Smells in your hair
Last week I spent a lot of time learning more about a popular shampoo: Suave Essentials Ocean Breeze Shampoo. Economically the shampoo is quite attractive. $3.50 and you could have enough to last you a month. However, do you really experience an ocean breeze when you lather your hair?
A little about Suave. Suave is a brand name used by Unilever in the U.S, Argentina, Mexico, and Canada. A variety of shampoos, soaps, and lotions are sold under the Suave brand. Unilever acquired Helene Curtis Industries in 1996 and in doing so also acquired the Suave line of hair products. Helene Curtis Industries was founded in 1927 as the National Mineral Company. Suave was originally sold as a hair tonic. The brand later grew into offering more than a 100 products.
The first thing I did before filling my hair with ocean breeze was look at the ingredients of the shampoo. Like any other shampoo there were a bunch of surfactants (detergents), foam enhancers, thickeners, and possibly other conditioning agents. Oh wait and fragrance.
Monday
When I try and imagine an ocean breeze I smell a slightly salty and fresh breeze, with maybe a hint of sea weed. That would be quite daft to include in a shampoo don’t you think? I can’t imagine anyone’s hair feeling great when they walk out of an ocean. Well neither did Suave. Suave’s Ocean Breeze Shampoo smells very citrusy and a little like papaya. It carries more of a tropical fruit touch than an ocean breeze.
The fragrance is light but not too strong. The citrus and fruity odor wafts lightly through the air. It feels a little fake and is short lived. It definitely was not nose fatigue that prevented me from smelling the fragrance all around me.
Tuesday
I walked through the same experience as Monday. A short lived tropical fruit fragrance with a touch of fresh citrus that disappeared just as quickly as it appeared.
I wondered if the smell lasted a while during the day. I asked a few people to smell my hair, but no one smelled any tropical fruitiness.
Wednesday-Thursday-Friday
As I used the shampoo more I understood that it’s one true strength was a consistent experience. Oh and it was also pretty great at keeping my hair clean. The fragrance though seemed to exist only to hide the odors of the various other chemicals and to momentarily please the user.
Composition
Being a shampoo primarily sold in discount stores the fragrance in Suave’s Ocean Breeze shampoo is unlikely to be quite strong and probably only exists to momentarily capture the wearer’s attention.
The primary ingredient in the shampoo is water. It probably makes up 70%-80% of the volume of the shampoo. The surfactants (detergents or cleaning agents) make up about 10%-15% of the volume of the shampoo. Other chemical agents probably take up most of the remaining volume with the fragrance making up about 0.1%-0.5% of the volume. Hence, it is quite understandable that the fragrance isn’t too strong or long lasting.
The fragrance is likely comprised of strong citrus top notes and esters composed of short aliphatic organic acids that provide the typical fruity odor. The short aliphatic organic acids and the citrus top notes are fairly small and light molecules and evaporate quite quickly, thereby explaining the short lived nature of the fragrance.
To conclude
The Suave Ocean Breeze shampoo is probably a great shampoo for the price. The fragrance in the shampoo is citrusy and fruity and not an exact representation of an ocean breeze. The fragrance is short lived and captures the momentary attention of the wearer and is probably meant to mask the odors of the various other chemicals in the shampoo. The experience however is quite consistent.
Quality tags
Short lived. Momentary. Consistent experience.
