Jung Ae Descamps: the craftswoman behind the two-step Method

Ask most people why plant-based colour "doesn't work" and you'll hear the same handful of stories: it went patchy, it faded in a fortnight, the grey peeped straight back through. Jung Ae Descamps has heard them all. And her answer is the same every time. The plants were never the problem. The method was.

Jung Ae is the co-founder of Tresse Paris and the person who designed the two-step application Method that sits at the heart of everything we make. She didn't invent henna, indigo, cassia or amla, those have coloured hair for centuries. What she did was rethink how they're used at home, so that the result you get on your own bathroom shelf actually matches the result the plants are capable of giving.

A method, not a mix

Here is the distinction Jung Ae keeps coming back to. A great many products on the market are, at bottom, a single bag of powder. You add water, you wait, you rinse, you hope. The pigments inside might be excellent. But the way they're meant to be released, prepared and fixed onto the hair fibre is left almost entirely to chance, or buried in a paragraph nobody reads.

Her conviction is that plant-based hair colour behaves less like a paint and more like a recipe. Get the sequence right and it's reliable. Get it wrong, or skip a step, and even the finest ingredients underdeliver. So instead of selling you a powder, she built a process and made the process the product.

The making of a perfectionist

Jung Ae did not arrive at this from marketing. She arrived at it from frustration, the practical, hands-on kind. She wanted a colour she could trust on her own hair, made without ammonia, without PPD, without resorcinol and without an oxidiser, and she refused to accept that "natural" had to mean "unpredictable".

That refusal turned into years of testing. Different fibres, different starting greys, different water, different temperatures. The pattern that emerged was stubborn and clear: success or failure almost always came down to two things that home users were never properly told about. How the fibre was prepared before the colour went on. And the temperature at which the pigments were released. Everything else was secondary.

The two-step application Method

So the Method splits the job into two deliberate stages, each in its own sachet.

• Step one prepares the fibre. Before any colour is laid down, the hair is readied to receive it. This is the stage most routines quietly omit, and it's precisely the stage that decides whether grey takes evenly or stubbornly resists.
• Step two delivers the colour. With the fibre primed, the colouring plants go on and bond properly, rather than skimming the surface and washing away.

And then there's the detail people are most surprised by: a thermometer comes in the box. Plant pigments don't reveal themselves on a guess. They need the right temperature to develop, and "warm enough" is far too vague to be repeatable. Giving you an actual thermometer turns a hopeful step into a measured one. It's a small object that quietly removes one of the biggest reasons home colour goes wrong.

None of this is complicated once it's laid out properly. That's rather the point. Jung Ae's job, as she sees it, was to take the parts that experienced colourists do by instinct and make them legible to someone doing it for the first time, at home, on a Tuesday evening.

Why it matters on grey hair

Grey is where method shows. Grey strands are less receptive than pigmented ones, so they're the first to expose a rushed or skipped preparation. Prepare the fibre properly and develop at the correct temperature, and the colour can cover grey by roughly 100% on the darker shades. Cut corners on either, and the grey is the very first thing to come back through.

This is also where Jung Ae insists on honesty about what the plants can and cannot do. Plant-based colour runs warm by nature. Caramel, copper, golden, mocha, auburn and chestnut tones are well within reach. What it will not do is lighten. It doesn't bleach and it doesn't lift, so ashy, cool or genuinely lighter results aren't on the table, only chemistry can lighten hair. The Method deepens, refreshes and covers. She would rather tell you that plainly than sell you a disappointment.

Designing in France, rather than reselling

There's a quieter decision underneath all of this: Tresse Paris designs and makes in France rather than buying in a finished blend and putting a label on it. The range is COSMOS Organic certified and made in France, and in 2024 the approach was recognised with the Natexbio Challenge award.

For Jung Ae, manufacturing close to home isn't a slogan. It's what lets her keep tightening the Method, the preparation step, the development temperature, the fit between fibre and pigment, instead of inheriting whatever a third party happened to bottle. It's gentle on a sensitive scalp, it coats and strengthens the fibre, and it does so because every part of the chain is hers to refine.

A brand with a face

Plenty of beauty brands keep their founders comfortably offstage. Jung Ae is the opposite. The Method carries her standards, her impatience with vagueness, her habit of measuring rather than guessing. When you open a Tresse Paris box and find two sachets and a thermometer, you're holding her answer to a complaint she's spent years hearing: that the plants don't work.

They do. You simply have to use them properly, and now you have the means to.

Frequently asked questions

Why does Tresse Paris use a two-step method instead of a single powder?

Because preparation and colour are two different jobs. Step one readies the hair fibre so it accepts pigment evenly; step two lays the colour down. Combining them into one bag is what leaves so many home results patchy, especially on grey.

What is the thermometer for?

Plant pigments only develop fully at the right temperature. A vague instruction like "warm" isn't repeatable, so the thermometer lets you hit the correct point every time. It turns the single most error-prone step into a measured one.

Will the Method cover my grey hair?

On darker shades it can cover grey by roughly 100%, provided you follow both steps and develop at the correct temperature. Grey is unforgiving of skipped preparation, which is exactly why the preparation step exists.

Can plant-based colour lighten my hair or give me an ash tone?

No, and we'd rather be straight about it. Plant colour runs warm and cannot lift or lighten. Caramel, copper, golden, mocha, auburn and chestnut are achievable; ashy, cool or lighter shades are not, only chemical colour can lighten.

Is the colour suitable for a sensitive scalp?

Yes. The range is formulated without ammonia, PPD, resorcinol or an oxidiser, it's COSMOS Organic certified and made in France, and it's designed to respect a sensitive scalp while coating and strengthening the hair fibre.