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Category Archives: Hair
Dollface Reviews: Nicky Clarke NSS042 hair therapy straighteners
When it comes to hair, I’ve always been very much a “wash and go” kinda girl. I’ve never really had a lot of time for styling products or tools, so for most of my life, a hairdryer and brush have been more than enough for me.
For most of this year, however, my hair’s been going through one of those annoying “growing out a fringe” stages. Suddenly, washing and blow-drying just doesn’t cut it any more: that fringe just wants to stick up and out, in all directions, so over the past few months, I’ve found myself becoming increasingly obsessed with finding the best tools to keep it under control, and looking as good as it can under the circumstances.
Enter Nicky Clarke’s Hair Therapy Straighteners, which were sent to me by VoucherCodes.co.uk as part of their bid to find out if budget straighteners are a good investment compared to their more expensive counterparts.
Now, I’ve always used budget hair straighteners, mostly because I’ve never considered them enough of an “essential” to want to spend a lot of money on. That said, I don’t want to ruin my hair either, so I was pleased to find that although these are only £14.99, they come with a range of features including tourmaline coated plates and Far Infrared Rays to help lock in moisture and stop your hair getting frazzled by the heat, basically. They also come with these:
A brush, comb and banana clips, to help you achieve that “salon-straightened” effect: I love it when hair tools come with these little extras.
As for the straighteners themselves, they’re of the “no nonsense variety”:
Forget the snazzy colours and cute carrying cases: these are sleek and functional, with a grey and silver casing, which houses the plates themselves, with the power switch and temperature dial on the inside.
These have a top temperature of 230degrees, and there are four heat settings. Rather than giving the actual temperatures, however, these are labelled FINE, MEDIUM, THICK and MAX, so you know exactly which setting to use for each section of hair. I found this really useful, as it takes a lot of the guesswork out of using this styler. With my current straighteners, which give the exact temperature, I have a tendency to just ramp them up to the highest setting, and use that for everything, but with these ones I found I was more likely to adjust the temperature according to which section of hair I was working on: I found that the “fine” setting, for instance, was more than enough to straighten my growing-out fringe, while I needed the higher temperatures for the thicker sections at the side and back of the head.
These warmed up within a couple of minutes, and were as easy to use as any other straighteners. I experimented with straightening some sections of my hair and using them to put loose waves in other sections, and had no problems at all, and I did feel my hair looked shinier afterwards than it normally does with my regular straighteners, which have no “moisture-locking” properties!
My one criticism of these would be the placement of the temperature control and power switch:
It’s not in the most accessible position on the inside of the casing, and, being rather accident-prone, I was a bit worried that I’d end up burning my hand as I reached in to change the settings. I haven’t so far, thankfully, but I’d like these a little more with the dial on the outside, to minimise the chances of any accidents!
Overall, I was very happy with these, and while I don’t have a huge amount of experience of more expensive straighteners to compare them with (I do use the GHDs at the gym sometimes, but that’s pretty much it!), I found them perfectly suitable for my needs.
These are currently £14.99 at Comet, down from the original price of £39.99. Click here if you’d like to buy a set.
Dollface Reviews: Swarzkopf Got2b Powderful Volumizing Styling Powder
This month, my ongoing quest for Big Hair led to to purchase a tub of Swarzkopf Got2b Powderful Volumizing Styling Powder. Two things about this:
1. The fact that they used numbers as letters in the product name hurts my heart a little.
2. I do no use styling products on my hair. Ever. Well, I mean, I’ll occasionally give it a blast of hairspray if I’m wearing it up, but only very occasionally, because I hate that “crunchy” feel it creates, and I have a habit of using too much and ending up looking like I’m wearing a hair helmet.
The fact is, most styling products don’t seem to make a whit of difference to my hair, other than in a negative sense: I have very greasy roots, and almost everything I try seems only to make them even more greasy. So, to say I wasn’t expecting much from this would be an understatement. In fact, if I remember rightly, I think I actually purchased it on eBay, because I was too cheap to pay full price for something I was sure I’d use once, hate, and then put in a drawer, never to be seen again.
But I was wrong.
Got2b Powderful is, as I’m sure you’ve guessed from the name, a powder which you apply to the roots of the hair in order to create volume. I was suspicious of this because I tend to be clumsy, and I imagined myself spilling it all over a black dress or something, and then walking around like Casper the Friendly Ghost all day. Or ending up with grey roots, because, me being me, I would be sure to use too much.
I needn’t have worried, though. (Or not about the grey roots, at least: I probably still SHOULD worry about the spillages…) This, you see, is a very finely milled powder:
The instructions advise you to tip a small quantity of it onto the palm of your hand, and then gently rub your hands together. (You can also simply tip it onto the roots of your hair, if you’re feeling adventurous…) When you do, it becomes invisible, as if by magic, (Note: no actual magic is used in this product. It does become undetectable on your skin, though.) and you can then rub it onto your roots without fear of it turning them grey. I generally tip my head upside down to do this, and try to distribute it as evenly as possible. Then I tip my head back up the right way…
Aaaand, just like that, my transformation into a crazy lady with hair in her eyes is complete! Just like I always wanted!
OK, I jest: I had literally just tipped my head upside down to show you, because that’s how far I’m prepared to go in my bid to bring you the truth about beauty products. Ahem.
Here’s how it looks with my hair NOT in my face, but still uncombed:
(No, I have no idea what was on the ceiling.)
(I did comb it afterwards, I promise.)
Now, I realise this doesn’t look like much to you with your normal, non-limp hair. But it does make quite a difference to my fine, poker-straight stuff, and I’m happy to report that it does it without creating a sticky, greasy mess at the roots. Yes, you can tell that there’s some product there when you touch it, but you can’t tell by looking at it, and I like it enough to have made it a permanent addition to my morning hair routine.
This is priced from around £2.99 and you can click here to buy it from Amazon.
Colour Depositing Conditioner for Red Hair: Superdrug Colour Effects Conditioning Colour in Warm Copper Gold
As regular readers may recall, ever since John Freida’s ‘Radiant Red’ Color Glaze was discontinued (pah!), I’ve been on what feels like a never-ending hunt for a colour-depositing conditioner for redheads.
Now, these aren’t easy to find, even if you’re blonde or brunette (although if you are, you’ll have a very slightly easier time of it). The makers of hair products, however, as I’ve noted before, generally like to pretend redheads just don’t exist at all, so it’s been a fruitless search. I thought it was over when I discovered Wella Lifetex Color Reflex Mask last year, but then… it was discontinued, too.
(Aside: I’m really starting to think it must be me: as soon as I find a product I love, it’s almost instantly discontinued. Hmmmmm.)
The loss of both of these products was a huge blow to me, because, for those of us who want to enhance our colour without resorting to chemical dyes (or even henna, which can be time-consuming and unpredictable), these conditioners are perfect: you use them in the shower, they don’t add a huge amount of time to your daily routine, and while they won’t cover greys or radically change your colour, they will give it a vibrant, more intense shade: or so I found, anyway.
I’d more or less given-up on finding a replacement for these two products, though. Anything I DID find seemed to be expensive, and not available in the UK, so other than a cursory glance at the shelves any time I happened to be in Boots or Superdrug, hoping against hope that the John Freida Color Glaze would have magically re-appeared, I’d almost forgotten about it. Then, a couple of weekends ago, I was in Superdrug, and I came across their Colour Effects Conditioning Colour.
This, as you can see from the image, bills itself as a “wash-in, wash-out” conditioning colour. It comes in a small bottle, containing just enough for three applications, and is just 99p: score! It works in much the same was as the other products I’ve mentioned here: you apply it to wet hair, as you would any other conditioner, leave it to soak in for around five minutes, then rinse it out. The resulting colour effect isn’t permanent: it will last for around 2 -3 washes, but as the product is cheap, and can be used in the shower as part of your normal routine, it’s easy enough to keep it going by just using it every few days. It’s NOT a dye: it won’t cover greys and it won’t change your colour by more than a shade or so, but it will revitalise dull hair, deepen your existing colour, and generally leave your hair looking a little more vibrant.
Well, so far, so good. There were about three different colour options available in the store: a blonde, a black (I think: I’m working from memory here because the product isn’t available online) and this “Warm Copper Gold”, which was the one I chose, because it looked more or less the same as my natural colour.
It actually took me a couple of days to get round to trying this, because, to be completely honest, I didn’t have very high hopes of it, purely because the colour described itself as “copper” rather than “red”. When I did, however, I was instantly converted: and instantly terrified that Superdrug would surely discontinue it at any second. I used the conditioner in the shower, and the first surprise came with the consistency of it: while this looks and feels exactly like any other conditioner (albeit a coppery brown one), it lathers up like a shampoo, which I wasn’t expecting. This does make it easy to distribute it evenly throughout the hair, though, so I left it for the recommended five minutes then rinsed until the water ran clear and headed off to dry my hair.
As soon as I removed my towel turban, I could see a difference in the colour: my hair was much more vibrant, and looked much “redder” to me, although in a natural kind of way: it’s basically my natural colour, just a little deeper. (Although I can see a big difference, no one else noticed!) Because I hadn’t actually been expecting to see any kind of difference, and my colour tends to look different every time I photograph it anyway, I didn’t bother to take a “before” shot, but here’s what it looked like after one application:
(It’s not actually a different colour on the bottom, by the way, it’s just the way it came out in the photo!)
There’s only one downside to this that I’ve found: it’s not great as a conditioner. While the other colour-depositing conditioners I’ve tried have left my hair very soft and shiny as well as subtly changing the colour, after using this, I didn’t really feel like I’d conditioned my hair at all, and the second time I used it, I used some of my regular conditioner afterwards, just to stop my hair from tangling up horribly. So while I love the colour effect, it’s definitely not a replacement for a regular conditioner: or not for me, anyway.
I liked this so much - especially given the 99p price tag – that when I couldn’t find it online I because paranoid that it had ALREADY been discontinued, and had to contact Superdrug to double-check. Happily, they replied to tell me that they have no plans to discontinue it, and while it isn’t on the website at the moment, it should be available in store. Phew!
Dollface Reviews: Babyliss Big Hair Rotating Styler
As the owner of fine, terminally limp hair, the quest for volume is a never-ending one, and when I heard various friends raving about the Babyliss Big Hair, I knew I would have to try one.
This is a rotating hair dryer basically: it has two heat settings and the revolving brush blows out air, allowing you to dry your hair and brush it out at the same time. The promised effect is more or less what you’d get from a professional blow-out at the salon: smooth, shiny hair, with added volume and bounce. Your stylist will generally achieve this effect by blow-drying the hair while using a large, rounded brush on it at the same time, but if you’ve ever tried to do this at home, you’ll know it can be a little tricky to manage brush and hairdryer together, especially on the back of the head. The Babyliss Big Hair, however, gives you both tools at once, allowing you to get that salon look at home: or so it claims, anyway!
I bought my styler at the start of the month, and, as described, it’s basically a large brush which just so happens to blow out hot air. There are two switches at the top of the handle which allow you to choose the direction the brush will rotate in: either towards your face for a smooth, turned-under look, or away from it, in a flicked-out style.
The first thing I realised when I started to use this is that it’s not exactly foolproof. In fact, the very first time I tentatively switched it on and applied the brush to my hair, it instantly tangled up so badly I was worried I was going to have to be cut out of it. Luckily for me, I managed to untangle myself pretty quickly, but there’s definitely a knack to using this, and took me a bit of practice to arrive at the perfect technique of holding the brush in place and then rolling it down the hair. I suspect some of my problems here may have been to do with the fact that I fail at life my hair is long, and therefore tangles around the barrel of the dryer more easily. If you have a shorter style, I’d imagine you’d find it much easier to use: if in doubt, though, I know there are quite a few tutorials on You Tube which may be worth a look!
Once I’d got my technique down, though, I was pretty impressed with the styler. It doesn’t exactly give me “Big Hair” – I’ve long since learned that absolutely NOTHING does that for me! – but it does create a great-looking blow-out, of the type I have never previously been able to achieve on my own. I find it particularly effective on my fringe, and the shorter strands of hair at the front of my head, which tend to stick out when I blow-dry normally, and it leaves all of my hair looking very smooth, with the ends turned under, which I like.
This is not quite a one-step tool for me, however, and I can’t use it to dry my hair from wet: or, at least, I could, but it would take forever. Instead, I have to either rough-dry most of my hair with my usual hairdryer, or leave it to air-dry for a while, before using the Big Hair to finish it off. Again, if you have shorter hair, I would imagine you’ll be able to use it right out of the shower: my hair is just too long for me to have the patience to dry all of it in sections every day, although for a special occasions it’s worth the time.
Overall, I’m happy I bought this, and have been using it most days. I still have the odd “tangling” incident, but nothing too bad, and because the barrel of the brush is large, if your hair does get caught up in it, at least it untangles easily!
This is £45.99 at Boots: click here if you want to try it for yourself!
Hair Hero: Christie Brinkley’s bombshell curls
Despite the best of intentions, I’ve had so much on this week that I’ve been struggling to keep up with product reviews… I came across this photo of Christie Brinkley at the Ides of March premiere this morning, though, and had to share, mostly because this is EXACTLY how I want my hair right now: if my Fairy Godmother could please just fix it for me to wake up every morning with my hair like this, that would be great, thanks!
Of course, in theory, this look is pretty easy to achieve as there’s nothing too complicated about curls. In practice, however, my curl-resistant hair would look like this for approximately 2.5 minutes, before reverting back to being poker-straight. I recently invested in a couple of different products to see if I could encourage the curls to stick around for longer, so I’ll post about those soon. In the meantime, don’t you think Christie Brinkley looks absolutely amazing? I was going to add the patronising “for her age” to that sentence, but actually, she looks better at 57 than I did at 21, so I’m just going to end the sentence at “amazing” and be done with it…
Dollface Reviews: Neal & Wolf Harmony Intensive Care Treatment
As I mentioned last week, one of the products inside my surprise Glossybox was a full-sized tube of Neal & Wolf’s Harmony Intensive Care Treatment for hair.
One of the great things about Glossybox, of course, is that it gives you the opportunity to try products you possibly wouldn’t be able to justify buying on their own, or which you might not even have heard of.
The downside of that, however, is that you can very easily find yourself addicted to something that turns out to be way out of your price league. Because of this, I was actually scared to look this product up online and find out how much it cost, because folks: I love this. It’s awesome, seriously.
This is basically an intensive hair masque, of the “apply, leave to sink in for a few minutes, then rinse” type. You can choose to leave it on for 10-20 minutes, say, if you want to give yourself the full pampering treatment, but I’ve been using it in the shower, and basically just leaving it on for as long as it takes me to shave my legs. By doing this, I noticed two things straight away:
1. It smells fantastic. I’ve said a million times here that I’m rubbish at describing scents, so I’ll simply describe this as “the scent of luxury”. You can tell that it’s a high-quality product just by sniffing it in other words. This made me nervous, and also made me want to hate it, so I wouldn’t feel obliged to keep on buying it once my sample tube is done. I was to be disappointed in that wish, however, because:
2. You can feel the difference before you even get out of the shower.
There’s no need to dry and style your hair to see if this has made a difference: you can FEEL the difference as soon as you rinse it off. When I use my usual (cheap) brand of conditioner, my wet hair will feel a bit tangled and unkempt. After applying this, it’s as smooth as glass, and completely tangle-free. It’s also shinier, softer, and generally healthier looking once it IS dry. Oh, and it still smells great.
With all of this said, then, I was seriously worried. ”I bet this stuff costs a fortune,” I muttered to myself, typing the brand name into Google. I was sort of right to have worried: direct from Neal & Wolf, this costs £12.95 for a 200ml tube. Now, I have to confess: I’m fairly frugal when it comes to hair products, so that’s quite a bit more than I’d normally spend. In this case, though, I do think the price is justified: as I say, it’s a fantastic product, and as it’s an intensive treatment, it’s not something you need to use every day. I’ve had three or four applications out of my tube so far, and there’s still some left: bearing in mind that I have long hair, and get through more conditioner than the average person, I think that’s a pretty good deal, and it’s definitely going onto my “to buy when I have some spare cash” list.
Want to try it? Click here to buy it from Neal & Wolf
The (Alternative) London Fashion Week Kit
London Fashion Week is upon us and that undoubtedly means that the internet will be overflowing with suggestions for a beauty kit needed to survive the relentless schedule of shows, launches and parties.
They’ll go something like this; blister plasters for feet which have trekked all over London from dawn till dusk. Caffeine tablets to prevent eyelid drooping. Nail polish for touch ups on the go. Anti-fatigue foundation. Sweets or biscuits, because there’s never enough time to eat. These guides contain invaluable nuggets of information for fashion week newbies and will undoubtedly remind you to stuff something or other into your handbag in a last minute panic.
Wait, what’s that… you’re not one of the privileged few going to London Fashion Week? Darn, those designers can be mighty forgetful when sending out the invites. Worry not; I have the perfect alternative LFW beauty kit for us mere mortals who will be sitting at home instead of on the front row.
Get your beauty sleep and make it count. You don’t need to be partying with the fash-pack till 4am and rising at 6am, so cash in on those hours of snooze time and make them work for you. Origins High Potency Night-A-Mins is not only moisturising but it alos contains Vitamins C, E and H and it resurfaces skin cells. So, you don’t just look rested when you wake up, but completely revitalised.
Consider giving your hair a luxurious treat. Apply some coconut oil through the lengths and ends of the hair then apply a deep conditioning treatment such as Sebastian Professional Penetraitt Treatment Masque over the top. Stick it into a bun to keep it out the way and leave for as long as you can before shampooing… We’re talking a couple of hours here. It won’t look pretty at the time but that’s just fine seeing as we don’t need to worry about being papped outside Somerset House. The reward for waiting is worth it; enviably silky tresses here we come.
Finally, give your tootsies some love. They may not be hitting London’s pavements as hard as the Vogue staffers, but they still deserve some attention. Plump for some Bliss Softening Socks; the gel lining inside these wonders pushes moisturising oils into tough, rough skin. Wear them around the house with abandon whilst feeling sorry for editors hobbling in their Manolos.
Celebrity Hair: Leighton Meester’s new fringe
[Image: PRPhotos.com]
Leighton Meester showcased a new fringe at Fashion’s Night Out last night. I really like this look on her: I’ve become a big fan of the long, soft fringe lately (think Brigitte Bardot, with tousled hair and a mussed-up fringe), which frames the face without looking too harsh, and gives a rock-chick look when left down, and a retro, 60s vibe with the rest of the hair swept into a beehive.
Leighton’s new look didn’t get a great reception from my Twitter followers, though, so I’m interested to hear what you Dollfaces think: yay or nay?
Dollface Reviews: Remington Spin Curl hairdryer
Greetings, Dollfaces! Today I come to kill you, mwahaha!
OK, OK, I jest. It’s not a strangely-shaped weapon, it’s a hairdryer. To be specific, it’s the Remington Spin Curl hairdryer, and it’s responsible for the huge pile o’frizz you see attached to my head in this photo.
I’ve actually had this since Christmas, but it’s taken me this long to put together a review of it, because, to be perfectly honest, that’s how long it’s taken me to work out that either I just can’t work the thing, or that it’s not designed with my hair in mind. I’m betting on the former option. I mean, it took me a few minutes to work out which end of it I was supposed to feed my hair into, so I’m not the brightest, and hair really isn’t my strong point. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, the obligatory product description.
The Remington Spin Curl, as I’m sure most of you know, is a hairdryer with a special attachment which creates loose, beachy waves as you dry your hair. It looks like – and, in fact, is - a regular hairdryer without the attachment:
Batiste Tones: Dry shampoo with a hint of colour
The people at Batiste have been busy lately, and in addition to the various scented and coloured versions of their classic dry shampoo which came out last year, they’re now releasing Batiste Tones to the market.
This is is a version of the spray which contains a hint of colour. Where this differs from the other Batiste sprays, some of which also include colour, is that whereas those ones are designed simply to blend with your natural colour (getting rid of that “grey roots” effect the original formula can create if you’re not very careful), these ones are designed to actually ADD colour, and can apparently even cover greys, as well as allowing you to blend in regrowth in coloured hair.
So far, so good, and this certainly seems handy for anyone who colours their hair, and wants to be able to keep the roots at bay between treatments, but I do have one small quibble with this: although the press material for this product describes it as “for all hair colours”, predictably enough, it’s only available for ‘light and blonde’, ‘medium and brunette’ and ‘dark and deep brown’. I don’t really see red or black hair fitting into any of these, but, of course, I’m happy to hear otherwise.
If you want to try this out for yourself, meanwhile, it’s £3.05, and available from Boots, Superdrug and all the usual suspects.
