Oribe’s Dry Texturizing Spray is the caviar of dry shampoos, and costs almost as much. Still, its superior performance makes it this week’s “Chosen One.” Here’s why.
There may be a handful of people who will beg to differ with me here, but in terms of humankind’s most useful inventions, right after the wheel and sliced bread, comes dry shampoo.
Just think of all the time and water it’s saved over the years on a global scale. Just thinkof all the times your bedhead has looked like the lovechild of Doc Brown and a wet Pomeranian, and you’ve been able to dry shampoo that mess into submission.
Yes, I’ve picked up on the side eye some experts have issued re: constantly blasting your scalp with a drying agent. Yes, I’m aware that it mostly makes me smell like a baby’s butt post diaper-change. But you can pry dry shampoo from my cold, dead, haven’t-washed-my-hair-in-two-weeks hands.
And while my everyday go-to’s tend to fall into the “whatever is less than $7 category,” like Dove’s Volume and Fullness Dry Shampoo or Not Your Mother’s Clean Freak Refreshing Dry Shampoo, a few months ago, I happened to come across the caviar of dry shampoos: Oribe’s Dry Texturizing Spray.
A sample arrived via my Birchbox subscription, and at the time, I didn’t realize that the beauty product Gods had bestowed upon me a beneficent blessing. While run-of-the-mill dry shampoos can be a bit ham-fisted in their execution (cue puzzled dude cocking his head and asking what that white stuff in your hair is) Oribe is a lightweight, invisible wonder.
The difference may lie in the fact that it’s a “texturizing spray” rather than a straight-up dry shampoo, though that distinction is puzzling. The product description claims that it absorbs oil at the roots, which is the primary function of a dry shampoo, but goes on to assert itself as “a brilliant alternative to dry shampoo.”
Call it semantics, call it a superior formula that justifies its fairly exorbitant pricing. Point is: It doesabsorb oil—Oribe chalks this up to the use of “zeolite crystallines,” which only soundslike a made-up currency from Xanadu. In fact, it is a mineral reportedly prized for its absorption properties, the porous nature of which can squirrel away oil particles more effectively than common starches or talc powders found in drugstore brands.
It also smellsexpensive. Rather than that predictable baby’s-butt scent, Oribe’s spray is floral and fruity without ever being cloying. It doesn’t overwhelm your entire olfactory system after you immerse yourself in a plume of the stuff, and more than once, I’ve been asked what my perfume is.
Oh, you mean “What is that lovely scent disguising my pungent human-ness? Why, it’s Oribe’s Dry Texturizing Spray, and it’ll only cost you $46 for a 8.5-ounce can!”
Yeah. Spendy. But it’s a rare case of getting what you pay for. Which means that I’m now a person who has a “special occasion” dry shampoo, but whatevs—that whole “totally chill, low-maintenance gal” ideal is just a tool of the patriarchy.
Plus, the internet backs me up: With over 38,000 reviews culled from sites like Birchbox and Influenster, it has an average rating of 4.3 stars.
It’s hardly worth mentioning that you can get a 2.2-ounce “purse size” for $22, because, yes, your mental math is correct—that’s nearly twice the per-ounce price as the full-size version.
