Fight!!!

How did we survive without dry shampoo? For festivals, for sleepovers and most of all those grungy days where an extra half an hour in bed is more important than the whole shower-blowdry-straighten rigmarole. And up until now, Batiste has been the original, most widely available, affordable and best.

Until now. We have a new contender entering the ring. In the red corner, Batiste Coloured Dry Shampoo in Black! In the Blue corner, we have TRESemmé Instant Refresh Dry Shampoo! Ding Ding!

OK, I'm going to stop with the boxing analogies now, because I really don't know anything about boxing. Lets just compare the products, shall we?

Colour: When I spray the original white Batiste into my jet black hair, I like to play a game called 'This is what I will look like when I am old and grey'. You should try it sometime, it's really fun. Even when its brushed out, my hair is a lot less black and the colour is a lot flatter. The black Batiste solves this problem because the powder is black instead of white. This is great in your hair, but not so much when you brush it out and your hairbrush is covered in soot.
The TRESemmé is not coloured but does not make me look like I've just seen a ghost, as the original Batiste does.

Smell: Now, I generally dislike the smell of Batiste in all its incarnations. It just smells a bit cheap but I suppose its better than the dreaded Dinner Hair smell. Apparently there is a new version of the original formulation called 'Fresh!' which sounds right up my street but I haven't seen it in stores yet. This black Batiste isn't the worst but its not great either. I'm terrible at describing scents but this is very sweet and kind of smells like Charlie! or So! or one of those awful cheap things we wore when we were 12.
The TRESemmé smells YAMMY as Rachel Allen would say. It smells just like the TRESemmé shampoos and conditioners and isn't your hair smelling like its clean and washed one of the main things you look for in a dry shampoo?

Refreshing-Powers: Maybe it's just me but I always feel that the black Batiste doesn't make my hair feel as clean and refreshed as the original does. It works grand, but it tends to still feel itchy and dirty by the end of the day (gross, right?) whereas a can of the original formulation has got me through Thursday - Monday at Oxegen. Pretty iimpressive, right?!
The TRESemmé has a similar feel to the black batiste, but the real test will be how it feels this evening. As I always wear my hair scraped back in a bun and wear a hairband to distract from the mankiness on dry shampoo days, this actually isn't as much as a deal breaker as the scent is.

Price: I bought this in Superdrug in Enniskillen (my home town when I'm not stomping around Dublin) and paid £2.50 for the TRESemmé and £2.99 for the Batiste. To put this in perspective, they had the original cans of Batiste (in Blush, Tropical and Original scents, all gross) on offer for 99p. Personally, I do not think the black batiste is worth £2 more when a can would not last longer than 4 uses. However, I think the TRESemmé is available in Tescos where everything is a lot cheaper.

The winner: The TRESemmé wins hands down, solely because of the scent. I am so fussy about smells, so much so that I have been wearing the same perfume since I was 14. This actually smells delicious and clean which makes me feel so much better about being lazy!