Fable & Mane HoliRoots Hair Oil
We can gallop a mile from hair oils, mostly. Thick, unctuous, claggy and a pain in the backside to shampoo out.
But such is the state of our frazzled ends right now that we’d give lard a go, frankly. Happily, this is a trillion times more pleasant to use than that – and in fact, we’re total converts.
Fable & Mane is a new range of Ayurveda-inspired beauty products, of which is the first we’ve tried. There’s a truly lovely story behind the brand, which taps into the Indian heritage and life journey of the founder, Nikita Mehta. When her hair started falling out from stress, a few years ago, Niki remembered that back in the day, her grandma would massage her head with blends of plant oils. ‘I went back to the kitchen, mixing the oils that my grandmother used,’ Nikita recalls.
And so (with her brother Akash Mehta, who’s ex-Parfums Christian Dior), she founded Fable & Mane to honour both their grandmother and grandpa – ‘a healer, a guiding light, and most of all, a wise genie with an incredible silver beard,’ they write. ‘His secret to hair growth? Good thoughts, free movement, followed by a cup of chai in silence.’
Fable & Mane HoliRoots Hair Oil, however, doesn’t require that level of enlightenment: it just takes a few minutes, smoothed through hair, to bring about something of a transformation. Free from silicones (and any more less-than-desirable ingredients), the oil itself is a revelation: not thick and oily at all, but more akin to a dry oil (albeit with a sublime smell of champaca and jasmine.) Based around safflower, olive, jojoba, sesame and grapeseed oils, also features the Ayurvedic herb ashwagandha and dashmool, which is a blend of 10 roots (regarded, so we’re told, as ‘the ultimate remedy for thick hair.’)
This is so UN-oily, actually, that over and above using it as a five-minute deep treatment (in fairness we left it on for quite a bit longer than that, under a hot towel), we’ve been skimming a little through our dry ends for a little definition and between-treatment conditioning.
Divine.
£25 for 55ml – buy here
A nice PS Akash and Nikita Mehta have also set up The Fable Fund, to support wildlife charities that restore habits for endangered wild felines, including tigers. Check it out here
