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Summary: After eight months of managing short hair, I’m finally ready to grow it back out, bangs and all. That’s when I tried Prose‘s custom shampoo and conditioner for 30 days. Built from a quiz about my texture, lifestyle, and hair goals, the formula came with clean, EU-standard ingredients and the option to go completely fragrance-free. After 12 washes over a month, my hair felt stronger and noticeably less frizzy, and my bangs finally stayed clipped back.

What I Love

• Fully customized formula: Prose builds your shampoo and conditioner from a quiz about your hair, lifestyle, and goals – because everyone’s hair is unique!
• Clean ingredients: no parabens, sulfates, phthalates, mineral oils, or GMOs, and they follow EU ingredient standards, which are stricter than the FDA’s.
• Certified B Corp and carbon neutral, with a made-to-order model that means zero overstock, plus leftover product gets donated instead of thrown away.
• Real results: after 30 days and about 12 washes, my hair had no split ends, noticeably less frizz, and felt stronger overall.

What To Keep In Mind

• At $64 for the shampoo and conditioner set, it’s more of an investment than a drugstore or budget option.
• The quiz takes about 10 minutes and asks detailed questions about your lifestyle, not just your hair, so it’s worth answering thoughtfully rather than rushing through.
• Prose offers a full lineup, including masks, leave-in treatments, styling products, dry shampoo, and supplements, but you don’t need to buy it all to see results.
• Preferences like fragrance-free, vegan, or dye-free need to be selected during the quiz.

I’ve always had great hair — long, wavy, textured, the kind my mom refused to let me mess with growing up. “People pay for what you have naturally!” she’d say. So I never dyed it, which I’m grateful for now. But every few years in college, I’d get bored and chop it all off. Then I’d immediately regret it.

Walking into the salon felt rebellious, like I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to. Short hair and my textured, voluptuous, frizzy-in-humidity hair don’t mix well — at least for my taste. Without the weight, my hair turns into an 80s situation I can’t control, and I never end up loving it. After my last big chop in 2019, I vowed to myself to keep my hair longer — a style I knew I liked, I knew looked good, and was easy to maintain.

“After my last big chop in 2019, I vowed to myself to keep my hair longer — a style I knew I liked, I knew looked good, and was easy to maintain.”

Fast forward to January this year. My hair was so long, it was practically touching the top of my high-waisted jeans. It no longer felt glamorous or put together; it felt unkempt, pulling all of the focus off my face. I looked like I’d never gotten a haircut before. And when I went to get a trim, the hairdresser pointed this out to me, and took it upon himself to usher me towards a shorter style.

I thought we were on the same page, that he’d chop a few inches below my collarbone. But instead, I walked out with a long bob — something I swore I’d never do again, a choice I didn’t anticipate making, and something I really had to get used to. My long hair had felt like my identity for so many years and I felt like a fish out of water without it. I kept finding myself informing everyone that “I cut my hair!”, as if they wouldn’t notice.

As the weeks went on, I came to like the style and even felt like the shorter hair suited me better. And since I live in Southern California now, with much less humidity than the Northeast where I grew up, it’s much easier to maintain since it doesn’t get as voluminous. And so over the last few months, I’ve gotten a few cuts maintaining the short length and shaping it as it’s grown out. My hair grows very fast, so it’s only at that perfect length before it gets between long and short territory — for a few too-short weeks.

But last month when I went to get it trimmed once more, I walked out with some tiny bangs too — which I have to admit, I kind of hate. Unless I blow dry them, they are kinked, pointing in different directions, and always in my eyes.

And just like that, I’m really ready to grow my hair out again — and especially for my bangs to be long enough to pull out of my face. So when I had the chance to try Prose for 30 days — I jumped on board, hair goal in mind: grow out my bangs.

Brand, ingredients, and sustainability 

Prose is a customized haircare brand that launched in 2017 with one simple philosophy: Not everyone’s hair is the same, so why is our shampoo the same? The brand is built entirely on customization — everything from benefits to scent — creating a unique set of products that meet your specific hair needs based on taking a detailed quiz. Whether you’re trying to grow out your hair, make your curls look their best, reduce frizz, or promote hydration, they can formulate something that meets your needs.

They design products in Paris and manufacture them in Brooklyn, making each formula to order based on your quiz results. And it’s truly not a gimmick. They have in-house chemists (which is rare for a DTC beauty brand) who continue to tweak formulas based on real customer feedback.

“Prose is a customized haircare brand that launched in 2017 with one simple philosophy: Not everyone’s hair is the same, so why is our shampoo the same?”

Prose’s formulas are cruelty-free and made without parabens, sulfates, phthalates, mineral oils, and GMOs. They follow EU standards (which have banned way more harmful ingredients than the FDA), so you’re not getting any of the sketchy stuff. What’s actually in there are things like maracuja oil for strengthening breakage, algae extract for taming frizz, maca root for promoting growth, and fermented rice water for smoothness. Their in-house R&D team meticulously researches and sources every single ingredient, and each custom formula includes between three and five active ingredients specifically chosen for your hair needs. You can request formulas that are vegan, silicone-free, dye-free, or fragrance-free — which I personally opted for, since I prefer unscented products as of late!

They’re also a Certified B Corporation and carbon neutral, and use a made-to-order model so there’s zero waste — they only make what you buy. Plus, they donate leftover products to nonprofits in New York instead of throwing them away. All of this makes me feel really good about Prose, and totally justifies the price point – around $64 for a custom shampoo and conditioner set.

Quiz and custom formulation

To take their haircare quiz and make your custom formulation, go to their website, and hover over “haircare.” Click the “Get Your Formula” button, and the quiz begins. The quiz took me about 10 minutes, and really requires you to answer thoughtfully for the best results.

The first frame asks you how long your hair is (mine is now considered “shoulder length”). Then you select your natural hair texture (mine is “Type 2B Wavy”). Questions continue on asking how oily or dry your hair is, if you get split ends and so forth — and they even have photos for most questions in case you’re a visual learner. Then you get into how you treat and style your hair, your lifestyle (like diet, sun exposure, whether you swim or sweat), and your preference and goals — I focused on hair growth, and optimal health since I’m wanting to grow out my bangs.

“The quiz took me about 10 minutes, and really requires you to answer thoughtfully for the best results.”

After you’re finished, Prose spits out a full report, a complete suite of products with everything from shampoo and conditioner, hair masks, leave-in products, styling products, dry shampoo and even supplements! They were kind enough to send me the entire set — but I have to say, I’m not a heavy product girl, so I mostly focused on the shampoo and the conditioner — and reached for some leave-in conditioner too when I was visiting my boyfriend in the dry desert.

My custom shampoo and conditioner came in cute little coral and purple 8.5 fl oz bottles with my name on the labels. You could select anything from Signature (floral and powdery), Botanica (herbal and aromatic), Corsica (sea breeze with peony and cedarwood), Meleni (tropical mango and melon), Arcadia (crisp winter woods with grapefruit), and beyond — but I wanted unscented.

“My custom shampoo and conditioner came in cute little coral and purple 8.5 fl oz bottles with my name on the labels.”

The shampoo is a gentle, sulfate-free cleanser formulated with fermented rice water for smoothing, yucca stem extract as the cleanser, and jasmine flower water as an antioxidant. It’s designed to increase hair strength and reduce breakage at a low pH to seal the hair’s outer cuticle. The conditioner is creamier — a moisturizer that helps with detangling and keeping strands nourished. It has the same fermented rice water for smoothing, plus apple cider vinegar for hair health and babassu oil for nutrition. According to Prose, it shows up to 3X stronger hair after one use and up to 3X less breakage… and I know that stronger hair = longer hair.

Testing & Results

I’ve been using my Prose products on and off for the last few months, but for the sake of this review, I really committed to using them exclusively for the last 30 days. I usually wash my hair 2-3 times a week — so it turned out to be about 12 washes over the course of the last month. I air dried my hair most of the time, and my waves felt smooth and bouncy. And when I blow-dried it, it looked slick and chic!

And I have to say, my hair is definitely feeling healthy, hydrated, and maybe even a little bit longer! I don’t have any split ends — my hair feels thick and generally without frizz. I don’t notice any greasiness or excess product sitting on my hair. My bangs can finally be pulled back in a hair clip without popping out into my eyes — and for that I am truly grateful.

I can’t wait to see the results as I keep using it into the fall! Overall, I think custom haircare really lives up to the hype — at the end of the day, it’s just a more intentional formula to help keep your hair healthy — and with Prose’s clean ingredients and sustainability standards, what’s not to love.

Grace Abbott is a LA-based freelance Brand & Marketing Strategist and a Contributing Editor at The Good Trade. She has a degree in Graphic Design from Parsons School of Design and is the founder of How To Go Freelance — a brand dedicated to empowering creatives to monetize their skills and build personal brands. Beyond work, she’s always studying a new spiritual modality, painting her bedroom a new color, practicing Pilates, hosting friends, or going on a nature walk with her chihuahua, Donnie. Find her on Substack or Instagram.