Michael Gordon’s second act.

Hairstory is the second haircare company associated with Michael Gordon, the hairdresser who founded Bumble and bumble. Gordon told Into The Gloss in 2016 that he left school at 15 to apprentice in a London salon in the 1960s, and that he chose the name Bumble as a kind of joke, because it made the salon feel open to everyone. English Wikipedia dates Bumble and bumble to 1977. The New York Post reported in June 2000 that Estée Lauder was buying the company, and Gordon told Into The Gloss that Leonard Lauder bought a majority stake in 2000 and that he later sold the rest of his shares; Cool Hunting, writing in 2015, put the Estée Lauder acquisition in 2006.

After leaving, Gordon set up Hairstory Studio, which Cool Hunting described as a creative outlet centred on hair, where a team of stylists, colourists, haircutters and models tested formulas in their work. In 2013 he launched a cleansing creme called Purely Perfect, which he later called “a beta test”: it was thick, hard to pump and came without clear instructions, Cool Hunting reported. The argument behind it, which Gordon has repeated in interviews, is that the detergents in shampoo strip hair and so create the need for conditioner.

The company dates its own launch to 2015, with New Wash; Summit Partners’ 2021 release places its headquarters in New York. Its founders are described differently by source. Summit Partners’ 2021 announcement says only that Hairstory was launched by “a team of haircare industry veterans,” while a 2023 BeautyMatter profile names four founders: Michael Gordon, Eli Halliwell, Mauricio Bellora and Jackie Bauer.

One wash, a balm and a powder.

Cool Hunting reported on New Wash in November 2015 as a detergent-free cleanser that replaced Purely Perfect: thinner, easier to work in and rinse out, with added extracts, and sold alongside three stylers, Hair Balm, the texturising spray Deshabillé and the blow-dry product Dressed Up. Gordon, the magazine noted, presented Deshabillé as an improvement on the surf spray he says he invented at Bumble. Cool Hunting called the packaging contemporary and clutter-free. Each box, it reported, carried Gordon’s own first-person account of why he made the product, and the brand added instructions and an animation because New Wash is used differently from shampoo.

The range is wider now. The company’s site lists several versions of New Wash, among them Original, Rich, Deep Clean and Fragrance Free, together with a Pre-Wash, Hair Balm and Powder. Hairstory describes its formulas as non-toxic and naturally derived and says every product is Leaping Bunny certified; those descriptions are the company’s own. BeautyMatter reported in 2023 that New Wash and the stylers use only natural fragrances made from essential oils, with the fragrance components set out in the ingredient lists, which is how the company presents them.

Hairstory also sells differently from most salon brands. Summit Partners described a “direct-through-stylist” model in 2021, in which hairdressers earn commission on their clients’ later purchases wherever those clients buy; the company now calls this the Hairstory Pro commission programme and runs education events for stylists through its studio.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all hair-care names: Joico, UNITE, Kerasilk, ELEVEN Australia, Philip B, Hairstory and Innersense. Hair-care brands sit at many different points in the trade, from small companies still run by the hairdressers or founders who started them to lines that now belong to much larger beauty groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a salon backbar to a department store or a website.

Salon brands in particular are often built by people who came from behind the chair, and many were first sold to salons before they reached shops. Their identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a name, a bottle and a way of talking to stylists, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production to a contract manufacturer or grown far beyond the salon where it began.

That makes the plain questions behind each name worth asking: who started it, who owns it now, and where its products are actually made. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its bottles and labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A pouch instead of a bottle.

Packaging is the most visible part of the identity. Hairstory says it began using low-plastic refill pouches for haircare in 2015, and Summit Partners said in 2021 that the whole line had moved to pouches after they were first used for subscriptions. First orders of New Wash now come with a refillable Better Bottle, which the company says is made with 50% post-consumer recycled plastic, to be topped up from pouches of any size. Hairstory also says it is a member of 1% for the Planet, giving 1% of each 8oz New Wash sale to water organisations, and that 90% of its products are manufactured locally; it does not name its manufacturers.

Outside investment arrived in October 2021, when the growth-equity firm Summit Partners made a minority investment and its managing director Melanie Whelan joined the board, Summit announced from New York. That release named Eli Halliwell as chief executive; BeautyMatter’s 2023 profile listed Harley Butler in the role. The company’s brand line is “fewer, better things,” which it applies to ingredients, routines and wash days alike, and it calls itself “a small company with big ambitions.” Gordon’s own title says something about how the brand talks: Into The Gloss introduced him in 2016 not as a chief executive but as Hairstory’s editor in chief, and its website still keeps an archive and a press page alongside the shop.

For a design guide, Hairstory shows how a single product, a refill pouch and a founder’s argument against shampoo can carry a brand. Compare it with Davines, the independent Italian salon brand that became a B Corp, and with Philip B., another stylist-founded American line. For this guide we use water blue, sand and clay with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Hairstory’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.