Beauty

This Vinegar Rinse Makes My Hair Look Insanely Shiny—Without the Stink

SHINE ON

Not one to shy away from weird beauty products, I dutifully tried this vinegar hair rinse and was pleasantly surprised.

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Photo Illustration: Scouted/The Daily Beast/Amazon

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always had a strange fixation on utilizing my pantry for beauty needs. If fragrant sea salt scrubs and milk and honey baths were supposedly good enough for Cleopatra, then they’re definitely OK for this 21st century girl.

The problem, however, is that you sometimes run into sticky situations—literally. I’ve accidentally cooked a bit of egg in my hair, and once I forgot to add a preservative to a DIY body cream and was greeted with a pile of moldy goo. In any case, I’ve definitely done the vinegar hair rinse thing, which makes your hair crazy kinds of shiny but it seriously stinks.

Mellow Touch Clean & Soft Apple Vinegar Hair Rinse

Having had some good luck with K-Beauty hair care products in the past, I was intrigued by MellowTouch’s Clean & Soft Apple Hair Vinegar, newly available on Amazon for under $20. In addition to helping you achieve shine, it also claims to help clarify and exfoliate your scalp, ridding it of product build-up, dry bits, and oil. I figured I’d put worse things in my hair, so I went for it.

Come shower time, I shampooed my hair and then popped open this giant bottle of vinegar-y goodness and gave it a whiff. It definitely has a slight vinegar smell to it, but the fragrance leans more eating-an-apple-in-a-laundromat. I doused my hair with the stuff—which is quite thin right out of the bottle—and let it set for a couple minutes before rinsing and deep conditioning my ends.

Afterward, I let my hair air dry to about 80%, per usual, then did a blow-dry and curl session for a little COVID date night. My husband actually commented on how good my hair smelled, and I noticed that it was extra soft and shiny. I’ve since used the hair rinse three more times (the company recommends using it about once per week as a treatment) and I’m officially hooked. I’m also super grateful that there’s no lingering sour smell wafting around my head in the days that follow a treatment, since I’d be stuck inside smelling it.

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