Oribe Matte Waves Texture Lotion Review

TL;DR:

A lightweight, leave-in lotion that'll give you waves — without crunch or grit.

Oribe’s Matte Waves Texture Lotion is a minimalist’s dream. And by minimalist, I mean someone who can’t be bothered to put in any real effort with their hair, but expects it to look chic nonetheless.

My skincare routine is laborious, and my makeup routine is involved, but when it comes to my hair care regimen, for some unknown reason, I can only be bothered to shampoo and condition it. I don’t even blow it dry more than a few times a month (the few times I wash my hair during the day and can’t let it dry overnight).

But I digress. All I have to do is run a nickel-sized amount of this lightweight lotion through my long hair and let it air dry while I sleep, and I wake up to the kind of undulating, non-frizzy waves that runway hair has been made of for the past few seasons (it’s no accident, by the way, that this exact product was used to create cool downtown-girl waves at the Veronica Beard show a few New York Fashion Weeks back.) It’s the kind of hair a man once adorably, sincerely described as ‘messy but organized at the same time’ in awe. And unlike most texturizers, which leave my hair wavy but irreversibly crunchy and gritty, this one just leaves hair so soft and touchable, you’d think there was nothing in it. That's because it contains hair-conditioning glycerin, fatty acids from a Brazilian nut extract, and panthenol, in addition to the polymers and resins that are actually doing the heavy lifting of making your hair look perfectly wavy.

If you, unlike me, aren’t an air-dry devotee, you can still make it work. When I have no other choice but to blow dry, I’ll work this through before drying my hair with a diffuser, scrunching it as I go to make sure I’m not blowing all the natural shapes in my hair straight. And then you’re good to go! Like I said — a minimalist’s dream.

See the results on Instagram: