Bombshell Cork Round Brush — 3″

The largest cork round in the range, and the one for long hair. A three-inch barrel wraps a wide section in a single turn, which is what smooths rather than bends. If you want a blowout that falls straight with movement at the ends, this is the size that does it.

Too big for anything above the shoulder. On short hair the section cannot get round the barrel far enough to set, and you end up dragging rather than shaping.

How it is measured

The three inches is the full diameter, bristle tip to bristle tip — the working size of the brush in your hand. Some brands quote the barrel alone and leave the bristles out, so a brush listed at three inches elsewhere may be considerably larger overall. Compare like with like before you decide a size is wrong for you.

The cork handle

Cork rather than lacquered wood. It is lighter, which matters when your arm is above your head for a whole head of long hair, and it does not turn slippery when your hands have product on them. A lacquered handle does.

It is also warm to hold, and it is a renewable material — cork is stripped from the bark of a living tree, which regrows. That was the point of the range.

The bristles

Boar and nylon together, because one bristle cannot do both jobs. Boar sits close in structure to human hair and carries the scalp's own oil down the strand, which is why hair brushed with it looks conditioned without anything applied. Nylon is stiffer and does the gripping — it is what holds a thick section against the barrel while you pull.

How it compares to the white pin version

There is a second three-inch cork with longer white nylon pins standing proud of the boar. That one grips harder and suits very long or heavy hair where the section wants to slip. This one is the standard build: less aggressive, smoother through the hair, and the right choice for most people with long hair rather than exceptionally thick hair.

How to use it

Dry to about eighty per cent before the brush goes anywhere near the hair. A brush in soaking hair does nothing but stretch it.

Section properly. Nape first, working up, and keep the dryer pointing the same way the brush is travelling — down the hair shaft, never against it.

On long hair, lay the section across the bristles rather than winding it tight around the barrel. Tension comes from how you pull, not from how many times you wrap, and winding long hair around a barrel is how a brush ends up tangled in it.

Looking after it

Clear the shed hair out from the base of the bristles after every few uses. Hair packs in around the roots and stops them flexing, and that is what kills a brush long before the bristles wear.

Do not soak it. Cork and standing water are a bad combination.

Where it came from

Peter Louis spent twenty-three years behind a chair in Manhattan — a salon on 57th Street, and years of blowouts before that, nine in the morning until ten at night. A supplier would bring a sample, it got used on clients, and it went back with a list of what was still wrong. That went on for years until one came back right.