Most of us use shampoo every other day, and it’s a staple of any bathroom in the world.

But have you ever wondered where is shampoo coming from? I really started to look into it only when we decided to create a Gallinée scalp care range.

The first commercial shampoo was from a certain Mr Schwarzkopf in 1903. Compare this to the 5000-year-old soap, or the 4000-year-old Kohl, shampoo has barely been here for 100 years!

What were people using before?
Well in India people were using natural saponins from plants. These ingredients have a foaming tendency, so a decoction was used to cleanse hair and scalp. In Pre-Colombian America, they were using the natural saponins you get when you wash your quinoa. So hipster.
And in Europe, people were either using plain soap or not washing their hair at all.

So what was the first shampoo looking like? Like this

It was single-use sachets of powder, to be used once a week. Mr Schzarzkopf called it “shampoon”, from the Hindi word champo, to massage. The success was massive and shampoo use thrived from there.

So how to bring this 100 years old product into the future?
Well, we had a simple checklist:

  • To cleanse hair and scalp in the gentlest manner possible, so that not to disturb the scalp microbiome
  • But still, have hair feeling light and clean
  • Be easy to rinse
  • Be the right pH, in order not to damage hair or the acid mantle of the scalp.

As you might notice, there is no mention of foam anywhere. Why? Because it adds nothing to the properties of the products, and can actually be damaging to the hair, the scalp, and the microbiome. Gentle surfactants yes, foam no! (Hardly a good battle cry, I admit).

So we created the Soothing Cleansing Cream. It contains a very gentle cleansing base derived from coconut, prebiotics and postbiotics to feed the microbiome, a pH 4 to respect the natural balance of the ecosystem, fermented rice water for its incredible properties, and no foam.

Welcome to a scalp revolution. A very gentle non-foaming revolution.

Marie