Suave Just Tricked The World by Releasing Fake Products

A few months ago, a new hair collection rolled across my desk called Evaus. The packaging was insanely trendy: creamy, peachy, millennial pink with white and black font, and simple labeling for hair in need of volume, shine, smoothing, damage repair, and strength. The ingredients list was a careful curation of fruit oils, nut oils, and sea minerals, and the scents seemed luxurious—expensive, even. Basically, it was a brand I knew I’d be seeing all over Instagram within a matter of weeks.

But then I found out that this trendy new line wasn’t a real hair collection at all, but a social experiment conducted by Sauve (a.k.a. Evaus spelled backwards; yes, I know), and that I, and every other beauty editor and blogger I know, fell had fallen for their millennial trickery.

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Source: Instagram Source: Instagram

As it turns out, Evaus is really just Sauve in different (albeit super pretty) packaging, specifically geared toward millennials to prove how much weight they place on Instagram-friendly branding. According to Sauve, the goal was to show that “price and labels do not have to be indicative of quality,” and that seven out of 10 women “think expensive brands work better than inexpensive ones.” And I’m not the only one who fell for it—Sauve had a bunch of beauty influencers test Evaus and share their thoughts on camera, and then filmed their reactions when they told them the truth.

The video, which is narrated by an English, because #prestige, features influencers like fashion blogger Kathleen Harper (“it was a game changer”), hairstylist Adriana Misoul (“I was in love with this product after the first time I used it”), natural hair blogger Viánnie Bell (“it’s edgy, it’s modern, it’s sleek”), and style blogger Maria Gonzalez (“it left my hair super strong and healthy; I love it”). After discussing how they don’t use drugstore brands, and how “quality is what you pay for,” Sauve dropped the mic and revealed their experiment. And yes, the whole thing is excellent to watch.

The moral of the story, here, is that Suave is clearly awesome (at least, according to these women who were told they got to be on camera for an exciting new hair launch), and millennials kind of suck, because we’ve forgotten the golden rule of “don’t judge a book by its cover.” Still, I’m really digging the Evaus packaging and am kind of sad it won’t be sitting in my shower anytime soon. But hey, at least we’ve got Sauve.

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