Less Is More: An Enlightened Approach to Haircare
By The Line
In the future, there is no shampoo, but everyone’s hair looks amazing, explains Michael Gordon. The founder and former president of Bumble and Bumble, which helped to ignite a global craving for all manner of salon-tested hair sprays, pastes, glosses, mousses, and other artfully packaged unguents, has a decidedly minimalist vision for the bathroom of 2025. “Shampoo will be dead and buried. Plastic will have gone away,” says Gordon, 63, with the calm confidence of a London-born Zen master, second-generation hairdresser, and veteran entrepreneur. “What remains will be quite lovely and beautiful and refillable.” For Gordon, the journey to this simpler, better world begins with his latest creation: Purely Perfect.
After selling his remaining stake in Bumble to Estée Lauder in 2006, Gordon used his sudden influx of spare time to think and observe. What struck him immediately was the proliferation of…things. “I came to the conclusion—not a very brilliant or original one—that there’s much too much stuff,” he says. After reading William McDonough and Michael Braungart’s book-length manifesto Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, Gordon turned his attention back to the industry he had been a part of since his first salon apprenticeship at the age of fifteen.
“I looked at the world of hair products and thought, ‘This is crazy!’ Everybody has ten shampoos, ten conditioners, masks, and then before you blink they’re making a hundred different products,” says Gordon. “It’s one thing to get rid of waste, but it’s much better to not create so much waste in the first place.” Reducing haircare to the essentials, he decided, would require finding an alternative to shampoo—or at least the detergents responsible for the bloom of suds that has long been the international symbol for clean.
Our products and processes can be most deeply effective when they are resonant with information and responses—when they most resemble the living world.William McDonough and Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle
“Seeing women moving to facial oils and oil-based cleansers, which don’t leave skin feeling parched like soap does, I thought, ‘Why can’t we do that for hair?’” So he did. Gordon drew up a list of off-limits ingredients (sulfates, parabens, detergents, silicones) and another list of ingredients he wanted to include (aloe vera, rose hip oil, evening primrose oil, peppermint oil), and took both to his favorite chemist’s laboratory. Several rounds of testing elicited “a slow shock,” he explains. The new formula not only cleaned without stripping (“think second-day hair, not squeaky-clean”) but also eliminated the need for conditioner.
I look forward to a future in which there will be far, far fewer things but more precious things—more designed, more simple. Michael Gordon
“It became clear that we had created something unique, so I thought we should stick to our guns and just have this one cleanser,” says Gordon of his Purely Perfect Cleansing Creme, which can take some getting used to after a lifetime of shampoo. “You really need to rub it in all over, slather it on,” he explains. “For those who have long hair, I suggest using a big wide-toothed comb—comb it through, continue with your shower, and then rinse it out very well.” And aspiring minimalists of today, take note: the rich, silky formula also works as a body wash, face wash, or shaving cream.
The Purely Perfect line also includes two styling products. Foundation Creme “is the equivalent of a grooming cream—something you can put in wet or dry hair to get definition, separation,” says Gordon, while Smooth Finish, light enough for the finest hair, is primarily for blow-drying. “It holds without being sticky. You can get height, you can get shape, you can get a great finish, but you won’t feel it.”
The less-is-more philosophy that underlies Purely Perfect extends to its distribution: through Gordon’s new company, Hairstory, which is based out of his lower Manhattan home. “We’ve tried to stay away from hairdressers and salons for the most part. They’re not exactly where I wanted to sell this product. A place like The Apartment is,” says Gordon. “I think the gap between perfume in a beautiful bottle and haircare products is slowly closing—people are putting more thought into each choice they make and every product they use.”
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