American Crew Pomade – For Super Shine In A Water Formulation
Over the last year or so, I have been interested in the American Crew brand. The advertising and imagery is undeniably; classy and attractive. Many of the jars sport a slick young Elvis. Although I have tried the Fiber and, I suspect the cream, I had yet to try the “POMADE”! So here we are.
A jar of this pomade goes for anywhere in between $21 at Shopper’s Drug Mart to $17 at Walmart. A median price for pomades in the current market. But I was resisting paying the price as I wasn’t totally impressed with the other hair fixatives from American Crew. What decided me was finding a jar at winner’s for $12.99. At that price I couldn’t pass it up and finally bought a jar.
The jar presentation is similar to the other American Crew packaging, a dark brown container with classy labeling. I can’t see a quantity or size on the jar but it looks to be a smallish 100 g container.
Upon opening the jar you are welcomed by the American Crew fragrance which is discreet and clean smelling. Sorry, I can’t give a better description since it doesn’t have any specific elements jumping out. The schmiere is neutral and opaque. Almost like Vaseline.
On contact the texture of the pomade is thick, sticky and jello-ee, as one would expect. While relaxing the product in my hands I become aware of its fairly high oil content. If I counted correctly, there are 33 ingredients. Number 1 is water followed by Castor oil which would explain the oily feeling. The label on the lid does state: “High Shine”. I can attest that it is a very shiny pomade. In fact, too shiny for me.
The application of this goo is easy as it spreads well. At the end of the styling phase, the oil content starts showing. It shows in two ways. First, it doesn’t have as much hold as a purely water based pomade. Second, and as mentioned above, the oil content results in a very high shine. Because of the higher oil content, the product doesn’t dry very fast either. The feel in hair is a tad waxy-oily. As with other water based pomades with elevated oil content, the hold is acceptable but limited. Within about 25 minutes, my hair was starting to fall out of place. Granted today was a very hot day in Ottawa, this combined with my own body heat relaxed the pomade too much. The reduced hold and high shine led me to rinse it out and reach for my jar of Boardwalk pomade. This also verified that it was truly water soluble.
I had high hopes for this jar as I figured that my previous tests with American Crew fixative where all pointing me to their pomade, but alas this one will not make it up on my list of favorites. I might revisit this pomade in fall/winter when it’s colder.
Here is the rating on a scale of 1 to 5, where 5 is a perfect score and/or level of shine:
- Hold: 3
- Shine: 5++
- Texture: 3
- Feel in hair: 3.5
- Facility to wash out: 4
If you are after the high shine in a water soluble format, this will certainly be a good option. On the other hand, if hold is more important to you, this will only get you through part of the day.
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