Nailing your curly haircare routine is like a big, frustrating, expensive science experiment. More often than not, you need to try what feels like hundreds of products before you land on the exact formula that works for you. Even then, it’s tempting to swap out shampoos, gels or mousses to see if you can find one that really takes your hair to that next level. And unfortunately, a lot of these products ain’t cheap. So if you tell me about an affordable substitute that’s going to give me the same effect, you’ve got my full attention; and that’s exactly what happened when Marc Daniel’s Go Curly range came across my desk.
This isn’t a flashy, fancy curly hair brand. It’s bright yellow branding is impossible to miss — but you might skip over it thanks to its lack of aesthetics. Because let’s face it, we do tend to judge a book by its cover.
The selling point isn’t the packaging, it’s the price. This entire range is less than $35. The curl gel is $9.99, the cream is $9.99 and the mousse is $14.99, ringing it up at a meagre $34.97. To put that into perspective, I added up all the products I use in my typical styling routine, and it came to $235.60 — and that doesn’t even include shampoo and conditioner. Ooft.
So, I decided to compare the Go Curly range to my high end curly hair routine and see if it’s a worthy competitor. If I can save myself $200, you best believe I’m going to give it a red hot crack.
Go Curly: Initial Thoughts
While the brand’s three different products are designed to be used on their own, my creative self decided to combine them and see what would happen if I used them all at once. After all, I typically use a mousse, cream and gel when styling my curls, so it made sense to keep that the same. I have a vague memory of trying Go Curly’s gel over a decade ago on its own, and it did NOT go well for me (although I didn’t properly know how to style my curls back then, so that could’ve also been an issue).
Marc Daniels Go Curly Curl Cream
My first problem with Go Curly rose when I went to use it: the products don’t say what they are. So, I opened what I thought was the curl cream, but when I squeezed it out, it was actually the gel. Note to self: pink lid means cream, yellow means gel.
Alas, onto the actual cream itself. Usually, curl creams, are, well, creamy. They act like a leave-in-conditioner and curl definer in one, so your locks don’t frizz up when drying. The Go Curly cream leaned more on the watery side of the scale, which I didn’t love. However, it got the job done.
Marc Daniels Enhance Define Go Curly
Now, onto the gel (not that you’d get that from the name, TBH). My hair is quite fine, so I typically like my gels to be light and as non-sticky as possible. This… is not that. Not to say that it’s bad, I think people with thicker, tighter curls will absolutely love this. I just had to be very conscious of how much I was using, otherwise my curls would be weighed down. What I will say is that I found it held my curls quite well after putting in the cream — there was a noticeable lift in my strands, even when wet.
Marc Daniels Go Curly Mousse
I can’t sugar coat it, the mousse was the biggest let down of the three. I alwyas apply it around my roots to give my roots a little extra oomph when drying, but it didn’t fluff up as mousse typically does — it was watery and yet didn’t dissolve into my hair very well. Alas, I pushed through, and hoped the mousse would too when it came time to diffuse.
Go Curly: The Results
Despite my grievances with the texture of these products, they really pulled through when I dried my hair with the diffuser!
For $200 less than my usual products, I didn’t notice a crazy difference with how my curls turned out. They were still defined and bouncy, albeit slightlyyyy more frizz than usual (but still a very normal amount). I even had some ringlets near the bottom of my hair! The only product that didn’t contribute its part to the group assignment was the mousse — my roots looked a little flat.
My day one hair looked pretty darn similar to my typical routine. It was as the week went on I noticed my curls frizzed up and flattened a little sooner than usual. While I can typically go three to four days without having to restyle my hair, I had to give it a touch up after two days this time around.
Go Curly: My Final Thoughts
While I didn’t go into the process with very high expectations, by the end of it, I spent a good five minutes sitting in front of my mirror, simply gooped and gagged at how my terrible start ended up with such a good finish.
While I’m not going to throw out my current routine (after all, I did spend some pretty darn dollars on it), I won’t be in as much of a rush to repurchase products once they run out now that I have this budget friendly alternative on standby. I’ll be experimenting with how the cream and gel mesh with other products in my routine, and see if I can get my usual voluminous results when combining them with my usual mousse.
I think Go Curly delivers great results, and is a good range for people to try if they’re sick of forking out their hard-earned cash on bougier products. I’d also think it’s perfect for people who are starting out learning how to style their natural curls because it’s so inexpensive, so you can mess around with it without being fearful of wasting precious product.
You can shop the Go Curly range at Priceline, Woolworths, Coles, or Chemist Warehouse.
Image credit: Alyssa Forato / Go Curly
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