We swear that’s what he’s known as – in the Middle East anyway. (Though we’ve always thought of Philip B as ‘the King of Shiny Hair’, ourselves, jetting as he does between A-list clients like Sharon Stone, Kate Hudson… oh, and us!) Catching up with him at Blakes Hotel, fresh from Berlin where he now lives, Philip was effervescing (as usual) – this time, about an extraordinary, Iranian new-but-actually-thousands-of-years-old ingredient he was introduced to on trips to Kuwait, Dubai etc. He calls it ‘katira’ (say it ‘kah-teee-rah’), and apparently this is a word to put Arabic women in an instant swoon, so legendary is it for its hair-boosting powers. A botanical ingredient, katira looks like dried toenail clippings, but swells to literally hundreds of times its size, holding that moisture – and is about the most amazing hair-conditioning ingredient on the planet. How do we know? Because Philip used his new Katira™ Hair Masque (available at Space NK) on our hair, then dried it with a drier. At that stage, it’s crisp and scrunchy. But when shampooed out (with Philip B Russian Amber Imperial Shampoo – which just happens to be the world’s first £100 shampoo, and smells d-i-v-i-n-e), the results were extraordinary. All the straw-like ill-effects of a centrally-heated, windblown winter vanished, leaving extraordinary gloss, zero flyaways and total manageability, and he promises that it’ll last a month before we need another katira booster. With Philip, we never know quite what he’s going to have up his sleeve next. But one thing we always do know: it’ll be worth a pilgrimage to The Hair God, to hear him give the gospel on it.
Philip B is available at John Lewis and Space NK
