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If there’s a definitive icon in the hair care industry, it just might be the Fekkai Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème — first introduced in 1995, discontinued, reformulated in 2018, and then re-released in true-to-its-origins form last year to honor Fekkai’s 35-year anniversary. Just recently, it earned a coveted spot in WWD’s list of the Greatest Hair Products of All Time, so, as far as staying power projections for the product go, we’re banking on the long-term.
It’s safe to say this comeback was cause for massive celebration, with fans of the OG product running to grab the Fekkai Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème and celebrity glam teams employing it in their pre-red carpet routines. During the 2024 Emmy Awards, for instance, Selena Gomez’s hairstylist Marissa Marino secured her glossy, shiny look by way of Fekkai’s gleam-boosting hair products — not the least of which was the cream in question itself. At the same awards show, Reese Witherspoon, too, mastered a full-of-elegance updo thanks to the formula; her hairstylist Lona Vigi made sure to work the Fekkai Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème into Witherspoon’s mane, while ensuring a uniform upward sweep sans flyaway hairs.
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Fekkai Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème
Price upon publish date of this article: $30
Hair glossing — something Fekkai’s back-by-popular-demand offering is lauded for doing — is hot as ever on TikTok right now, with some videos getting upwards of a million views. But the Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème’s power lies in just how much of an overachiever it is, making us reluctant to put it in just one hair care category. The cream is great for all hair types and can be used at each step of the styling process, whether you choose to apply it on your locks right before wrapping them in a hair towel or else to add smoothness to already dry stands.
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Equipped with emollient-rich, cold-pressed olive oil that penetrates the hair cuticle and increases shine, the Fekkai cream also controls frizz (via its polymer-rich PhytoVie Defense complex), helps define curls, and adds a touchable hold to styles so that they last all day — in reality, and not just on paper.
There’s nothing superficial about the Fekkai Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème: It works on a cellular level with the help of additional ingredients like prickly pear seed oil that revitalizes hair’s moisture barrier in a way you can both see and feel. Again, depending on what you’re going for, you can take full advantage of this cult-favorite product’s benefits by either applying it on damp hair — from the ends up to the roots — before a blow-dry, smoothing back an updo prior to heading out the door, or else using it to scrunch up curls and craft a fuller, healthier hair look.
To truly understand the ins and outs of how Fekkai’s Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème works, I put it to the test. I grabbed the formula soon after its September restock and now consider it a vital part of my hair maintenance routine: which says a lot, because my hard-to-manage curly hair is usually not receptive to most trending hair products.
Read on for our honest testing reviews of the celebrity-loved cream, and peep the “More About the Brand” section if you’re curious about Fekkai’s fascinating origin story. Once you’re ready to grab your very own bottle of the Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème, head to the Fekkai site, Ulta, or Amazon.
How We Tested the Fekkai Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème
- Product tested: Fekkai Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème
- Testing time period: One month
- Hair type tested: Thick, highlighted, naturally curly hair
- Where to buy the Fekkai Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème: Fekkai, Ulta, Amazon
- Pros:
- Banishes flyaways and baby hairs without adding unwanted oiliness to hair
- Reduces frizziness
- Doesn’t create a rigid or crunchy feel when used on dry hair
- Cons:
- If too much is used, it can feel slightly tacky
- Editor testing review: “I am known to take a less-is-more approach with my hair, which is why the Fekkai Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème has me obsessed. I feel like it helps me bypass extra hair spray, gel, or cream investments by being a multihyphenate wonder. I’m able to use it to give my ringlets added bounce and definition after a wash; to secure my hair back in a tight pony for a night-out without the use of bobby pins; and, if I am planning on blow-drying my locks, to ensure I don’t end up looking like a dandelion by preemptively eliminating frizz and securing sleekness. I’m still on my first tube of the Fekkai cream (it lasts a while if you apply in measured, dollop-sized quantities), but I just know I’m going to replace it with a fresh one as soon as I’ve squeezed out the last bit. The Fekkai Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème, after all, helps me feel put-together — hair-wise if not life-wise! — on days when I don’t have time for proper styling with hair tools or even a wash.”
Fekkai Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème
Price upon publish date of this article: $30
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An Honest Review of the Fekkai Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème — Editor Testing Notes
Truth be told, I have a very limited number of hair care products I trust to deliver consistently great results on my curly, tricky-to-manage hair. That being said, I believe the Fekkai Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème deserves every ounce of its viral appeal — a conclusion I came to after testing it out for a month in service of this specific review, though I started using it right after the product’s September 2024 relaunch. To make sure my evaluation process was as rigorous as possible, I decided to test the product three ways: putting the cream to work as a hydrating curl booster right after a shower, applying it on slightly damp hair before blow-drying it, and using it to tame flyaways while wearing my hair up.
In the first instance, I can safely say the Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème helped define my ringlets and give them the volume that’s often lost when I air-dry my hair without curly hair products. I spotted the very shine promised by the product’s Italian cold-pressed olive oil formula and was delighted upon realizing that my usual frizz (a lifelong hair problem I’ve long ago learned to accept) was, ladies and gentlemen, gone. In the second case, I also noticed a major reduction in said frizz — with sleekness coming to take its place — when I applied the cream from ends to roots before using a blow dryer to style my hair. Overall, I could see how much healthier each hair strand looked, which is quite an impressive thing to witness in the short-term.
Finally, when I used the Fekkai Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème as a spot treatment of sorts to smooth back baby hairs and flyaways in buns and ponytails, I was happy to see that it didn’t make my hair rigid once dry. Moreover, there was absolutely no evidence of greasiness, which is the weakness of many alternative styling creams: producing a kind of wet hair look that might look great on red carpets but not what you were going for, perhaps, on a pre-work morning.
The TL;DR of my Fekkai styling cream experience? It’s the type of hair product I envision having in my medicine cabinet for life, based on its affordability; multifunctional nature; ease of use; lightning-fast results; and (not least among these attributes!) gorgeous scent profile combining grapefruit, green tea, ginger, and cedarwood. Here’s to hoping Fekkai doesn’t pull the plug on its loved-by-all Fekkai Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème ever again.
Fekkai Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème
Price upon publish date of this article: $30
More About Fekkai
The way Fekkai as a brand describes it, its founder Frédéric Fekkai singlehandedly jumpstarted the “skinification of hair care” — using formulas that not only style but also contribute to hair health on a nitty-gritty level. Fekkai, a celebrity hairstylist by trade, first launched his business in the form of a hair salon (at Bergdorf Goodman in 1989, to be exact). As his salons started multiplying and becoming chock-full of celebrity clients, Fekkai started inquiring about what said clients felt like they were lacking in terms of hair care… and proceeded to promptly fill in the industry gaps with science-based, innovative formulas backed by top-tier ingredients. One such Fekkai formula that generated particular traction was none other than the Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème: introduced to the world in 1995, at which point it quickly became a mainstay backstage at fashion shows and in the hair routines of everyday individuals alike.
Unfortunately, the OG cream was discontinued and released in new forms circa 2008 and 2018 — with the latter reformulation sparking the public’s disapproval for its inability to mimic the Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème they first fell in love with. People were craving the previous iteration so much, in fact, that it was selling for north of $100 on eBay in many cases. According to Fekkai, efforts launched in 2023 to help bring back the styling cream of old via work with the original chemist responsible for its creation. Fan-powered focus groups also gave the brand direction, and, in September 2024, Fekkai once again relaunched the hair product — this time in a version that truly tapped back into its predecessor’s power.
Besides the Brilliant Glossing Styling Crème, Fekkai’s roster of bestselling offerings includes the Apple Cider Detox Scalp Scrub, Brilliant Gloss Anti-Frizz Serum for achieving seriously glassy results, the Super Strength+ Everstrong Bonding Oil, and much more.
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Meet the Author & Product Tester
Stacia Datskovska is a Senior Commerce Writer at WWD. Previously, she worked at ELLE DECOR as an assistant digital editor, covering all things luxury, culture, and lifestyle through a design lens. Her bylines over the past five years have appeared in USA Today, Baltimore Sun, Teen Vogue, Boston Globe, Food & Wine, and more. Prior to joining ELLE DECOR, Datskovska learned the ins and outs of e-commerce at Mashable, where she tested products, covered tentpole sales events, and curated gift guide roundups. She graduated from NYU with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and international relations. Datskovska regularly reports on trending hair care products and is especially eager to test them out on her own curly, hard-to-manage locks.