How It's Made: 6-in-1 Style Guard Hairspray
The lifecycle of a Virtue®️ product begins long before it hit shelves. It starts with helping people love their hair—the right product can even change a person’s confidence—and it ends with Alpha Keratin 60ku®️, a damage-repairing human protein you’ll only find here. But there’s more to our formulas than just big ideas and high-performance healers.
Our in-house scientists and research-development teams work tirelessly to ensure each product delivers on its promise. Here Debby and Marc from Product Development spill the secrets on how our best-selling & award-winning 6-in-1 Style Guard Hairspray is formulated to offer moderate, touchable hold while actually making hair healthier and stronger with each use.
This new hairspray is part of our 6-in-1 family, some of our most multitasking products, and it’s pretty unique that a hairspray offers a benefit beyond hold. How did you land on each of these six benefits?
Marc: First, we identified the “must haves” for this product to be best in class, versatile, and a “healthy” styler. Those benefits included moderate, touchable hold that lasts without being crunchy or stiff. Other benefits included “healthy styling” with protection from aggressors such as UV/solar exposure, environmental pollutants, and heat styling tools. Once we landed on a formula that tested well with our stylist ambassadors and affiliates, we performed instrumental testing internally, and then broad consumer perception testing to validate benefits such as humidity protection, strengthening, and style protection.
Debby: We’re are always looking to create treatment-based stylers that have benefits beyond the norm. Because our protein is so efficacious, we have the ability to partner with other ingredients that create multifunctional results. This formulation was able to go above and beyond what a typical hairspray does to protect, strengthen, and hold.
6-in-1 Style Guard Hairspray is a revamp of our original hairspray, The Finale Shaping Spray. Why did you decide to reformulate this product?
Marc: Finale Shaping Spray was one of Virtue®️’s original stylers. As technology in haircare advances, as well as our internal formulation knowledge advances, we often update and re-stage specific products for enhanced efficacy, performance, and/or updated repair and protection.
Debby: After getting some feedback from our brand ambassadors, we also found that our formula needed to offer more hold. So we took the opportunity to make the formula vegan and add some style and protection benefits.
Our protein, Alpha Keratin 60ku®️, is clinically proven to repair and strengthen hair. How does it benefit hair when dispersed in an aerosol?
Marc: Styling and finishing aerosol products are able to deliver smaller particle sizes on the hair, which facilitates healthier hair without coating or build-up. Additionally, aerosols allow for a finer and drier mist that does not make the hair frizzy or add any weight.
Are there specific hair types or textures that most benefit from this formula?
Marc: Virtue®️’s 6-in-1 Style Guard Hairspray is for a very broad range of hair types and textures; really, it’s for anyone who wants extra hold and lasting style in a sheer, weightless format. As with all Virtue®️ products, it’s safe for color-treated and chemically processed hair.
We get a lot of feedback from stylists that hairspray is essential to their business. What do you think they will love most about this product?
Debby: I think that hairsprays are important to stylists because they finish and perfect their clients’ styles and help hold it longer. Stylists also need dry hair finishers such as this for up-do’s, special event hair and more intricate styles.
Marc: What makes this such a superior-performing product for stylists is its versatility on a broad range of hair types, and that it provides lasting hold that is natural-touch; it’s not crunchy or stiff. The added benefit is that our proprietary Alpha Keratin 60ku®️ seeks out damage and “paves” strands to fill in damage and cracks in the cuticle. As with all Virtue®️ products, our Alpha Keratin 60ku®️ is paired with other ingredients (in this case a protective complex for UV/solar protection, anti-pollution protection, and heat protection) for damage repair with targeted benefits for each product.