My stylist recently received a visit from van + veronica, who left her a full set of their products to sample. Since their focus is on fragrance-free products (which are extremely difficult to come by) and I have a recently-discovered fragrance allergy, she immediately thought of me and asked if I would like to try them. So thank you to my wonderful stylist for the products, and to van + veronica for supplying them to her!
Full disclosure: I did not begin by clarifying, as the company recommends, but I already clarify regularly to counteract hard water and other elements, and I also use all water-soluble products as a rule. So I will address that first.
If you look at van + veronica’s website, you will see their primary focus is dermatologist-approved products that are fragrance-free and won’t irritate your scalp. This makes my heart happy. After discovering last year how nearly impossible it is to find fragrance-free products when you go looking for them, I know this is desperately needed–not just by me, but so many other people out there with fragrance allergies and sensitivities. There needs to be a lot more of this happening.
van + veronica’s goal is providing these gentle, fragrance-free products specifically to people with curly hair. Also great. It’s tricky to find good curl products if you don’t know what you’re looking for. van + veronica’s products are all fragrance-free, essential-oil-free, sulfate-free, silicone-free, coconut-oil-free, shea-butter-free, dye-free, and paraben-free. All of this is a dream for someone who has a fragrance allergy. This is what I would love to see more of in the majority of products and brands. At least a fragrance-free line as an option, you know?
However, there is a little more that goes into a good curl product, as I discuss in my intro to the Curly Girl Method here. A good curl product should be water-soluble and void of ingredients that cause buildup. And I’m not sure van + veronica has that fully covered yet. But this is something a chemist has to answer for you; a layperson can’t see it just by looking at the ingredients. Out of curiosity, I showed the ingredients to ChatGPT to see if it could tell me. It told me it is not water-soluble. It said their shampoo looks okay, but their conditioner contains all of the following which are known to contribute to buildup: cetearyl alcohol, cetyl alcohol, stearyl alcohol, behentrimonium chloride + quaternium-87, and several oils. Their leave-in contains the same. Their styler contains polyquaternium-69, polyquaternium-11, and the same oils again.
All of the above, it said, are minimal, but when stacked together, can quickly begin to build. So based on that alone and without further confirmation on its water-solubility, this is not a product I would personally use regularly. However, I am going to try it out for those of you who don’t have a lot of options and are okay with more frequent clarifying.
All that said…to test it, I then gave ChatGPT the ingredients for two brands I know are all water-soluble (Raw Curls and Innersense), and it told me neither of them are water-soluble, either, and in fact that van + veronica is even better than Raw Curls. So I’m not really sure how to go about verifying the facts here. I reached out to van + veronica to ask, but did not receive a response.
Day One
The first thing I noticed when shampooing was that my hair felt a little bit grittier and more tangled than I am used to it feeling during a shampoo. That could have been my imagination because I had so much more heightened focus on what I was doing than I normally do. I’ll see how it feels during the next shampoo. As a note, I always shampoo twice, because my scalp does not suds up enough during the first round, and that was true here, as well.
I typically shampoo about once a week and always deep-condition when I do. (My hair really could probably stand a shampoo and deep-condition twice a week, but I just don’t have that kind of time in the middle of the week, so once it is.) So I did not try the conditioner on this first day. However, I added both the leave-in and the styler.
I gave my hair a little whiff to see what, if anything, it did smell like. (Being fragrance-free doesn’t mean it doesn’t smell like anything, since products have their own natural scents; it just means there isn’t scent added to it.) I thought I detected a faint hint of oatmeal at first, but it faded as my hair started to dry.
I always air-dry my hair because I simply do not have time in the mornings to blow-dry. So I applied the products following their directions exactly, scrunched out the excess moisture with a t-shirt, and waited.
Once it was dry, my hair looked a bit shiny and had lots of curl.
After scrunching out the crunch, I noticed it looked very full, with lots of volume and great curl clumping! I liked the clumping even more than what I normally get with Raw Curls. However, I also had quite a bit of frizz halo going on. I rarely have any halo with Raw Curls. (By coincidence, I just happened to be wearing my “Frizz happens” shirt that day. Medusa can relate.)
Day Two
I woke up early the day after first trying the products for a long car trip and overnight stay in Cedar Key. As always, I had slept on a silk pillowcase with my hair in a pineapple. I took it down and, as always, had broken and flat curls all over, along with the halo of frizz, but there was still a lot of shape. It was enough that, since we were rushing, I decided to follow the refresh instructions and simply spray with water and then scrunch. Then I sat in the car for several hours. After that, I got out and walked around sweating in the sun for several more hours. When we finally checked into our room, I didn’t have time to shower before our dinner reservations, so I refreshed the same way again, and we went out.
I was feeling self-conscious after all the sweating, but to my surprise, when we were at a bar later, a woman with my same hair type told me she loved my hair!
Back at the hotel at the end of the night, I was surprised to note there was still a lot of both definition and volume! Even at the end of day two with all that sweating, and having refreshed twice already.
Day Three
The next morning, we were just hopping in the car to drive back home, so again, I didn’t bother to do anything but refresh. But by the end of that day, I still had tons of definition and volume! My hair was almost beginning to take on an ’80s kind of look to it.
I will note here that I just learned I had not been following the instructions properly on my Raw Curls products. I am curious to see what my hair will do with that when I start adding the proper amount of gel after this trial is over. I also only just bought my spray bottle and started experimenting with refreshing, so this is all pretty new to my hair.
Day Four
I could possibly have refreshed today, but things were looking a little crazy, and I decided to start over again instead so I could try the conditioner. The conditioner has pretty good slippage. My hair felt kind of tangled when I first got it under the water, but the tangles fell out fairly easily.
Day Five
On the fifth day, I just refreshed again. And it looked fantastic! It also seemed like the halo had mostly subsided.
I did notice that my hair seemed to feel a little sticky/greasy to the touch while using these products. It was subtle, but still there.
The Verdict
All in all, if and only if I could confirm that the brand actually is water-soluble, I would probably continue to use Raw Curls’ shampoo and conditioner, as well as their clarifying cleanser and deep conditioner, and then replace their styling products with van + veronica’s leave-in and styler…as long as the frizz halo problem went away.
For an intro to the Curly Girl Method, in case you missed it above, check out my post here. Check here to see all of my personally-designed curly hair t-shirts available for purchase. And if you’re looking for a wonderful, certified curl specialist, check here.
Leave a Reply