Bombshell Wet Brush — Pocket, 7″

The same wet brush, made to fit a bag. Seven inches instead of eight and seven eighths, and a narrower head at one and seven eighths across — everything else about it is identical, including the three quarter inch bristles.

Hair is at its weakest when it is wet. The bonds that hold it in shape are temporarily loosened by water, so a strand that would take real force to break when dry will give way under far less. A stiff brush dragged through a wet knot is one of the most common causes of breakage there is, and this brush is built not to be that.

How it handles wet hair

Long flexible ball-tipped nylon pins set in a rubberised air cushion. When a pin meets a knot it bends rather than forcing through it, and the cushion gives at the same time, so the head of the brush flexes instead of transmitting the pull into the hair.

Every pin is ball-tipped — a small rounded bead on the end — which is what lets you use it on a scalp with any pressure at all without scratching.

The pins are widely spaced. A dense brush packs a tangle tighter; a spaced one lets the knot open up and come apart.

Nylon, not boar

No boar in this brush, deliberately. Boar is soft and works across the surface of the hair — it polishes, and it would be useless in a wet tangle. Nylon is stiff enough to part hair and get through a knot.

This is a detangling brush rather than a finishing one. If shine is what you are after, that is what the boar brushes in the range do, on dry hair afterwards.

Why the small one

The brush you actually use is the one within reach. A gym bag, a suitcase, a desk drawer, the beach — wet hair happens away from your bathroom more often than in it, and that is usually when it gets handled worst, with fingers or with whatever is to hand.

It is also the easier of the two to use on a child. A full-size head is more brush than a small head needs.

For a whole head of long hair at home, the full-size version covers more per pass and will be quicker.

How to use it

Start at the ends. Take the bottom two inches, work the tangles out of those, then move up an inch and repeat, until the brush draws from root to end without meeting resistance.

Never start at the roots on wet hair. That collects every tangle in the length into one knot at the bottom, and then you are pulling all of it at once.

Blot with a towel first rather than rubbing. Soaking hair is heavier and more fragile than damp hair.

Looking after it

Rinse it and let it dry properly if you use it in the shower. Do not leave it face-down in standing water; the cushion takes water in and does not give it back.

Clear the shed hair out of the pad regularly. Once hair mats between the rows the cushion stops flexing, and the flex is the whole point.

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.