Some ingredients sell themselves by their name on a label. Cocoa butter is not one of them. Solid at room temperature, it melts on contact with the skin, and its use on your hair is surprising.
But you have to know what to ask of it. It has ten useful effects on curly hair, which can be grouped into four families: what it retains, what it smooths, what it protects, and what it brings to the scalp. There is also one thing it does not do, and that may be the most important point of this article. To place each treatment at the right time, our step-by-step tutorial details the six steps of the Rituel Texture®.
Cocoa, I did not discover it in an ingredients list. I knew it in pods. A neighbor brought some to my grandmother's house, and we made as much cocoa butter for hair as hot chocolate. The cocoa in our treatments today comes from two origins: Côte d'Ivoire and the Dominican Republic.
Ghana Elin, founderWhere does cocoa butter come from
The pod contains beans. Pressed, these beans release a clear fat, with a characteristic scent, which we call cocoa butter; what remains, defatted and ground, becomes the powder we know in cooking. The two have nothing to do with hair. It is the butter that works the fiber, the powder is useless for it.
Our cocoa comes from two origins, Côte d'Ivoire and the Dominican Republic, and the technical sheets of both butters are available. We prefer to say it this way, with both names, rather than reduce a raw material to a single origin because it tells a prettier story.
Its peculiarity lies in its texture. Cocoa butter is firm at room temperature and melts on contact with the skin, which explains both its hold in a product and the melting sensation upon application. On curly hair, this firmness is an asset: the film it leaves resists a whole day better than a fluid oil that evaporates or migrates.
What it retains
This is its main function, and it explains three of the effects attributed to it on its own. A curly hair is dry because its spiral shape prevents sebum from regularly descending along the fiber: the root is properly lubricated, the ends never are. A rich fat body applied after washing takes over for sebum and slows down the evaporation of the water that the fiber has just absorbed.
The rest follows from this retention. A fiber that keeps its water remains flexible; a flexible fiber bends instead of breaking, which changes everything at the time of detangling and pushes back breakage and split ends. Elasticity is not an extra pleasantness, it is what decides the length you will keep from one routine to the next.
This is also why La Crème Coiffante combines cocoa butter with hibiscus and an aqueous base: it helps maintain the hydration brought by washing, instead of placing a fat body on a dry fiber.
What it smooths
The surface of a hair is made of scales. When they lift, the strand catches the humidity of the air, neighboring fibers tangle with each other and light scatters instead of being reflected. This is the common origin of frizz, lack of shine and knots that resist.
An emollient like cocoa butter fills these irregularities and closes the cuticle. Frizz calms down in humid weather, the strand reflects light better and appears shinier, and above all detangling becomes possible without pulling. This is exactly the role of the Masque Réparateur at step 03 of the Rituel Texture®: applied for 10 minutes, under a shower cap if possible, it coats the fiber so that Le Peigne de Man Dol' can then slide without catching, on hair still coated with mask.
What it protects
The film left by cocoa butter is not only used to retain water: it also stands between the cuticle and what damages it. The wind that rubs the strands against each other, the collar of a coat, the dry air of a heated interior, hard water, all this works the surface of the hair all day long. A fat body that holds allows the fiber to take it a little better, which explains why a richer treatment imposes itself when cold comes. Our article on protecting curly hair in winter details the seasonal adjustments, which are few: the same routine, a little more product.
On the scalp
Cocoa butter brings to the scalp what it brings to the lengths: a fat body that limits the pulling of dry skin and makes the scalp massage more comfortable. On skin that pulls after washing, it is a real relief, and a good excuse to take the five minutes of massage that we rarely allow ourselves.
Two reservations, however. On an oily scalp or prone to dandruff, a fat body at the roots maintains the imbalance instead of soothing it: in this case, we keep the rich treatments for the lengths. And if the itching is accompanied by patches, pain or bleeding, no ingredient replaces the advice of a doctor or a dermatologist.
As a home treatment
This is the tenth use, and the easiest to implement. Cocoa butter works very well at home: melted in a double boiler then mixed with a vegetable oil, a little honey or a crushed avocado, it gives a rich mask to apply on the lengths, never on dry and bare hair. Our 7 ingredients for a homemade mask detail the proportions. A reservation of good sense: a pure butter solidifies as it cools and becomes difficult to rinse, which is precisely the problem that emulsified formulas solve.
What cocoa does not do
It does not hydrate. It is a fat body: it retains the water already present in the fiber, it does not bring any. Applied to dry hair, it locks in the dryness, and we end up with hair greasy to the touch and brittle to handle, which is the worst possible combination.
It therefore always comes after a moisturizing step, never in its place. This is the reason why our formulas combine it with an aqueous base and hibiscus rather than offering it pure. And this is the reason why the Rituel Texture® starts with a wash and the application of the Masque Réparateur, before La Crème Coiffante intervenes.
Is cocoa suitable for your texture?
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