Reinventing The Showercap For the modern lady

Two years ago, on the behest of both her mother and her hairdresser, Jackie De Jesu started buying around for a showercap. knowing that many women, like her, do not wash their hair each time they bathe, she assumed there could be at least a number of options that have been each stylish and high quality. however after months of looking out, she came up dry.

It wasn’t that they weren’t personalized. She found showercaps that had been bedazzled, patterned in floral roset and khaki chevron, ones covered in illustrations of high heels—however these had been simply taking the present design and adding flourish. The noisy, pungent, plastic disposable showercaps which have made appearances in dozens of sitcoms had by no means actually evolved, even if the women who’re the usage of them have.

“the women who are the use of bathe caps are the women who care about how they appear, who wish to preserve their hair healthy, who like fashion” says De Jesu. “I saw a huge hole in the market and this tension between what individuals want and want.”

to fulfill that want, De Jesu lately launched SHHHOWERCAP, which she calls “full re-invention of the shower cap that everyone knows…….and hate.”

in response to ideas from chums and focus teams, De Jesu’s redesigned showercap is reusable, washable, and uses a excessive-efficiency, waterproof material. A revised elastic band and extended pocket in the back assure a safer fit that doesn’t slide around or create a crease the brow. And with a turban silhouette that comes in 5 vivid, stylish patterns, it is an enormous improve from the plastic disposable showercaps that also proliferate the market.

An promotion artwork director, De Jesu knows what to seem out for in relation to design. “You look around our house and everything is chosen based on design. once I look for a new product I regularly need it to be fashionable and smartly-designed—smartly-designed floss, a smartly-designed lint curler,” De Jesu says with amusing. “I searched [for a showercap] and those search phrases that on a regular basis pull up a number of well-designed products just about again the other of that. It was once like the dregs of the design world.”

She sees a parallel to Spanx, the spandex undergarment company that made its founder, Sarah Blakely, the youngest self-made female billionaire on the earth. Like Spanx, which essentially reinvented the girdle for lately’s girls, De Jesu hopes to convey the showercap into the 21st century. “[Blakely] took an current factor that was once uncomfortable and horrible and out of date—she modernized it, constructed a model round it and made it social applicable,” says De Jesu. “i’m seeking to do the identical factor.”

What women want
many ladies, on the recommendation of hairdressers, beauty specialists and dermatologists, don’t wash their hair each time they shower.

“It started within the ’80s, grew within the ’90s, after which become big in the ’00s—there used to be a push in the hair care business to no longer wash your hair as continuously,” Kazu Namise, founder of magnificence model Phylia de M, explained in a latest Refinery29 article. “all over that point, when you take into accounts the products available in the market, you see quite a lot of issues that have been closely detergent-based. That wreaked main havoc on a lot of people’s hair and scalps.”

De Jesu figured that if discovering a fashionable, purposeful showercap was an issue for her, then it must also be a problem for other women who do not wash their hair everyday. She started to ask around, first informally with chums, and then by way of organizing center of attention groups once she had a product. “Being an advertising ingenious, I’ve always been super skeptical of focus groups, however in product design it is extraordinarily valuable,” says De Jesu. “every conversation that I’ve had for the past year has been about showercaps in some form or some other.”

She requested the women she encountered the identical general questions: Do you employ a showercap? Do you hate it? How does it make you’re feeling? About half of the ladies she talked do use showercaps frequently, although a lot of them were embarrassed about it. (De Jesu says that one girl she talked to hid her showercap from her roommate, despite the fact that she used it four times per week. some other almost flipped over in the bathe seeking to take it off before her boyfriend noticed.) another 10%-20%, she estimates, mentioned they use showercaps infrequently, possibly have one of their bathroom cabinet, but don’t use it incessantly.

Then there’s the category that I fall into: the women who’ve by no means owned a showercap, however nonetheless do not wash their hair every time they shower. This team employs a substantial amount of effort seeking to lather and rinse their bodies with out getting their hair wet, resulting in various awkward movement that De Jesu calls “the bathe dance.”

“The lady that just wrote bathe caps off as a result of they weren’t that groovy, as a result of nothing spoke to them and they didn’t work well—i’m tapping into that market,” says De Jesu.

The Design
“the unique brief I gave myself used to be to make a lovable showercap so that women don’t need to sacrifice type. but when I began to ask girls about their experiences, they unloaded a ton of functionality considerations,” says De Jesu. So she started to build these issues into the design: “They hate the way in which that elastic leaves a band on their head? We’ll widen the elastic. It doesn’t even in point of fact keep on, so let’s make the back pocket a bit of bit greater. The leave out Muffet form was an immense difficulty.”

De Jesu looked to efficiency gear for a waterproof material that’s machine-washable and breathable in humid (read: very steamy) environments. She took a cue from lingerie design for a seamless development with out a sew holes. The SHHHOWERCAP additionally has a rubber grip on the inner band so that it’s going to stay secure within the bathe with out flattening hair.

Aesthetically, the design is a colourful, youthful departure from the traditional showercap. De Jesu knew from the start that she needed to it to look chic and timeless, which she carried out with a turban silhouette. She paired up with cloth dressmaker Teva Livne to create five completely different patterns that range from an summary black and white pattern (“Goes with the whole lot. especially nude. Wink,” reads the description) to to a vivid watercolor print.

“i wanted to make sure that the design I chose had toughness and used to be one thing which may be iterated off of and reskinned for years to come,” she says. De Jesu not too long ago launched the road of showercaps on her web site, and is involved in marketing her firm and probably discovering investors (the corporate has been completely self-funded so far). someday, she plans to work with different designers to create different patterns.

All Shhhowercaps are $forty three and are to be had for pre-order on the web site and will likely be on sale in November.