Unsung Heroes: Suave Professionals Color Care

Unsung Heroes is a place to discuss products that may miss out on glamorous promotions, but deliver on their promises.

Emmy nominated celebrity hair stylist Luke O’Connor, owner of LuKaRo Salon in Beverly Hills has gained a following for creating Debra Messing’s look on “Will & Grace,” and has styled Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Blake Lively, Becky Newton, Diane Keaton, Ashlee Simpson, Brooke Shields and Lucy Liu, among others. As spokesperson and consultant for Suave, he was live at BlogHer, doing what he does best. For the masses. I failed to get my hair done (yes, I was insane to miss the opportunity, and no, I don’t recall them ever taking a break), but I spent a good amount of time talking with other Suave reps about the new Professional line.

The Suave Professionals line is slated to work as well as a competing salon line with less cost. I left with a generous full size bottle of shampoo and conditioner, and Sleek Cream (to help with frizz – there! I said it!). The comparative salon brand for Color Care is Biolage.

I tried the Sleek Cream the next day and love the texture and ease of use.  It is of medium light texture, somewhere between a cream and a gel, it distributes easily.  I did continue to have mild flyaways, so it is possible I needed to use more.  Static is one of the toughest problems to combat with hair, so if you have a lot of issues during humidity you might need to go with a much stronger product.

In the end, it is the shampoo and conditioner that blew me away.

The shampoo definitely cleansed without stripping, but initially didn’t seem to work in as easily as Biolage  (I actually had some in the shower, and felt a little pang of regret not using ‘the expensive stuff’).  I want to note that after multiple uses, I didn’t seem to have this problem anymore, so perhaps it was battling some sort of build up.

The conditioner, on the other hand, was immediately soaked up in each strand.  By nature and chemical processing, my locks are conditioner thirsty, and if my hair takes product in easily I can usually tell it will be good for it. Just like Biolage, the consistency was a nice translucent cream that did not weigh the hair down.  Critical!

So what was the end result? Something I didn’t expect. I have some serious shine going on!  I can only guess it is the color protectant in the formulation that is making my hair looking as if it was freshly colored. You know, that bright, healthy, vibrant glow? My locks also felt incredibly soft. Fortunately, it wasn’t flat soft (I hate that) and I really could not stop touching my hair.

This was the first I’d heard about the Professional Series, which looks like a revision of a line put out around 2007.

Two thumbs way up for the 2009 version. I don’t know what performance and true color-treatment protection is like yet if used exclusively over a 30-day period, but it is well worth at least intermixing, if not going exclusive. At $3 a bottle, Suave has done a great job. www.suave.com

The line carries a number of products with corresponding salon matches for different hair types.  Find your type and treat yourself:

Humectant = NEXXUS Therappe
Color Care = Biolage
Damage Care = Redken Extreme
Vibrant Shine = Sebastian Laminates
Sleek = Matrix SleekLook
Volumizing =Matrix Amplify