and to keep readers (hopefully) interested in the various things I write about. I mention this at the outset of my review of the Tigi Catwalk Curl's Rock Leave-In Moisturizer because I neglected health and beauty products last month and I'm trying to rectify that now. The Curl's Rock Leave-In Moisturizer is a good product that is vastly overpriced for what it is.

My wife and I could never afford Tigi Catwalk Curl's Rock Leave-in Moisturizer. This is usually sold at salons only and there the prices are inflated. Our local salon at the mall marked the 8.5 fl. oz. container up from $14.95 to $15.50 in the last month! For such a pathetically small amount, this is ridiculously expensive. My wife came upon a whole bag of products at her workplace and the store policy where she works is that if no one comes back for it by the end of the shift, the employees divide the lost-and-found up among themselves. That was a month ago and my wife's share of that found property included the Curl's Rock Leave-In Conditioner.

This haircare product is not like a rinsing conditioner which one uses in the shower and washes out. Truth be told, even though I use those and I have used several that have worked, the concept has never felt right to me. After all, rinse out conditioners do not stay in the hair and as a result, one has to ask how they continue working if they are no longer in the hair. And given how cold my house gets when I shower, I do not wait around for such things to work sufficiently usually. So, the idea of leave-in conditioner makes a great deal of sense to me.

The principle of the leave-in conditioner is simple: after your hair is rinsed, either wet or dry, you use a dollop of leave-in conditioner and it continues to work to rejuvenate hair. Curls Rock Leave-in Moisturizer is comes in a soft plastic ball-shaped bottle. The 8.5 fl. oz. container includes a pump at the top, like what one usually finds on a liquid soap dispenser. The actual product is a remarkably watery aqua blue fluid that is mostly translucent. The Curls Rock Leave-In Moisturizer is easily dispensed by pressing down on the pump and allowing the product to be squirted out.

Curls Rock Leave-in Moisturizer is a lot more watering in its consistency than what most people imagine when they use a conditioner. However, this makes it much easier to spread through the hair than most lotion-like or creamy conditioners. To its credit, in addition to being very easy to spread through hair because of the watery consistency, it requires very little to get it out of the bottle because of its fluidity. I have very long hair (over a foot long throughout) and it takes less than a quarter-sized dollop of Curls Rock Leave-in Moisturizer to get through my entire head of hair.

As for its effectiveness, this is the saving grace of Curls Rock Leave-In Moisturizer. This product works as if it were a miracle drug for hair. My partner recently cut my hair and eliminated all of my split ends. Since then, I have been using this product (I do not have curly hair) about once every three days. My hair has been well-conditioned and easily managed since then. Even so, a few days ago, I stripped my hair and it was a bit crispy. One squirt of Curls Rock Leave-In Moisturizer had my hair feeling flexible, nicely conditioned and manageable again within fifteen minutes! I used no more than the usual quarter-sized droplet and it was that effective at restoring my hair to manageability.

This is, quite simply, an amazing product that does exactly what it claims.

That said, as a conditioner, it has no cleaning properties. As well, it has a faint odor when it comes out of the container. This scent is very hard to describe, but it is something between vaguely fruity and faintly medicinal. Regardless of how the product smells coming out of the container, it does not leave a residual smell in the hair, so this is a good product for those who need to work in environments where no strong scents are allowed.

Curls Rock Leave-in Moisturizer not only restores dry or damaged hair, but it seems to have a protective quality. As autumn has progressed, my hair usually gets dryer and somewhat more brittle. This year, however, my hair has been wonderfully manageable and has not gotten brittle or broken as a result of using this product.

The ingredient list in Curls Rock Leave-In Moisturizer reads like a mad scientist's project, outside the first ingredient (water). Unfortunately, for those who are into current trends, the second ingredient is "amodimehicone," which means this product is NOT cone-free. So, there may be long-term problems with using this product, but if there are, I have not experienced any of them.

In other words, Curls Rock is a great leave-in moisturizer for anyone, not just those with curls. But it comes with such a price that it is very hard for me, as a value shopper and thrift enthusiast, to recommend. Ultimately, I recommend this as a supplementary product, one that people use about once a week to maintain hair that it being regularly conditioned through rinse-out conditioners. In this fashion, the "cones" in the product ought not to damage hair and this small bottle might well last up to a year, making it a reasonable expense for those who have to pay for it.

For other conditioning products, please check out my reviews of:
Suave Ocean Breeze Conditioner
VO5 Passion Fruit Smoothie Conditioner
Mentha Hair Conditioner

5.5/10

For other health and beauty product reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2010, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.




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