Worth It: Conditioner For Curly-Straight-Dry-Oily Hair

By Jenna Sauers | September 28, 2011 | 11:05pm

Beauty Style

I have relatively few complaints about my hair, generally speaking. I like that it grows in thick, I don’t mind that it tends towards wiry because it really holds a style, and it’s got a nice wavy natural texture. (That is to say my hair is curly when freshly washed, fading to wavy the following day, and more or less straight the day after.) It is, however, oily at the roots almost no matter what and dry at the ends almost no matter what. There is only one product I’ve ever used that has remedied this condition, and unfortunately it is only available in France. Jacques Dessange Phytodess Masque à L’huile de Macadamia, you are magic. I miss you. I bought the biggest bottle of you that I could find last time I was in Paris, and that was four years ago, and you’re long gone. I have an eBay alert and a Google alert set to your name. When traveling friends ask me what I want from overseas, I don’t tell them duty free Lucky Strikes or Laphroaig, I tell them only: Jacques Dessange. I miss you. I need you in my life, and on my head.

I love this conditioner so freaking much. It’s the only thing that’s ever balanced out my oil situation and left my hair looking so great it’s almost unreal. One morning I actually took a picture of myself in my pajamas, because I couldn’t believe my hair right after I’d washed it with this conditioner. My hair never looks like this. Ever. (By the way, when I took that photo — in early 2008 — I had not yet discovered is Clinical Active Serum, hence the zits. But I digress.) And now my hair definitely never looks like this, because I have no way of getting Phytodess Masque à L’huile de Macadamia in the U.S. (that I know of).

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Phytodess always left my hair curly, but not frizzy. It was soft but not limp; it had body. I miss my Jacques Dessange Phytodess Masque à L’huile de Macadamia. For about a year after my first bottle ran out, I kept the peeled-off label in my suitcase, just so I could remind myself that it existed, show it to friends so they’d know what to look for in Paris, and compare the ingredients list to anything else that might have tempted me in the drugstore aisle. To that end, I tried other things with macadamia oil in them (none came close to the results). I bought some expensive Kérastase hair mask at discount when the company discontinued some of its products — it sucked. I bought Kevin Murphy, Moroccanoil, knock-off Moroccanoil, paraben-free this, fragrance-free that. I tried some stuff you can get in the U.S. that goes by the brand name “Phyto”: those guys should be fucking sued for trading under a deceptively similar name because it’s not the same. I just want my goddamn Jacques Dessange Masque à L’huile de Macadamia back. I last washed my hair with it sometime in September of 2009, and I still remember how good it felt. (The bottle I used looked different than the one above; it was white, and barrel-shaped, with big, sans-serif lettering on the label.) Sometimes when I get out an old piece of clothing or open up the suitcase I traveled with at the time, I think I can still smell it. Clearly, I’m deranged. But hot damn do I miss my favorite conditioner.

Jacques Dessange Phytodess Masque à L’huile de Macadamia, priceless, because it’s not fucking available in the U.S.

Worth It only features things we paid for ourselves and actually like. Don’t send us stuff.