Kundal

The name is a hybrid nobody would guess: the German word for art and craft, spliced with an Australian Aboriginal term for the macadamia nut. It is an odd construction for a Seoul hair care company, and it points at the brand's actual obsession, which is not hair biology at all but smell.

Founded in 2016, the brand built itself around fragrance as the primary product feature, with a team of in-house perfumers developing scent profiles that behave more like fine fragrance than the functional perfumery most shampoo uses. The commercial result was a category the Korean market now recognises in its own right, perfume shampoo, in which the brand became the leading name domestically before expanding to dozens of countries and a US warehouse-club listing for its honey and macadamia range in 2024.

The formulations follow the contemporary K-beauty template around that scent: plant-derived conditioning ingredients, no parabens, and avoidance of the harsher sulfate surfactants in favour of milder cleansing systems. Nothing in the range is presented as medicated, and the brand does not claim otherwise.

The honest read is refreshingly simple, because the brand is honest about what it is. This is cosmetic hair care sold on sensory experience and priced accessibly, and it does that job well. Long-lasting fragrance in hair is a genuine formulation skill and not a trivial one. What it is not is scalp treatment. There is no active here for dandruff, seborrhoeic dermatitis or hair loss, and heavily fragranced products are worth approaching cautiously if your scalp is inflamed or you are prone to contact reactions, since fragrance is among the more common sensitisers. Judged as a pleasant, well-made everyday shampoo with an unusually good scent, it is a straightforward recommendation. Judged as anything therapeutic, it was never making that offer.

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