Guys, I won’t lie, it’s taken me a bit of bloody perfecting to get this right – I put this down to the fact my hair has COMPLETELY CHANGED TEXTURE SINCE HAVING A TINY BABY – but that’s for another post/century.
Pic: Jennifer ‘T & A” Stenglein
I’m working with hair that is:
- A total bitch
- Fine
- Flat
- Straight (IT USED TO BE CURLY GUYS WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON SOMEONE CALL THE POLICE I’M SCARED)
- Slippery
- Lank
- Short
Which I wish was:
- Full of volume
- F-d up
- Messy
- Gritty
- Textured
- Dirty
- Movey… as opposed to wavy. Almost straight, but full of body, with a soft wave. (I flick it over from side to side, real ’80 style, so curls don’t work.)
So. I get a real good cut at Edwards and Co every 3-4 weeks. Also a colour. (I see either Monsieur Jaye Edwards himself, Melvin Royce Lane, or Lauren Mackellar, they are all EXCELLENT and I trust them implicitly.) My natural hair without bleach in it is a floppy, flat mess. I get the ends razored so the bob doesn’t look TV Newsreader/too perfect/daggy.
I wash with a volume shampoo like Redken Body Full Shampoo to remove all product and start the scaffolding of volume. Then I wash again to actually clean the hair and scalp. No conditioner. My hair can’t handle it at the moment. Buzz off, conditioner! I heard you were a snitch anyway.
On damp hair, I spray some kind of volume boosting, body-boosting, fullness product all over. This might be L’Oréal Professionnel tecni.art Volume Lift Spray, which is lightweight and has a targeted nozzle and which I love, or it might be Kevin Murphy BODY.MASS, and not just cos the bottle looks great, don’t be so godamn shallow.
Then I blast dry with my beloved bright orange Parlux 385, of which there is no comparison, either hand drying the hair (no nozzle on the hairdryer), or (using the nozzle now), brushing the hair in every direction, across, over, both sides, with my Denman Styling brush, of which there is also no comparison. This creates more volume. More air in the hair.
I then go to bed. I never tong freshly washed hair. It sucks. Hair needs to be a bit lived in so the curl will hold.
Next morning, it’s about shaping the hair. Not curling. Shaping.
THE TWO-MINUTE ROUTE:
Wake up, take something “gooey” and thickening and run it through the hair, all over, to give the hair movement and thickness and a mild ‘wetness’, like Kevin Murphy UN.DRESSED. (Your chap’s matte texture clay could even work here, esp from the mid-lengths to the ends.)
THE PROPER SETTING WHICH WILL LAST LONGER BUT ALSO TAKE LONGER:
I spray in setting spray, like Matrix Thermal Active Setting Spray, then I use either the ghd Curve Creative Curl wand, (I like the tapered barrel for haphazard, I-woke-up-like-this waves), or my beloved Babyliss curling tong. With longer hair, you can afford to leave ends off the styler, to create beachy, lazy waves. With my length, it’s better to get those ends on that styler/tong, because leaving the ends out looks so ’90s and crunchy. So I wrap from the mid lengths to the ends of the hair for approx. 8.04 seconds, then I remove wand, and I tug and pull at the bottom of just-curled sections so loosen up the wave and make it straighter.
Then I let it set. Curls and waves only set when they are stone cold. No touchy til then. (Maybe a light mist of Bumble and bumble Spray de Mode, but that’s it.) Being fine, my hair demands I go easy on the finishing products. (It also demands pikelets for breakfast, but is less victorious in that respect.)
After 10 mins or so, I go through the hair with a wide tooth comb, to make waves blend, and to soften them up.
Then a light dusting of volume powder (Evo Haze, for instance) all over the top of the head, massaged into the scalp, for grit and to zap any remaining floppiness. I run fingers through and mess around with it a lot to get the shape right.
IF I STILL FIND IT TOO WAVY: I spray some sea salt spray lightly over the hair and blast hair dryer on high heat over it for 30 seconds. This will straighten it, but maintain texture.
I add more volume powder and dry shampoo each day for about three days, when the hair finally looks utterly perfect for about six minutes… then it’s time to wash again.
It’s definitely a dirtier, more product-ier is better hair style. I miss lazy top-knots, but I feel WAY more me with short hair.
And remember: the shorter the hair, the shorter the hemline. YEEEEEEEEEW!