Okay, so I’m going to be honest with you right off the bat: I’m a sucker for a good celebrity hair endorsement. Not because I think Mariska Hargitay’s stylist has cracked some ancient beauty code the rest of us don’t have access to, but because when two A-listers with wildly different hair textures and hair histories both land on the same product, my ears perk up. That’s exactly what happened here, and now I can’t stop thinking about a $46 tube of cream.

Wait, Mariska Hargitay AND Jennifer Garner? Same Product?

Yep. Same product. The Virtue Flourish Thickening Styling Treatment Cream, to be exact. Hargitay’s longtime hairstylist Adir Abergel used it to get her that gorgeous, undone wave look at the Emmys (you know the one, the “I woke up like this but actually I didn’t” hair), and Jennifer Garner has apparently been a fan of the same stuff for a while now. That’s not nothing. Two women, two very different careers, two very different heads of hair, one cream between them.

Here’s the thing about celebrity hair products, though. Most of the time I roll my eyes a little. Like, sure, Jennifer Aniston’s hair looks amazing, but she also has a team of people and genetically blessed hair and probably doesn’t even remember buying her own shampoo since 2003. But thickening creams are different. They’re not some magic serum promising to reverse aging or regrow follicles overnight. They’re just trying to make your hair look fuller without turning it into a stiff, crunchy mess. That’s a much more believable claim, and honestly, a much more useful one for regular people like us.

What Actually Is This Stuff?

The Flourish Thickening Styling Treatment Cream is designed to be lightweight. That’s the big selling point, and it’s also the thing that separates a good thickening product from a bad one. A lot of “volumizing” creams and mousses out there basically coat your hair in product until it feels bigger, sure, but also feels like straw. Nobody wants straw hair. This one’s supposed to add fullness without the weight, which if it actually works as advertised, is kind of the holy grail for anyone with fine or thinning hair.

Why Does This Matter to Regular People Who Aren’t Attending the Emmys?

Because most of us aren’t dealing with a glam squad before we leave the house in the morning. We’re standing in front of a bathroom mirror, half awake, trying to make our hair look like something other than “I just woke up and I’m late.” A product that celebrity stylists reach for on the red carpet, and that also works for two different women with (presumably) two different hair types, feels like a safer bet than most of the stuff cluttering the shelves at your local drugstore.

“It’s designed to give strands a fuller, thicker appearance without weighing them down.”

That line right there is basically the entire pitch, and honestly? It’s a good one. Thinning hair, especially as people get older, is such a common and honestly kind of under-discussed issue. We talk about wrinkles and gray hair constantly, but hair density loss doesn’t get nearly the same airtime, even though it bothers a lot of people just as much, if not more.

The Price Tag Question Nobody Wants to Ask

Let’s talk money for a second, because $46 isn’t pocket change. It’s not the most expensive thing on the market by any stretch, but it’s also not a drugstore impulse buy. I’ve seen thickening creams range anywhere from $12 to well over $60, so this one lands pretty squarely in the middle. If I’m being honest, I think the price makes sense given what Virtue is known for. The brand built its whole reputation around using alpha keratin 60ku, which is basically their proprietary protein technology thing that’s supposed to repair hair from the inside out. Whether that’s marketing magic or actual science, I genuinely don’t know. I’m not a chemist. But the brand has built a loyal following over the years, and loyal followings usually mean the product is doing something right, even if it’s not doing everything the marketing copy promises.

What’s interesting here is that neither Hargitay nor Garner needed this cream, at least not in the way most of us might. Both women have been in the spotlight for decades and both have, from what I can tell, pretty healthy heads of hair to begin with. So the fact that they’re both reaching for a thickening treatment says something. Maybe it’s less about desperately needing thicker hair and more about maintaining what they’ve got as they age. That’s a totally different conversation, and honestly a more relatable one. Hair thinning with age is real, it happens to basically everyone eventually, and pretending otherwise doesn’t do anyone any favors.

The Emmys Look, Specifically

Abergel’s work on Hargitay for the Emmys was going for that “fresh, undone” wave thing that’s basically been the dominant red carpet hair trend for the last, what, three or four years now? It’s not sleek, it’s not overly polished, it’s supposed to look like you just have naturally incredible hair and you rolled out of bed like this. Which, obviously, takes a ton of product and technique to fake. The thickening cream’s role there was to give the waves some body so they didn’t fall flat under their own weight, especially with the tousled styling Abergel was going for. Lightweight products matter enormously for that kind of look, because anything heavy just kills the texture you’re trying to create.

What This Actually Means

Look, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that buying this cream is going to transform your hair into Mariska Hargitay’s Emmys look. That’s not how any of this works, and honestly, half the effect is the stylist, the technique, and probably some strategic camera angles too. But there’s something genuinely useful in the fact that two different celebrities, with two different hair types and two different stylists, both landed on the same product for the same basic problem. That’s not just coincidence or a coordinated PR push (probably). That’s a product doing its job well enough that people who can literally afford anything keep coming back to it.

Will I be buying it? Probably, not gonna lie. My hair’s been feeling a little flat lately and $46 feels like a reasonable gamble for something that’s apparently good enough for two Hollywood veterans. Whether it lives up to the hype for someone who isn’t getting professionally blow-dried every day, though… that’s the real question, and one only trying it yourself is going to answer.