With a stream of starch to cover every last inch of oily root, the best dry shampoo is hands down the easiest way to revive second-day hair. But now there's a new reason to love Jen Atkin’s Ouai Super Dry Shampoo: the Byredo Mojave Ghost fragrance.
In a move that will have millennials chomping at the bit, the planet’s coolest haircare and fragrance brands have joined forces to create Ouai Super Dry Shampoo X Byredo.
Ouai Super Dry Shampoo X Byredo Mojave Ghost, £20, Space NK
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This limited-edition version of Atkin's dry shampoo features the same best-selling formula (rice starch to absorb oil and volcanic minerals to mop up impurities).
But now with a burst of Byredo's Mojave Ghost scent from every angle.
Why scent a dry shampoo?
Fragrance has been key to Ouai's DNA since its launch in 2016. ‘I'm a fragrance snob,' Atkin tells me over Zoom. 'Our products have always been about making your hair smell good. With dry shampoo you’re covering up gym hair or sweaty hair. So it’s always about masking and making strands smell fresh.’
While Atkin had always been a long-time fan of Byredo scents, visiting Barneys in New York for her fragrance fix, the collaboration almost didn’t happen.
‘I’ve always been inspired by the minimalism of the brand, the simplistic packaging and the performance of the fragrance,' she explains. 'Then I met Ben [Gorham, Byredo founder] three years ago and, you know, we’ve become close. It was always in the back of my head to do a collab but I thought it could never happen. I was too embarrassed to even ask.’
But a timely DM changed all that. ‘I DMed Ben and was like, Superdry is such a bestseller and everyone’s using dry shampoo more than ever right now. If you’d ever consider working together I’d love Gypsy Water or Mojave Ghost. He wrote back straight way and was like, ‘I love the idea, let’s do it.’
The allure of Byredo's Mojave Ghost
Atkin immediately set to work on a moodbaord inspired by ‘vintage 1920s Chanel and a tonne of Byredo’.
Her reason for choosing Mojave Ghost with its musk, sandalwood, magnolia and cedar notes was simple. ‘It’s just a sexy smell. I’ve always been a fan of musky floral scents.'
She continues, 'It reminds me of going out before I was married. It reminds me of when I first started getting pay checks and was excited to buy a really nice fragrance. You know one you’d use sparingly and only ever for special occasions.’
On the subject of pay checks, the collaboration is the perfect way to walk around in a cloud of Mojave Ghost without the Byredo price tag [the dry shampoo costs £20, while a 50ml bottle of perfume will set you back £115].
Handy, if you're looking for a purse-friendly way to wear the best perfume for women.
As for technique, Atkin has this advice: ‘Start a can length away. Spray Ouai Super Dry Shampoo X Byredo so it can really get on to the roots and scalp. The biggest mistake people make is to spray dry shampoo really close. This makes it hard to manoeuvre and work in the way you want it to.’
Ouai Super Dry Shampoo X Byredo is what we imagine rich people smell like at an LA rooftop party.
Better still, someone doesn’t have to be close enough to your neck to smell it. Just swish your hair and anyone within a socially distanced two metres can huff on it.
