Bombshell Pocket Cushion Brush — 7″ Boar & Nylon

The same brush as the full-size oval cushion, made smaller. Seven inches, so it fits a bag, a desk drawer, or a coat pocket without the bristles taking a beating.

It is not a compromise version. Same boar and nylon, same rubber cushion pad, same job — it just covers less ground per pass, which only matters if you are working through a lot of long hair at once.

Boar and nylon on a rubber pad

Two bristle types doing two jobs, and neither one could do both.

The nylon is stiffer. It parts the hair, pushes into the length and gets through a tangle rather than catching in it. That is the bristle doing the actual work of detangling.

The boar polishes behind it. Boar sits close in structure to human hair and carries the scalp's own oil down the strand, which is where the shine comes from — your own oil moved down the length, not anything added to it. Hair brushed properly with boar looks conditioned without any product on it.

Both sit in a rubber cushion pad rather than a solid back. The pad gives as the brush travels over the curve of the skull, so the bristles stay in contact instead of skidding off the high points, and any snag lifts the pad rather than pulling at the hair.

Why a small one earns its place

The brush you actually use is the one within reach. A good brush at home and nothing in your bag means the hair that gets brushed properly is the hair nobody sees, and the tidying up you do at four in the afternoon gets done with your fingers.

It is also the size to hand to someone else. On a child, a full-size oval is more brush than the head needs.

For a whole head of long hair at home, the eight and seven eighths covers more per pass and will be quicker.

How to use it

Start at the ends. Take the bottom two inches, clear the tangles from those, then move up an inch and repeat. Working from the top down drags every tangle in the length into one knot at the bottom.

Once it is clear, long slow passes from the roots all the way through. That is the pass that moves the oil, and it is the one worth taking your time over.

Be gentler on wet hair. Hair is at its most fragile wet.

Looking after it

Clear the shed hair out of the pad regularly. Boar holds onto shed hair more than nylon, so this needs it more often than a nylon-only brush, and once hair mats down between the rows the pad stops flexing.

Keep it in something if it lives in a bag. Loose bristles pressed against everything else in there bend, and bent bristles do not spring back.

Do not soak it. Water gets into the cushion, and it does not come back out.

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.