Desert Essence Coconut Shine & Refine Hair Lotion


One of my favorite items from Influenster's Naturals'12 VoxBox that I received for free in order to try and review was Desert Essence's Coconut Shine & Refine Hair Lotion.  This extremely coconutty white lotion promises to make your hair healthier and shinier, while taming frizzies and fly aways.  Also, it's very coconutty.  Did I mention that?  In fact, it's so coconutty that I can't wear it around my friend that's sensitive to coconut.


They're not kidding about the coconut part.

I have to add in here that I absolutely love the smell of coconut, and if I had to compare the scent of this hair goo to something, I'd say that it smells like classic Hawaiian Tropic sunscreen.  I love the smell of Hawaiian Tropic, too.  I remember being young and wearing it around the house just because I loved the smell of it.  Plus, the bottle I had was a tanning lotion, and I could lay out in the sun just like the grownups on the telly.  I did some strange things when I was a kid, but to be fair it was the 80s, lol.

Since we have, in fact, established the scent of the product, we can now move onto its uses.  It's advertised as moisturizing, strengthening, and smoothing.  In the next breath, they promise that it helps bring out your hair's natural beauty and texture.  This confuses me.  On one hand, it helps smooth your hair.  But what if your natural texture isn't smooth? 

Personally, I have stick straight hair.  It couldn't hold texture if my life depended on it.  I remember once, a friend wanted to learn how to use hot rollers so I offered myself up as a guinea pig.  I don't think I'll ever forget the look on her face as she pulled the rollers out and watched my hair instantly straighten back up, almost like a reversed time-lapse video of a vine curling around a stick.  My whole family has this stick straight hair, too, so I've not been able to test this on someone with a different hair type to see how it would perform.  I do know that for me, this stuff works wonderfully.


Not pictured:  the cartoonish sound of a deflating balloon and the "wap wap wap" of failure.

As long as I use a light hand, it tames flyaway hairs, adds a bit of shine, and leaves me with hair that I sit and sniff all day.  The scent is very strong, though not overpowering, and really lasts.  I keep mentioning the scent for two reasons:  one, I love it, and two, I can really seeing it turning some people off.  If you don't like the smell of coconut, you will not like this.  If you don't like hair products where the scent lingers all day, this probably isn't for you, either.  A quick warning though:  too heavy a hand will leave you with a head that's delicious smelling, but quite greasy looking. 

As far as the moisturizing aspects, I can't say I've noticed a big difference in my hair.  Dry hair isn't something that I have a big issue with.  I can say that I noticed a dramatic difference in any split ends that I may be rumored to have, though.  Now my daughter (who insists on wearing this every day) is a whole other story.  It makes a huge difference in how soft her hair is.  She's gotten so many compliments; it makes me sick and/or possibly jealous, lol.

In regards to the shine adding aspects, yes it does add a little shine.  The more that you add, the more shine it adds until you slide right into grease-ball town.  Does this add as much shine as a dedicated hair gloss?  Nope, not by a long shot.  If you want ultra-shiny hair, you'll probably want to go towards one of those.  If you're wanting something to tame frizzies and fly-away hairs, help with split ends, remind you of summer, and do this using mostly all-natural bits, then this is definitely an item that you'll want to look into. 

2 comments:

Unknown said...

i've signed up for influenster since april and i have yet to receive anything.. this sounds like a lovely product though :)

vickyhoang.blogspot.com

Fina Time said...

Truthfully, I think Influenster just randomly pulls names out of a hat for their boxes, lol. The only reason that I got this one was that I was lucky enough to get another box that had a challenge reward of another box, lol.

I absolutely love this stuff, though. They have a whole line around this coconut scent that I'm going to look into. Yum. :)

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