Bombshell Cork Round Brush — 1.75″

The smallest cork round in the range, and the one for short hair. At an inch and three quarters the section wraps far enough round the barrel to genuinely set, which is what gives a bob its shape and a fringe its direction rather than just drying it flat.

It is also the brush for the parts of a longer head the big ones cannot reach cleanly — the fringe, the sides, the short pieces around the face. Plenty of people with long hair own this alongside a larger one for exactly that.

How it is measured

The inch and three quarters 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 the same size 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, 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 section against the barrel while you pull.

A small barrel is not a beginner's brush

People assume the small one is the easy one. It is the opposite. A narrow barrel takes more sections to get through a head, and it will put a bend in hair whether you meant to or not — so if you want your ends left straight, this is the wrong size and no technique will fix that.

What it does better than anything else in the range is shape. Root lift, a fringe with direction, the turn under on a bob.

How to use it

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

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

Wind the section around the barrel. That is what a small barrel is for, and it is how you set a curl or a bend into a shorter cut. The risk of the brush catching is low because there is not much length to catch.

Looking after it

Clear the shed hair out from the base of the bristles after every few uses. A narrow barrel packs with hair faster than a wide one, so this size needs it more often than the others.

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.