R+Co

My shower is a veritable convener belt of hair products. I’m always rotating different ones in and out, and rarely will the same thing stay in there for weeks or months, but it does happen occasionally when I love something A LOT, which is happening right now — this very second! — with $29 R+Co Analog Cleansing Foam Conditioner.

UGH, it’s so good, babe! Like change-your-life good.

Analog cleansing conditioner is unlike anything I’ve ever used. It’s a foam, man! A foam! And it’s airy and light like the top layer of a pumpkin spice latte.

It has moisturizing argan oil and antioxidant-rich green tea, and it doesn’t have harsh mineral oil, parabens or sulfates.

Metaphorically, the fragrance is fresh, fancy, young and expensive to me, with notes of orange, fig, guava, musk and some other things that I can’t put my finger on… I’ll call it “new money minimalist.” It reminds me of something Pinrose would do.

You use it like a regular cleansing conditioner. You wet your hair, massage the foam from roots to ends, then rinse. Unlike most cleansing conditioners, however, many of which leave a film behind and make your hair feel heavy with product, Analog’s frothy foam rinses out completely and makes my hair feel full, light and bouncy, even when I conditioner-wash multiple days in a row.

The end result is clean, hydrated hair with volume.

Oh, and most importantly, when I use it, my hair actually feels clean! You know how some cleansing conditioners leave your scalp feeling like you’re the human version of Pigpen from Peanuts? Like they left behind a layer of sweat and grime in your roots, even though you massaged the living crap outta your hair and thoroughly rinsed, leaving you to feel like a filthy beast?

Yeah, Analog doesn’t do that. The foam breaks down all the oil, grease and dirt on my roots, my scalp and my strands. When I step out of the shower, my scalp feels legit clean.

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R+Co Death Valley Dry Shampoo may have a morbid-sounding name (“The place where oily roots go to die.”), but, ironically, it makes me feel so alive! — like, in a “Damn, this is so good!” kinda way.

A $29 can of Death Valley is right up there with the gold standard in dry shampoo/texturizing sprays for me, Oribe’s Dry Texturizing Spray, WHICH IS HELLA BOMB, but it’s $42…

Like the Oribe spray, Death Valley feels like nothing in my hair. I can’t feel it sitting on my scalp or anywhere (other than a bit of a gritty feeling) and the mist shoots out super fine, so it’s virtually invisible, even on dark hair.

My hair feels a bit gritty when I use it (just a bit), but by no means would I call it crispy. So, your hair will not feel like uncooked Ramen noodles.

Like all R+Co products, it smells like fancy perfume, which I love. The scent is R+Co’s “Rosy Eyed” fragrance, which is a blend of bergamot, fig, tonka beans, cedar wood and lotus flower.

And you know what I heard through the grapevine? Oribe and R+Co are owned by the same company, Luxury Brand Partners, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the lines share some recipes.

I mean, you can find similar formulas across the Estée Lauder brands (MAC, Bobbi Brown, etc.), so I’m just saying… I wouldn’t be surprised.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

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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