Go on! Mess your hair up! (Schwarzkopf Osis Mess Up)

Member Name: Morgenhund

Product:	Schwarzkopf Osis Mess Up
Date:	01/02/02 (1220 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good hold, only need a tiny bit

Disadvantages: very hard nay elusive to get hold of!, pricey

From the title, you'd think that I was promoting the dying of hair in all sorts of strange colours, shaving lumps out of you hair and all sorts of other strange things. Furthermore if I told you that my hairdresser has been allowed to mess up my hair for 18 months, you'd have to presume that there was some ulterior motive behind my continued patronage of London Underground in Vienna's Josefstädterstraße. I would have to concede that my hairdresser is very pleasant, a sweet young lady in her early 20s blessed with a good sense of humour and with a great future in front of her, and who always does a great job, which always means a healthy tip for her: Part of it boils down to the fact that she?s been "messing up" my hair for the last 18 months - not literally, but because of the matt wax she uses in my hair, which at last the salon had finally started selling to customers - just as I had given up hope of ever getting some of the stuff.

What is so special about this stuff?

Well apart from the fact that it is "Only Sold In Salons!", that's not just the name of the range but also true, it is the wax that I have found the most effective on my hair. I used to use another Schwarzkopf product, Taft, which is readily available (well at least over here in Austria!), and the "Drei Wetter Wax" - three weather wax - i.e. suitable for sun, rain and snow and therefore particularly good in Austria all year round, but found that it was still quite greasy and that the hold was not as good as the banana wax I'd used to get at the salon back in Blighty. (Ah, nostalgia!)

The wax contains beeswax and has a slight fragrance to it - I was yesterday complimented by an ex on my aftershave (she'd "identified" it was Acqua di Gio), when in fact I wasn't wearing any, and the smell she could smell was in fact the "Mess Up" in my hair! It comes in 100ml canisters (a brushed aluminium metal con
tainer with a screw top, with simple black and red graphics on it (as per the picture of the product above!), with a canister really going a long way.

The intended effect is a slightly tousled look, with messed up hair (the bed-head look!) although I find it very effective in controlling my hair, something which a lot of so called "Ultra hold" gels seem unable to do.

Unlike a lot of waxes, which are gloss waxes, and therefore give your hair an extra shine, this is a matt wax, and this means that your hair will have a more natural look, and there is certainly no danger of a wet look. Of course, if you prefer a wet look, then you'll not want to go for this one probably. It is probably due to this that my hands feel less sticky after using this wax than others, although this may be down to the fact that you only need a tiny pea sized amount and therefore a canister will ready last you a long time ? a lot longer than a squeezy bottle of gel.

Of course there is a catch to this, namely the price tag. Friends thought that I was paying a lot for Trevor Sorbie professional wax (£5.50) for a jar of approximately the same size as the OSIS, and in comparison with Schwarzkopf's other waxes (e.g. Drei Wetter Wax - costs about ?3.50) it is a pricey alternative, at ?11 per tub (£7), and then of course that is only when you can actually find the stuff. However that does still not detract from me giving the product a five star rating. If you rationalise the expense, e.g. buying a canister every eight weeks or so if you use it daily, then it is not such an expensive option after all. As you use it very sparingly you will also not use as much as say if you were to use a squeezy gel. It might cost about 10 times as much as supermarket own brand gel, but do you really like running slime through your hair, and feeling the stickiness of it for hours to come? Obviously for the best results you should use it on clean dry hair, and generally on sho
rt hair - long hair and wax - I don't think so, you'd be through this stuff in a matter of days!

Summary: