Act+Acre

A married couple, one of them a hairstylist and the other a textile scientist, met on a flight in 2015 and eventually launched a hair care brand in 2017, built around a single unusual production process. Every formula would be cold processed, not heated, to preserve active ingredient integrity. Helen Reavy was a session hairstylist who had worked on runOuai shows for Anthony Vaccarello and Mark Jacobs. Her husband Colin Mackin was a scientist specializing in textile fibre chemistry. They co-founded Act Plus Acre in 2017 around a commitment to what they called cold processing, a manufacturing method that keeps the formulation below 90 degrees Fahrenheit throughout mixing and bottling. The goal was to preserve the molecular structure of plant-derived actives that are typically degraded by the heat used in standard cosmetics manufacturing.