by Hayley Granston
When I was a child I loved my ‘Tressy’ doll. Pressing a button on her stomach would lengthen her beautiful blonde hair – sorry her beautiful blonde STRAIGHT hair. For a young girl, blessed (and I used the word lightly) with thick curly/frizzy hair, I dreamt of the day when I too would have straight hair that could actually be combed without reducing both my mother and myself to tears.
Over the years I tried everything to tame my curly hair – from Japanese straightening through to Brazilian blow-dries and every off-the-shelf product I could lay my hands on. If it promised straightness, I’d try it. But with the exception of the Brazilian blow-dry which did work, albeit briefly and at a cost, none ever gave me that glossy, frizz-free hair I craved.
But then I heard about Aveda Naturally Straight (£21.50), part of the Smooth Infusions range, which works using plant fibres to progressively straighten hair as it’s used. Well with claims like that, of course I was going to try it.
As someone who is still a firm believer in the triumph of hope over experience, I excitedly bought a bottle, put a 20p size blob in my hands and worked it through my towel-dried hair. The product needs heat to activate it and a blow-dry with a round brush is recommended. I’m not the greatest blow-drier so I still needed to run my straightening irons over my hair afterwards. My hair felt incredibly soft afterwards but more importantly survived a mildy moist day with light drizzle. I wanted to run down the street shouting ‘Look! No frizz!’.
3 weeks later and I’m still using the product religiously. It now takes a fraction of the time to do my hair. My hair has the gloss and sheen of naturally straight hair and doesn’t frizz up in the rain.