I am sitting around a table in Dyson’s London HQ, black box containing a top secret new launch in front of me. I signed an NDA prior to arriving, and the ceremony surrounding opening the black box with three representatives soberly in attendance implies to me that I am about to see something big. My mind reels. Could it be an innovative face mask? Some sort of body massage device? Something for my teeth — a toothbrush that simultaneously whitens, perhaps?
Either way, it’s going to be pretty ground shaking, I decide; Dyson did, after all, really make waves in 2016 when they launched their Supersonic™ hair dryer.
No techie magic awaits me. In fact, what emerges from that box are four unassuming cylinders containing hair products, two Pre-Style creams and two Post-Style Serums. The premise couldn’t be simpler: you just pick the one for your hair type, either straight to wavy, or curly to coily, apply the Pre-Style cream to damp hair and the Post-Style serum to dry hair and let the Chitosan go to work.
Okay so no techie magic. But is it magic of a different sort? Having never heard of Chitosan and wondering what made it worthy of being plastered on the (refillable) tubes, I did a bit of a deep dive. Chitosan is, as it turns out, precisely the right ingredient for a hair product. A macromolecule that’s responsible for oyster mushrooms keeping their shape, Dyson have parlayed this property into the haircare range, meaning hair has flexible hold, smoothness without stiffness.
The packaging itself is a bit more obviously Dyson and very clearly the work of a brand known for design nous, each pump delivering a precise 0.22ml without smearing around the exit (I push the bottom against my hand and - plop - there is the serum in my palm), and the details like the click of the lid is satisfying, made me more inclined to pick it up.
If you’re baffled as to why Dyson have taken this route, there are two things worth knowing about Dyson that help to explain. The first is that they have heavily moved into the hair category, making pleasing styling products that are easy to use, lightweight, and kind to hair, so styling products are a natural progression.
The second is the Dyson Farming sites. Sounding a little Wonka factory, Dyson’s 1,225,000 strawberry plants, which are grown year-round in a circular process transforming waste to energy, are hand-picked by robots capable of analysing the “fruit’s quality and ripeness to ensure the produce consumers buy is of optional nutritional value, texture, and taste.” Well, of course. It’s Dyson, after all.
This spliced interest — on the one hand cutting-edge tech, on the other a fascination with nature — is behind Chitosan and, probably, beauty products to come; Dyson have tellingly changed their @dysonhair handle on social media to @dysonbeauty.
After a few bumpy years in which Dyson made cuts to their workforce (last month it was announced their global restructure would mean a loss of around a thousand jobs), cynics may feel this latest frontier is a profit-boosting endeavour. Maybe - probably - it is. But me and my newly-silky hair can attest to the products delivering on their promises, which as we all know isn’t always the case when it comes to beauty products. If this is the Dyson way, then bring on more @dysonbeauty, please.
