GRUNGE WAS A GODSEND for anyone who found looking well-groomed on a daily basis a chore. You could always shrug off a bad-hair day with the handy excuse that you were actually keeping up with the times.
The sleek styles of today have to be shiny and frizz-free, curls have to be manicured rather than mop-like, and that cutting-edge crop has to be studiously structured. All very well if you have a professional stylist at hand, not so simple if you don't.
Enter Vidal Sassoon, which believes it is has come up with the perfect DIY solution for savvy consumers in the Noughties. Its new Edge Collection comprises 10 products that fulfil fashionable hair-care needs - from cleansing and conditioning to styling and finishing. The range can be mixed and matched with the brand's existing Red Collection, but aims to help consumers enjoy a more luxurious, salon-quality hair regime at home.
'Most people don't just slap any old thing on their skin, and similarly they are becoming much more demanding when it comes to styling products,' says Vidal Sassoon's editorial director Peter Gray, who was instrumental in the range's development and was in Hong Kong recently for its launch.
'Hairstyles are changing all the time and you need new products to help you to achieve these looks. But there is so much guff coming from the beauty industry and hair salons that consumers end up totally baffled about what to buy. Intelligent consumers want to make their own hair analysis and know they are going home with a product that really delivers.'
Along with leading colourist Peter Dawson, experts at Vidal Sassoon's 26 salons, academics and a team of scientists at its research and development centre in Kobe, Japan, Gray worked on the range for two-and-a-half years. Existing products on the market were rigorously tested and anything wrong with them - stickiness in the hair wax, oily hair serums - was taken out and better formulae created. Each tub, tube and bottle comes with simple instructions about which product you should choose according to the kind of hair you have, what you want and the way to achieve the desired look.
