Mizu Launched Its Own Hair Care Line

The new Mizu line.

Surely you’ve heard of Rusk hair products. The global brand has been in stores around the world for more than 15 years. But what you may not know is that Louise Rusk, salon director at Mizu—a stark white salon with locations in the Back Bay and on Park Ave. in NYC—and her husband Irvine, are the brand’s creators. So who better to spearhead the development of a brand new hair care line than Louise Rusk herself?

After more than a year of planning and testing, Mizu quietly launched its eponymous hair care line in November. The products range in price from $22 to $26 and feature an array of different concoctions, from shampoo and conditioner to styling sprays and leave-ins. Currently, there’s six products in the line and another six are set to launch this spring.

“We have [a large retail business] here and being that products were my background, I decided that we should try and create a Mizu brand,” Rusk says. “We have a broad spectrum of clients, age groups, demographics, everything. So we set about creating what our clients’ needs were and that was to improve the quality of the hair, add shine, and extend the life of a blowout. When we did our research, that was really the three things that they were looking for.”

Rusk says it was very important to create a line that is “responsible,” which means making sure that the products are made in the U.S. with quality ingredients, including a lot of organic components, and environmentally-friendly packaging. But Rusk is also a realist. With more than two decades of experience behind the chair, she knows that there’s a real struggle between wanting to use organic ingredients, and wanting results for the client.

“The line has a lot of organic ingredients, but I find that when it comes to hair products, there is only so much an organic product can do,” Rusk says. “So when you get into hair repair or styling, then you kind of have to use other ingredients. You have to be responsible. It can’t just be all organic because then you are not being results-oriented. In real life, organic sounds wonderful, but to be ‘organic’ is a very romantic version of what the product does.”

Rusk and her team created the high-end professional line with a chemist who works with a lot with organic ingredients and another chemist that worked with cosmetic ingredients. So, they were able to bring those two fields together to create the Mizu line that includes ingredients such as Nanoberry, which Rusk says is an “incredible antioxidant” that keeps hair cleaner longer and helps to repair the hair. “It doesn’t just help your hair look better, it makes your hair better,” she says. “It will help your hair repair and restructure.”

The line is also infused with avocado oil, sunflower seed oil, and some silk proteins. It’s also sulfate free, gluten free, and safe for color treated hair. Plus, items like the dry shampoo won’t get cakey like many others because there is no talc in the formula.

So what’s the main difference between creating a line in the 1990s versus now? Accessibility.

“Everyone incorporates more essential oils and more natural ingredients in their formulas because we have way more access to them now than we ever did before,” Rusk says. “We have access to effective global ingredients that we didn’t have before.”

776 Boylston St,  617-585-6498, mizuforhair.com