Receipts
Nov 2020 to now.
Same person. Phone camera. No filter.
Nov 2020
My hair was shoulder length and tired. Ends splitting, color fading, and I'd just found out I was allergic to dry shampoo — every one I tried. My sister handed me a bottle of Monat's dry shampoo and said try this one. I could use it.
That was it for a couple of years: dry shampoo, then texture spray, then hairspray, all from sample bottles she kept passing me. I liked them. I wasn't buying them.
Feb 2024
She gave me a shampoo and conditioner to try. I didn't like it. The smell was off and it didn't feel like the styling stuff did. I stopped.
Then more samples showed up — Bond IQ, and I think the damage-control line — and those were different. Hair felt softer out of the shower. Ends looked better between trims. That's when I started the routine for real: oil the night before wash day, shampoo, conditioner, split-end mender on the ends, leave-in, done.
Sep 2026
Yesterday. The color is dye — that's a salon, not a bottle. What isn't dye: the length, how full it looks, and ends that make it to the next trim without splitting off.
Two and a half years of the same wash-day routine, most weeks, not all of them. I was not consistent. It still shows.
What I'd say to your face. The dry shampoo, the oil, and the shampoo and conditioner. Those three changed how my hair looks and feels, and it didn't take long. I'd hand any of them to a friend.
Still testing
IR Clinical serum. One week in. Updates go on my shelf page in a few months.
What didn't work
That first shampoo and conditioner. Still don't know which line it was. Not every product in a lineup is for every head, and this one wasn't for mine.
Skin
Feels firmer. I have no photos to prove it, so it doesn't count. When I do, it'll be here.