Thick hair, firm parting
Azogue Firm Pomade. Hold 9, low shine, rinses out with water. The default, and the one we take back most happily if it is wrong.
€17.00In stock · 24 tins
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Which one is for me
Nobody needs twelve tins. You need one, and which one depends on four things: what your hair is like, how much it has to hold, what you want it to look like at six in the evening, and whether you are willing to shampoo it out. This page answers those in that order, in words, with the price beside each answer.
Start with your hair
Four situations cover almost everyone who writes to us. Pick the one that sounds like your head on a normal morning.
Fine or thinning, 2—6 cm
Your enemy is weight, not movement. Anything with wax in it drops the hair onto the scalp and makes it look thinner than it is, which is the single most common complaint we get about firm pomade. You want a cream that adds grip and nothing visible.
Use Grooming Cream No. 3 · €16.50 · hold 3 of 10 · no shine
Dose Half a fingertip, about 1.5 g, into hair that is nearly dry. Dry it upwards with your fingers afterwards, never flat.
Comes out One wash with plain shampoo. It is oil-based, so water alone leaves a film.
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The second question
Five bases, and what each one costs you
Water. Sets hard, looks dry, rinses out with a warm tap. The compromise is that it goes rigid: once it is set you cannot re-style without wetting your head again. Azogue and Media Luz.
Oil. Never fully sets, so you can comb it all day, and it shines. The compromise is shampoo — one wash at least, two in hard water, and it marks a pillowcase. Vuelta.
Clay. Grip without gloss, and it adds apparent thickness, which is why short crops like it. The compromise is grit: it is drying, and on a scalp that flakes it makes things worse. Tejado.
Salt paste. Roughens and separates rather than holds. The compromise is that it holds almost nothing — four out of ten — and it dries the hair out if you use it daily. Playa.
Cream. Weightless, invisible, a little control. The compromise is that it will not hold a shape at all; it only makes the shape your hair already wants hold together. Grooming Cream No. 3.
The third and fourth questions
How much, and how it comes out again
Almost every complaint about a tin is really a complaint about the dose. A fingertip scoop is about 3 g, roughly the size of an almond, and it is enough for hair up to 10 cm. People new to pomade routinely take three times that, then say the product is heavy or greasy. It is not; there is simply too much of it on their head.
Warm it until it turns from white to clear before it touches your hair — cold pomade drags and deposits unevenly. Work it in from the crown forwards, which is where you have least hair and most need of hold. What is left on your hands goes on the beard or the back of the neck, never back in the tin, because that is how a tin goes off early.
Coming out is the part nobody asks about until the third day. Ten of our twelve products are water-based: one rinse under a warm tap and they are gone. The two oil-based ones need a plain shampoo, and along this coast the water is hard enough that a second wash is sometimes honest work. If your hair feels coated on day three, that is build-up, not the product failing.
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Three places to start
If you read all of that and still want to be told, these are the three tins we hand across the counter most often, and who gets each.
Fine hair, nothing visible
Grooming Cream No. 3. Hold 3, no shine, no weight. If a pomade has ever made your hair look thinner, this is why.
€16.50In stock · 22 tubes
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A beard past week three
Rompiente Beard Oil, unscented. Four drops to the skin, not the hair. Stops the itch and the wire, and it is the only unscented one we make.
€21.00In stock · 40 bottles
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Four things that go wrong
My hair feels coated by day three
That is build-up, and it is usually dose rather than product. Halve the scoop for a week and wash once with a plain shampoo, no conditioner, to strip what is there. If it comes back on half a scoop, the water where you live is hard and you want a water-based tin rather than an oil-based one.
My scalp is flaking since I started
Clay and salt paste both dry the skin, and on a scalp that was already dry they tip it over. Stop the clay, give it ten days, and come back to a water-based pomade applied to the hair rather than the roots. If the flaking is greasy and yellow rather than dry and white, that is a condition and not a cosmetics problem — see a pharmacist, not us.
The water here is hard. Does it matter?
It matters for coming out, not for going in. Calcium in the water binds to the waxes and leaves a film that plain rinsing will not shift, which is why people in the limestone belt think water-based pomade does not wash out. One plain shampoo a week fixes it. We mix with deionised water for exactly this reason, so the tin is not adding to the problem.
My hair is coloured or bleached
Nothing in the range carries added colour, so none of it will stain or shift a tone. Bleached hair is porous and takes about a third less product to look the same, so start at half a scoop. Avoid the clay: bleached hair is dry already and clay will make it feel like straw within a fortnight.