Kerastase Resistance Ciment Thermique heat-activated reconstructing milk review

I used to go to hairdressers and always end up buying whatever styling products they recommended because  whatever they did, it made my hair look fabulous when I step out from the salon. Sadly once I get home I can never replicate the same look and end up wasting the products.

After that I've stopped buying any hair stylist recommended products for quite a while, because often your hair looked so awesome was because of the careful blowdry, the end styling product virtually just 'finished it off' or added a little bit more shine or hold. Hence what probably needed improvement on my part is my hair blowdry skills...

Then come this little thing! I went to get my quarterly hair trim, the hairdresser applied a bit of this on my damp hair before blow dry and also a little bit after. I was absolutely blown away by the scent, I couldn't stop sniffing the air! It was like a mild fragrant 'neutral' floral scent yet also a touch of herbal, not sickeningly sweet, but yet not clinical or overly strong herbal.

Not to mention my hair looked really silky after that (again, that was really to the merit of the blowdry rather than this product).

Afterwards I asked the price (was about $30-35 AUD or something) and just grabbed a bottle home!

It comes in a classy light green paper box- the product is 125ml which lasts a while.

It's made in Spain- if anyone wants to know.

Comes in a squeeze tube like this. It's a screw off cap.

Click below to enlarge- basically it says apply to damp hair, start at the ends then brush through. Walnut sized.  If styling with straightening iron, dry hair completely first with blowdryer, then use iron ideally at 180 degrees Celsius temperature, and iron through.

Looks like this- it's light and not oily. Absorbs really quickly.

I always try to be as truthful as possible with my pictures- from my pictures of before and after I can't tell much difference. Top picture is before, bottom is after. This is probably because I just had a trim so all the dry ends are gone.

What it really does is it's a wonderful leave in treatment that kind of "seals" the end of hair together so it feels really smooth and feels like it mends any split ends temporarily. Not to mention it's also a heat protectant- I don't have too many leave in treatments at the moment that works well with curling irons. I have other common products like Moroccan oil and Kerastase elixir oil ultimate in the original gold bottle (and other variations of it like the pink and purple bottles) or the oleo relax oil (and a lot of other things), I find that oils work better with blowdry (since it helps even heat distribution so you can blowdry hair a lot faster). This product also makes blowdrying a little bit faster but not as dramatic as say, moroccan oil (which helps me dry my hair in half the time compared to without it).  

What it does best is before straightening iron- I find that when I use hair oils with straightening iron or curling iron, because it almost conducts heat faster, it ends up frying my hair. So oils are better as a 'finisher' after straightning to add some gloss or tame frizzies down.

It's not a miracle leave in treatment which can turn straw hair into silk immediately, but it does what it markets to do- protects against heat and seals the end so hair feels smoother.

Overall rating 5/5. I'm heavily biased due to love of the scent though!

Kerastase Nutritive Bain Nutri-Thermique thermo-reactive intensive nutrition shampoo/ conditioner review

These are probably my second bottle of the Kerastase Nutritive Bain Nutri-Thermique shampoo used, and this time I also tried the conditioner.

They come tin 250ml size for shampoo and 200ml for conditioner. Shampoo comes with screw top and conditioner is a flip-top.

Ingredient list etc:

The Nutri-thermique line is meant to be for hairs that undergo regular heat treatment. I wash my hair daily and blast it with hairdryer plus I use a curling iron every now and then, so I thought this would work for me.

Shampoo on the left and conditioner on the right. The shampoo is a very light colored clear yellow.

BEFORE shampoo:

After shampoo and just random blowdry without hair brush. Hair feels "lighter" in general, but it doesn't really feel ultra smoothed down like what I'd expect from Kerastase shampoos. It's still a bit frizzy at times and look a bit 'ungroomed' while usually with Kerastase oleo relax shampoos my hair looks like it's styled and bouncy even when I didn't use any extra treatment products or had to brush blow-dry.

I went through the first bottle of shampoo before I started dying my hair every 6-8 weeks, and I was generally happy about it since my hair felt clean and it lathers easily and has a nice floral scent. Then once my hair was a bit more damaged, the shampoo felt really ordinary on my hair and even with the conditioner it felt like it did nothing.

Eventually it was a bit painful to use up the second bottle (and I consider the conditioner really useless and weak, compared to the Nutri-thermique masque which is much more nourishing).  The conditioner is definitely not going to be a repurchase for me because for a few more dollars, get the Masque and use it as a conditioner sparingly it'd still yield far better results.

Overall 3/5. Not really great for damaged hair, even though I consider my hair damage to be rather mild...