JessicaLea

I'm studying abroad in France for a month and I don't want to weigh down my luggage with shampoo, conditioner, etc on the flight to France. I'm planning on bringing travel size stuff for the first few days and buying all my shower stuff when I get to the university (in Clermont-Ferrand). What are some good products you can get in France?

tarquin

Klorane shampoos and conditioners - only sold in pharmacies.

Christina

YOu can buy any international brands in drug stores there, I'm sure you'll see the names you'll recognize. Soap is pretty much soap as far as I'm concerned (in terms of shower gel or bar soap), just buy something that is cheap and looks good. I like Nivea soap myself, but that isn't something you've never heard of, I'm sure. I buy Le Petit Marseillas shower liquid soap in France because it is cheap and I think the bottle is cute, which are my main criteria.

kerouac

France has been known to sell a few beauty products. There are the huge international brands and then there are also the local cheap brands. It's all a question of budget.

Southam

L'Oreal alone produces Garnier, Redken, Lancome, Mabelline, Body Shop, Diesel, Ralph Lauren, YSL and Armani among its brand names. The question is not so much what you should take with you, it's what you will bring back home.

WeisserTee

Actually, if you compare the cheap shampoos to most of the expensive ones, their top ingredients tend to be almost identical -- usually water followed by sodium laureth sulfate, then a few other ingredients jockeying between brands for third to fifth position. After that, the differences are mostly fragrance and window dressing. There is a little more variation in conditioners. If I happen to be over the border in France, I buy the Dessanges (sp) brand at the supermarket. If I'm over the border in Germany, I pick up something from Guhl. Both work just as well as expensive brands like Kerastase (which also has sls as one of its top ingredients).

Christina

I don't care about soap (except not wanting a particular fragrance, and nothing with deodorant in it), but I do find differences in shampoos, but that is really personal, so you can't go by what anyone else says. I have dry hair and like certain shampoos better than others that I buy in the US, so would never just buy some shampoo because someone said they liked it. I find some of the cheaper brands more drying, but I always buy shampoo with conditioner together, and then use conditioner also on the ends. BUt it is trial and error.

I used to word for a costmetic company, actually, who also made shampoo and had a French branch, and that's when I found out the ingredients didn't vary that much and that the main thing affecting the price was the packaging, actually. An expensive face cream that cost $40 only had about 5 cents worth of ingredients in it.

L'Oreal is generally cheaper in the US than in Paris, anyway, at least for some of the cosmetics I've priced.

MilenaM

Uriage Hyseac - lots of face products.
L'Oreal Elseve Extraordinary Oil for dry hair
Dessange Mousse for curly hair (boucles)

Underhill

Uriage products--especially the lip balms--are terrific. I love them so much a friend of mine recently in France picked up 8 for me.

Also excellent, and nearly impossible to buy here for some reason: Nivea soin de jour, a lovely, light daily face cream. Also good is Nivea's Cashmere hair rinse after a shampoo. In France there's a much wider range of Nivea products than available in the U.S.--except for men's products. No idea why!

Underhill

That was bad syntax. I meant that there are quite a few Nivea-for-men products available here in the U.S.