It is impossibly apropos to focus on appearance when it comes to marketing a style product, and Bangstyle is certainly not one to miss that boat. In bottling, their products more-closely resemble items found at an auto shop than one found in a salon. Bangstyle “artisan hair products” intentionally speak to one’s inner rebel. Well, at least that seems to be the intention. My inner rebel is long gone with that of my teenage angst years. When it comes to these items, it seems I’m the one who has missed the boat to cool-dom.

Bangstyle is a part of a greater force – Bangstyle U (“university”) and a hair browsing app for your phone. The website opens with “Think of us as a cannonball into a quiet pool,” coupled with a skinny blond sort-of-cannon-balling into some sort of body of water next to a beach, within sight of the ocean. Enter the “university of inspiration” and the site becomes an array of articles featuring stylists and salons and some retro/instagramish photos. And remember those large hard-back books that salons sometimes house for look inspirations that seem to have only ever been published in the 80s (apologies if more recent hard-backed publications exist, my knowledge/familiarity is quite limited)? They scanned them all and put them on this website. Or at least that’s what it seems like…

But back to the product. Self-described as “like a well-trained dog or prison pen pall…your hair will lay down on command. Sitting and rolling over is just not going to happen.” Well, frankly I’ve never asked my hair to do any of the above on command, though I do appreciate the nod to smoother hair. Can’t say the reference to a prison pen pall feels at all appropriate or embellishing of the product, but still I tried it. Ultimately, scent is okay and experience is unremarkable, but no strong complaints either.

And then there’s the salt sea mist. Excited as I was to attempt a fresh-from-the-beach look in mid-winter, the spray did not transform my tresses at all, let alone into a surfer-babe vibe as promised, or at least implied in the statement: “imagine 10,000 mermaids blowing the ocean breeze from a cool banana leaf. This is sort of like that but without the leaf or the imaginary mermaids.” With or without the banana leaves and mermaids, ultimately the result was pretty uneventful. 10,000 breeze-blowing mermaids, however, would be, even in bottled-up form.

Unfortunately I can’t say the bangstyle artisan products – to me- make too much of a splash.