Stripped dry. (Naked Rescue Intense Care Shampoo)

Member Name: Vaula

Product:	Naked Rescue Intense Care Shampoo
Date:	27/07/09 (214 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free of Sodium lauryl sulfate, parabens, and petrochemicals. Not tested on animals.

Disadvantages: Need to use quite a lot at once, so not great value for money. Leaves hair feeling dry and stripped.

I'm always on the lookout for products that contain as little toxins and pollutants as possible, and so picked up this shampoo form Boots some time ago.

The shampoo comes packaged in a 250 ml see-through, cylender shaped, off-white plastic bottle with a press-open cork. The back of the bottle advises: "Naked ingredient lists are free from Sodium lauryl sulfate, parabens, and petrochemicals." This is great, Sodium lauryl sulfate being an industrial stripping chemical, which is known to be very drying on the skin. The back of the bottle also states that Naked products aren't tested on animals.

The bottle also reads that the product is "97% natural", and uses "Sweet Almond Seed extract along with natural proteins to repair weakened hair and improve the appearance of dry, damaged locks" and that "Sunflower Seed extract provides armour to protect hair from the harmful effects of the sun". It would be interesting to know what the word "natural" actually implies here, as it's quite liberally thrown around in the beauty industry to describe anything with even a very faint connection to something occurring in nature - it certainly doesn't mean 'organic' in this case.

The product itself is very very light yellow in colour, and see-through. It smells divine, probably due to the sweet almond in it.

As you apply it to hair, it doesn't get distributed all over the hair very easily, so you need quite a bit of it to be able to cover your whole head with it. It basically doesn't lather very much. It feels quite simple, and, well, a bit cheap on the hair, in the sense that it doesn't have that soft, sliding, moisturising feel many shampoos do, but feels a little harsh on the hair. The result feels like you've washed your hair with a cheap shampoo, as the hair feels dry and a bit difficult to brush through.

Because my hair has been coloured several times, and is quite dry at the ends, I normally use an intensely moisturising TIGI shampoo and conditioner on it, but occasionally try other shampoos like this one (while using the same intense conditioner). Maybe this is why the contrast between my usual shampoo and this one is so obvious. It could be that the Naked shampoos would work better on very healthy, non-processed hair.

I'm all for what the company are trying to do here by producing something free of some harmful ingredients, but as it's compromising on the quality this much, it's not something I can keep on using. I'm also more concerned about the harmful ingredients in products that actually stay on your body, and can get absorbed into it (moisturisers and sunblock, mainly). Then again, wherever you can reduce the toxic load on your body, can't hurt.

The shampoo is currently priced at £3.99 in Boots, but you can regularly pick it up on a 2 for 1 deal for the same price.

Summary: Shampoo that's more natural than most, but not of good quality.