LAYRITE Cement Clay

After trying out the American Crew Fiber on Sunday I am moving onto the Layrite Cement Clay this morning.  When I got my uppercut refreshed at Hair Junkie, I was thrilled to see that they had also received new LAYRITE products.  LAYRITE has undergone a bit of an image change.  The jar is a tad bigger and now has a stylish gold metal lid.  The label is also more mature but maintains that vintage edge.  Rest assured, the cool retro gall that makes up the logo is still present, but she is now stamped in the metal lid.

Hair Junkie’s Mastermind, Fady, gave me the run down of his challenges to bring these products to Canada.  Crushing exchange rates with the US dollar, bonkers shipping rates and customs of course wanting a cut of the deal.  All of these factors drove the price to some $27.75 a jar.  As a consumer, I have witnessed the shipping cost double for the same size parcel between 2015 to 2017.  It use to be $5 or less to ship a 100 gr jar of pomade to now $10+.  Ordering from the US is also somewhat of a challenge, where anything over the $20 mark is subject to duties and taxes.  Thank you to Hair Junkie for bringing these products to Ottawa.

First off the new jar is a tad larger at 120 g then the previous iterations at 113 g.  The jar is also made of a nicer and more robust plastic container.  Not that this makes any real difference, but if anything if feels tougher.  The scent of this clay is quite nice and is in-line with the LAYRITE fragrance.  To me it’s a honey-sugar-vanilla’ish scent.  BTW – the clay fragrance is more subdued than in the pomade.

Scooping the clay out of the jar requires a bit of strength as the product is quite firm.  But once scooped out it is very easy to relax by warming it up and your palms.  The application is a tad challenging as the clay becomes very sticky on contact with the hair and is very difficult to spread from that point forward.  The result is that you might get more product in some areas.  Forget about trying to get a comb through that.  The only place I was able to comb a bit was on my sides and back since the hair is very short (uppercut), but my bangs are 5-6 inches long so it wasn’t an option.  Regardless, hair placement was workable and I was able to achieve some height in the front.  Now the products takes a very long time to dry, so expect the feel to be waxy and sticky for at least 4-6 hours.

The product is called “Cement Clay”.  It is not a pomade and it is not a wax based solution.  In that sense it does feel like a firm clay. But up to some point it has the elements of a wax and we could argue, pomade as well.  But it really feels different than pomade or wax.  Now having tried a number of clay’s, I am realizing that clay do not offer me the best results.  But as far as a clay goes, the LAYRITE version was the better one to date.  I will say that the LAYRITE clay is better in the hold department as it was able to keep my bangs up the whole morning. Better than the American Crew Fiber or the more expensive Kevin Murphy waxes/clay’s.

At this point I have to make a comparison – this clay is almost exactly the same: colour, texture, feel, stickiness, and hold as the American Crew Fiber I recently reviewed. The main obvious difference is the fragrance and then the LAYRITE clay offered better and longer lasting hold.

There is a need to make an observation about how the products are being classified.  To American Crew this was a “Fiber” while to LAYRITE it is a clay.  There is clearly a need for some education before purchasing a product as the identifiers used by the makers are not always as accurate as they could be.  In my mind, a pomade, a clay and a wax are all very distinct concoctions, but some makers unfortunately substitute these identifiers.  Ideally, if you can see the physical content of the jar you should be able to make an enlighten purchasing decision.

Here are: pomade, clay and wax side by side as a reference:

Pomade has a consistency that is somewhere between a jelly and a wax.  The clay is very pasty and almost gritty.  Finally the wax, is true to itself and is, well waxy.

Because this product is dry (nothing like a pomade which contains a good amount of water) and is white, it had an amplifying effect of my grey hairs. Yeah, my sideburns are definitely there and the speckling has started pretty much everywhere.  That being said, as the product dries, this amplifying effect also fades away.  If you do have some grey or even allot, the wetter pomades pretty much hide that by giving some level of shine.  A matte product like clay has no such offerings.  For example, when I use a grease based pomade like Lucky tiger, my hair looks shiny black.

When I applied this clay, I went at it the same way as I would with pomade.  I am now thinking that my application approach should have been a tad different.  first off, I think my hair should have been a little wetter on application.  Usually I dry with a total as much as possible.  I am thinking that the clay needs more water than it’s pomade counterpart which already as allot.  Secondly, I am realizing that less clay is needed than what I am accustomed too.  So another test will be required and this post will be updated with the new findings.

Bottom line I wanted to try a clay again to more or less confirm that pomades were in fact my favorite, and without a doubt, they are.  But if I had to choose between a gel and clay when no pomade was available, it would be the clay.

Here is the rating on a scale of 1 to 5, where 5 is a perfect score and/or level of shine:

• Hold: 5
• Shine: 0
• Texture: 2
• Feel in hair: 2
• Facility to wash out:  3.5 (One wash will do the trick, but you might feel that a second wash is better.)

This and other LAYRITE products can be found at Hair Junkie on Laurier Street West in Ottawa.  Below is the selection they sell. Please mention Style 4 Men if you go over.

 

If you can’t make it out to Hair Junkie, you can also find this product via these online vendors: