ATTITUDE's Super Leaves conditioner for coloured hair, 240 ml, with avocado oil and pomegranate. Vegan, silicone-free and EWG VERIFIED — the companion to the colour protection shampoo in the same range.
Why conditioner matters more on dyed hair than on virgin hair. Permanent colour works by opening the cuticle with alkali so that dye precursors can get inside the shaft and react there. That process leaves the cuticle permanently rougher and the hair more porous than it was, which is why coloured hair tangles more, feels drier, and loses dye every time it gets wet. Conditioner does two useful things about this: it lays the roughened cuticle flatter, and a flatter cuticle both reflects more light and lets less dye escape. On coloured hair, conditioner is not optional maintenance — it is part of how the colour survives.
Avocado oil and pomegranate. Avocado oil is one of the heavier, more penetrating plant oils, high in oleic acid, which suits the porous, thirsty texture that colouring produces. Pomegranate seed oil is unusual in the plant world for its punicic acid content — a rare conjugated fatty acid that is one of the more genuinely interesting botanical ingredients in cosmetics rather than simply a nice word on a label.
Silicone-free, and why that helps coloured hair specifically. Silicone conditioners give instant shine, but they accumulate, and the shampoos strong enough to remove that accumulation are precisely the sulfate-heavy ones that strip colour fastest. Avoiding silicones means never needing a clarifying wash — which, on dyed hair, is worth more than the instant slip you give up. Expect one to three weeks of transition when switching.
Free from: silicones, parabens, PEGs, synthetic fragrance.
Available at Só Verde, an organic concept store in Foz, Porto.