In my quest to find a product that would help to define my coils and allow me to rock some of the cute wash out styles I’ve seen in the world of natural hair, I happened upon the above bottle of advertised goodness.
NextImage Curl ‘N Wavy Curl Defining Conditioner and Detangler claims to define the S-pattern of naturally curly hair and define it’s natural curl. Boosting an impressive list of “natural” ingredients such as olive oil, shea butter, jojoba oil and vitamin E, this product from NextImage’s laboratories — who’s presence I can not find on the Internet anywhere — also claims to be good for synthetic and natural hair, providing a non-greasy, oil free, non-sticky, soft and frizz free finish. In addition to aaaall of that, this product further claims to repair dry and damaged hair and prevent breakage. Well from my experience, this product well short of it’s professed glory by a country mile.
Product’s directions read as such: For excellent conditioning and detangling, hold bottle 8 – 10 inches from clean, wet hair and spray evenly throughout. Do not rinse. Style as desired.
Which is exactly what I did, and upon initial application I can say it worked rather well. My curls were defined and oil free as the bottle stated they would be. As for the “non-sticky” allegation, I can not affirm that to be truth (it was a slight stickiness, but it was stickiness none the less). Because I comb through my shampoo and conditioner during cleansing I wasn’t all that concerned with the detangling aspect of the product, but using my wide tooth comb I did as I’d been instructed and combed the product through my hair. For about twenty minutes I was somewhat pleased with the results, although not quite what I’d imagined which was something close to this:
Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of my results, but they were nothing like the above pic.
Quite possibly the product was designed for hair of a finer grade or shorter length, because the more my hair dried the less defined my curls became and the more tangled my tresses grew. It was as if the product totally evaporated with the water, leaving behind a sticky residue that smelled faintly of Jheri Curl activator. And it did nothing to work well with my shrinkage. Honestly, I feel as if I had applied a bottle full of fragrant water onto my hair, although the water would have had a much more desirable and longer lasting effect.
Since I did not bring the bottle with me, and can’t find any information online other than a five star review I am convinced was trumped up to push the product and a listing on the Texas Beauty Supplies Website, I can’t offer up a list of all of the ingredients used. I also can’t provide any information on the manufacturer of this waste of $6.99 plus tax and/or shipping and handling. But what I can provide is my personal opinion of this product… it sucks.
On my typical scale of 1 to 5 Afro picks, one being the worst and five being the best… this product gets a shameful MINUS TEN.
So in short, I do not recommend this product, and I wish I could get my time and money back.
Healthy Hair Wishes,
