Bombshell Pocket Cushion Brush — 7″ Pure Boar

The only brush in the range with no nylon in it at all. That makes it the best polishing brush here and the worst detangling one, and you should know which of those you are buying.

What pure boar does

Boar sits close in structure to human hair. Drawn slowly from the roots through the length, it picks up the oil your scalp produces and carries it down the strand — and that oil is what makes hair shine. Not a product, not a serum. Your own.

Take the nylon out and there is nothing but boar meeting the hair, so every pass is doing that job. On fine hair especially, that is a noticeable difference from a mixed brush.

It also lays the cuticle flat as it goes, which is the other half of why brushed hair catches the light.

What it will not do

It will not get through a tangle. Boar is soft and it has no reach — it works across the surface of the hair rather than pushing into it, and a knot will simply stop it.

So if your hair tangles, this is not your only brush. Detangle first with the boar and nylon version, then finish with this one. If you have thick or curly hair and you want a single brush, buy the boar and nylon instead — this one will frustrate you.

Where it comes into its own is fine or straight hair, hair that has already been detangled, and anyone whose main complaint is dullness rather than knots.

The pad and the size

The bristles 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.

Seven inches, so it fits a bag or a drawer. The brush you actually use is the one within reach.

How to use it

On dry hair, always. Boar on wet hair does nothing useful — the oil will not move and the hair is at its most fragile.

Make sure it is untangled first, then take long slow passes from the roots right through to the ends. Slow is the whole point. A fast pass skims the top; a slow one carries the oil down.

Two minutes a night does more for shine than most of what is sold to produce it.

Looking after it

Clear the shed hair out of the pad regularly. Boar holds onto shed hair far more than nylon does, so this one needs it most of anything in the range, and once hair mats down between the rows the pad stops flexing.

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.