With every season comes new challenges in haircare: The sun, salt, and chlorine of the summer wreak havoc on your strands, while the wind and cold, dry air can be equally as damaging, resulting in breakage, split ends, and frizz. For that reason, it's essential to find a go-to product (or a few) sure to heal damage and prevent more from ensuing. But with all the options on the market, how does one know what to choose?
"Being in the industry for almost thirty years, and dealing with all of my clients and seeing so much damage—there needed to be something that truly repaired hair and reversed damage," says Adir Abergel, celebrity hairstylist and creative director of Virtue Labs. "A lot of the products that were out there were coating it and not repairing the damage."
This need led him and the rest of the Virtue team to do some exploration. He says, "After working with our Alpha Keratin 60ku for the last ten years, I knew we could come up with something that was groundbreaking. I had already seen how our core line had improved the health of hair in ways I had never seen before." The result? The brand just developed its newest launch, its Damage Reverse Serum, which Abergel says underwent extensive clinical testing and promises to reverse and prevent damage within just five uses.
"This is a product that will change people’s relationship with their hair," he explains. "Now, we have a product that is not a styler but it's a leave-in treatment that is lightweight, targets damaged, broken and split ends to instantly mend."
As Abergel mentioned, this is due in large part to the brand's patented "hair-healing protein," Alpha Keratin 60ku, which Abergel says "works from the inside out, offering a holistic approach to healing hair." This new serum contains the highest concentration of the protein out of any of Virtue's products, making it "the first line of defense in reversing damage."
The ingredient was discovered by bioscientists specializing in regenerative medicine, and, according to Abergel, is 100 percent bio-identical to the keratin found naturally in human hair, "allowing for seamless integration and effective repair at the cellular level." Thus, it helps combat daily damage from heat, styling, UV rays, and more.
The serum, which was inspired by skincare serums and is meant to be the first in a multi-step hair routine, also includes a Biomimetic peptide meant to help prevent oxidative damage often cause by UV damage, sun or chemical exposure, or certain hair treatments.
"We had quite a few testers paneling this formula," says Abergel. "More than once these testers noticed that they didn’t need the same frequency of their haircut, because their hair felt healthier and ends were not broken. One tester actually went for hair color and the colorist asked her if she had just received a haircut, when in reality, it had been a few months overdue!"
The highly-anticipated release is now available at Virtue Labs' website, along with the rest of their award-winning haircare.
