Oribe’s Legacy Is About More Than Just Great Product—Here’s How the Brand Keeps Innovating

When it comes to salon-quality hair products, Oribe has been the standard for over 14 years. The brand, founded by legendary hairstylist Oribe Canales and Daniel Kaner, has consistently brought innovative and iconic products to the market. As you’d imagine, the brand’s DNA wholly embodies Canales’ point of view on beauty.

From the 1980s to the 2010s, Oribe Canales was known for his next-level hairstyling prowess. He created glamorous looks for fashion houses (like Versace and Chanel) and publications (between 1997 and 2000, he styled 36 consecutive covers for Elle US). “Oribe was always steps ahead in his visions for hair,” Oribe’s principal artist of global design, Kien Hoang, says. “He gave me insights on how we can push the looks of hair forward in all dimensions of styling.”

The brand’s principal educator of content & training, Coby Alcantar, echoes these sentiments, stating, “His love for making things beautiful and always having a vision for what something should look like inspired me.”

Through his namesake hair care line, Canales was able to bring his sharp styling skills to the masses. Since launching in 2008, the brand has left an indelible mark on the industry and continues to find new ways to push hair care forward. Ahead, we’re taking a deep dive into Oribe’s past, present, and future.

The Beginning

Canales hairstyling experience and Kaner’s career in beauty (he’s worked at Aveda and Bumble & Bumble) provided them with insight into gaps in the market. In the early 2000s, they both saw a need for high-performance products. “We launched the brand because we wanted to bring a unique perspective to professional stylists and engaged consumers looking for tools that addressed their needs,” Kaner shares. “The hair care category was evolving and open to a wider and carefully considered product offering. In most beauty categories, there are good, better, and best. We saw an opportunity to be the best in performance.”

Within the first two years, the brand launched products like the now-iconic Dry Texturizing Spray, which serves as a shining example of Oribe’s point of difference. In such a saturated market, the brand’s luxurious, solution-driven formulas struck a chord amongst the masses. “At the time, a lot of the session stylists were using dry shampoo to get that voluminous, piece-y, slept-in look, but the powder formula left the hair gritty and dull,” Kaner explains. “Oribe designed his dream product—a styler that gave the hair texture and volume while leaving it touchably soft and shiny.”

Oribe took great care to ensure each product provided the most elevated experience, thoughtfully refining details like fragrance (another element the brand has become known for). “Oribe was working with Jennifer Lopez at the time and loved how her fragrance trailed her—he said you could smell her down the hall, and it was an intoxicating experience,” Kaner notes. “Our ambition was to create this custom perfume so that after you’re done styling your hair, you have this beautiful, fine fragrance left behind to signify the overall Oribe experience. This fragrance became our signature scent, Côte d’Azur, which runs throughout our entire line of products.” 

Kaner reflects on Oribe’s early days of development of Oribe fondly, describing it as one of the most exciting times in his career. “It was such a grassroots effort,” he says. “We were all out in the field, on the phone sharing our brand story and traveling the country in an old van doing in-salon education events. We would pick Oribe up after he’d flown in from an Italian or French Vogue shoot and would drive to a small town in the U.S. and do hair demonstrations with the products. The stylists loved him, and they loved the products.” 

The Present