The lifecycle of a Virtue^®️ product begins long before they 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^®️. We’re the only ones with this damage-repairing human protein. 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 Recovery Shampoo and Conditioner is made to give your strongest, softest, most resilient hair wash after wash.

Recovery Shampoo & Conditioner is the most popular, best-selling product combo. Why is this?

Marc: Hair is damaged constantly from a number of factors, including color treatments, chemical straightening and processing, use of heat styling tools, environmental pollutants, UV exposure, chlorine, saltwater, and even minerals in shower water. Recovery Shampoo and Recovery Conditioner were formulated specifically to address repair and damage prevention as a result of these factors.

Virtue^®️’s patented and proprietary Alpha Keratin 60ku^®️ targets the most damaged areas of the hair to re-pave the cuticle and “micro-repair” each strand, so it made sense that Recovery Shampoo and Conditioner were the original in-shower regimen products to anchor the lineup. Healthy hair looks and feels better. You can’t conceal damage; you need to repair it.

What makes this combo so good for color-treated or chemically processed hair?

Debby: All of our shampoos and conditioners are sulfate-free, so they’re safe for color-treated and chemically treated hair. All Virtue^®️ products also enhance the richness of color while they repair hair, and they also help fight color fade. By making hair stronger, hair is able to better hold moisture and color molecules. Whereas dry, damaged hair loses color molecules quicker than healthy, moisture-balanced hair. Recovery, specifically, is our hardest working healing duo because of the emollient-rich, moisture-retaining ingredients that partner with our Alpha Keratin 60ku^®️ protein to focus on nurturing dry, damaged hair.

What makes the formulation process for this award-winning duo so special?

Marc: Each Virtue^®️ product takes anywhere from 6 months to 2 years to formulate, refine, and perfect. Following that, we perform extensive in-house testing at our lab to validate that formulas are (a) highly efficacious and address the desired benefit and (b) that our Alpha Keratin 60ku^®️ performs the way it’s supposed to. Once approved, products are sent to a third party to perform clinical testing and/or a consumer perception panel.

To ensure we’re getting the best possible performance out of our products, we look at four different variables:
• The protein alone
• Our formulas without protein
• Our formula with protein
• A control

Debby: As our hero, Recovery focuses on the heart of the brand: Making hair healthier. It took quite some time to determine the optimal amount of Alpha Keratin 60ku^®️, as well as which ingredients “played nice” with the protein. Because our protein is derived from human hair, some ingredients were binding to the protein rather than the hair itself, so we crafted our ingredients especially to work well together, each performing their respective jobs.