Review: Don’t Despair, Repair! Deep Conditioning Hair Cap System

This past summer, Sephora released a line of sleeping masks for your hair. I was obsessed. So you can imagine my excitement when I met with Briogeo founder Nancy Twine to learn all about the latest to her cult-favorite hair line, the Don't Despair, Repair! Deep Conditioning Hair Cap System Kit. The product is a two-part deep conditioning system that promises not only to restore moisture but fix your split ends too. The concept behind the kit was inspired by the K-Beauty craze, and the product is described as a sheet mask for your hair. While I wouldn't exactly call it that, Briogeo's latest is, at the very least, a close cousin of the now-ubiquitous product.

What's so special about the kit is that the cap (which you place over your head after applying the Allure Reader's Choice 2017 winner Don't Despair, Repair Deep Conditioning Mask provided in the bottom half of the package), is that the inside is covered in essence made from argan oil vegabeads. The beads contain negatively charged ions that latch onto the surface of your hair, which is positively charged with amino acids. The combination of the two is supposed to go to work on your split ends, sealing them back together.

At the time when I used this, my ends were a total mess. I'd recently gotten my hair braided and had to give myself a blowout before heading over to the salon. On my kinky/curly hair, blowouts are kind of a must for braids, because the style looks smoother and neater if my hair isn't curling everywhere. I think I got a little overzealous as I blew out my ends because they were feeling extremely rough. I hoped that this would at least fix that issue.

I used the system post-shower, starting by applying the deep conditioner first, and then putting the cap over my head as instructed. You can feel the essence if you touch inside the cap. It's a little slippery and slimy, but not unpleasantly so. I put the cap on my head, rubbed it around a little bit to make sure the essence was evenly distributed, and prepared to keep the cap on for the suggested 15-60 minutes. Instead, while I was in bed watching an encore of CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, I fell asleep with the conditioning system still very much on my head. Sorry, guys, I have a really bad habit of deep conditioning at night and then falling asleep. Testing beauty products is tiring!

Anyhoo, when I woke up the next morning (with CNN still playing on my laptop), I high-tailed it to the shower to wash off the remaining conditioner. My hair felt extremely soft and my ends weren't as coarse and rough as they had felt the previous night. "So this shit really works," I said to myself. I do get split ends, but due to the texture of my hair, I'm more prone to teeny tiny fairy or single-strand knots. I didn't notice if my split ends were fused together, but I did notice that my hair felt amazing and, again, my ends were also feeling pretty great.

But just to be sure, I asked cosmetic chemist Ni'Kita Wilson if there was anything to this vegabead fusing technology, which she called, "very effiacious." But here, she wasn't sure how effective it actually is when applied in this fashion. "It doesn't translate well when impregnated in the cap because only the surface hairs benefit from the technology. I tested it on my daughter's thick curly hair (the cap didn't quite fit) and I couldn't see a difference. If the Vegabead was in the actual repair mask, then it would be much more efficient — or if you have thinner hair."

So there you have it. My hair did feel a lot better, and it was getting conditioned, but if I go by what Wilson says, it likely wasn't as effective as it could be. Still, the mask felt like it was doing something, and, after all, the next day my ends felt so much better than they did the night before. My only issue was that I thought there should be more of the actual deep conditioner included in the pack. For someone with thicker or longer hair, I don't think the amount provided is enough. Fortunately, I had a whole tub of the deep conditioner in my stash, so I was able to supplement with that. But besides the amount of DC, I would likely use this $36 wonder again when my ends get super rough.

Pick up the system for yourself at Briogeo.

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