R+Co

Are you ready to surf wave after wave of ’80s nostalgia? If you are, girl, all I have to say is R+Co Palm Springs Pre-Shampoo Treatment Mask! It will take you there, because it’s a mousse…and if you were an impressionable tween in the ’80s who had a spiral perm like yours truly, you might remember putting tons of mousse in your hair.

At least, that’s one of the things I recall about the late ’80s. I was always scrunching mousse in my hair, and it’s kind of fun to do it with this treatment, too.

Typically, pre-shampoo masks have a thick, lotion-like consistency like a hair conditioner, but R+CO likes pushing boundaries and doing things differently. Palm Springs is a lightweight, airy mousse, and the moisturizing formula is designed to help damaged hair.

You apply it to damp hair before you shampoo, then leave it to sit for anywhere from five minutes to a couple hours. And can I just say that if you have a couple hours to kill while your hair mask does its thing, I’m so jealous?!

After that, you hop in the shower, rinse it out, shampoo, condition and style as usual.

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Did I wake up with my hair looking like this? HELL NO, GIRL! This is all R+Co’s doing. I’ve been using a styling product in their line called Sail Soft Wave Spray ($29).

It’s the one in the blue bottle with the sailboats on it (kinda looks like a Monet painting).

Basically, it’s beach wave witchery, and I loooove it. It’s a salt spray that encourages a wavy texture, and then locks that wave into place with medium-level hold. It also lifts hair for loads of volume and, here’s the kicker, leaves your strands feeling super soft.

If you know your salt sprays, then you probably also know that in order to get that roughed-up beach waves effect, most salt sprays will leave your hair feeling crunchy (*ahem*, Bumble and Bumble Surf Spray).

Yes, all that wavy texture is awesome, but the trade-off is hair that doesn’t feel great when you run your fingers through it. At least I don’t think so.

That crunchiness is an issue for me. I don’t like it when my hair feels stiff, overworked or lacquered into place. Even when I have styling product in my hair, I still want my mop to look and feel like clean, just-washed, regular ol’ hair, ya know?

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I’ve been loving a little texture lately.

“A little texture,” she says, as her hair expands into the firmament, LOL!

No, seriously! I’ve been into spraying a texturizing spray on my hair lately (mid-shaft) to kind of rough it up and make it look more voluminous (hopefully) and windswept, in that just-stepped-off the runway way.

But the thing about texture sprays is that most of them don’t do squat for shine. Most are matte, so if you want shiny AND tousled hair, you have to add a separate shiny product (usually an oil), but that can then weigh down your hair, thereby defeating the whole purpose of using a texturizing/volumizing spray in the first place.

OH, THE HORROR!

R+Co (pronounced “R and Co”) is a hair care line I’m totally obsessed with at the moment (I blame my hairstylist friend Alis, who lives, breathes and sleeps hair, for telling me that “This line is amazing, and their products will change your life.”), and they figured out a way to add good texture and shine in the same product with their new R+Co Trophy Shine + Texture Spray.

You get lovely, tousled, windswept action, along with a healthy dose of shine (that doesn’t look greasy). The product has clay in it for texture, and sweet almond oil for shine, and it’s $29 for a bottle…which hurts so good, but like all of the R+Co products I’ve tried, it’s amazeballs.

Use it on freshly washed hair (slightly damp) before air or heat drying, or apply it on dry hair before or after styling. I usually do a few sprays on my hair when it’s dry after curling with an iron. Then I spray a little on the mid-shaft section and go layer by layer. Then I rough up the waves by scrunching them with my fingers.

Here’s a helpful how-to video

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