Browned Off! (Andrew Collinge Mocha Brunette Shampoo)

Member Name: cyberem78

Product:	Andrew Collinge Mocha Brunette Shampoo
Date:	14/11/08 (144 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: High shine finish. Exotic ingredients.

Disadvantages: Difficult to use pump-action dispenser.

I enjoy testing a lot of haircare products until I find ones I really love. I tried this particular product, 'Andrew Collinge's Brunette' after having highlights put in my hair. I have naturally dull brown hair and I'm always on the look out for products that promise to enhance it and give it celebrity-style shine.

I was attracted to this product as the 300ml sized bottle looks pretty sassy and salon designed. The bottle is transparent so the ginger, tea-coloured shampoo glows through. The silver writing and dispenser pump are sleek and shiny and give the impression of high technology at work!

The wording on the bottle is very attractive too. The shampoo is described as "salon shampoo" for "mocha to coffee brunettes". I also loved the description of the product which states that the formula contains "silk proteins...dark caramel and amber, coffee and tonka bean...". Now, I've never actually heard of a tonka bean but it sounds like something exotic, a bio-medicinal gem of nature found in distant lands I'll never set foot in! I was further impressed by the Andrew Collinge printed signature on the end of the garb - as if he'd written this as a personal message to each one of us using the shampoo- it did make me feel I could trust the product to do a good job.

The dispenser on the bottle has a simple open/close mechanism - twist one way and the pump locks. I found the pump action to be very stiff and difficult to use. It takes several presses to actually produce enough product for one hair wash. It just doesn't seem to function correctly- as if it can't suck up the shampoo through the tube. Furthermore, the tube which draws up the shampoo does not reach right down to the bottom of the bottle and when you are nearly finished the product about two washes worth of shampoo is stuck at the bottom of the bottle! The dispenser top can't even be twisted off so you can't ever get to this lost shampoo. It's annoying and wasteful.

The shampoo is gelatinous and sticky and has a sharp, highly perfumed smell. The aroma is a little bit like nectar but reminds me of walking past the perfume counters in a beauty department store - so quite clean and girly.

The shampoo froths up in the hair and becomes bubbly and gives a lot of coverage through the hair. It is easy to rinse off. After using this my hair did not feel any softer than usual but when dry there was a high shine finish, which was impressive. My hair was not particularly easy to manage.

At approximately £3.99 a bottle this is too expensive for a shampoo that yields little results. I also have never hated a bottle design as much as I did this one - it was so fiddley and time consuming. This is definately a product I will not be buying in the future.

Summary: A shampoo that doesn't do enough for brown hair.