I really resent how much time I spend thinking about my hair.
Having had a giant mane all my life and never given it a second
thought apart from to moan about how annoying it was to have
too much hair, the post-menopausal thinning of my once-lavish
thatch bothers me constantly. I should qualify that statement,
before you start thinking that menopause makes you bald (it
doesn’t) — I also blame stress and a predisposition to alopecia,
which I had in two 50p-sized spots, for quite a long time in my
twenties. But, anyway, a friend took a picture from above the
other day and I nearly died — I could see bits of scalp. My roots
badly needed doing, which didn’t help because white-grey hair next to the skin looks like
baldness even when it isn’t, but still, it wasn’t at all nice.
My solution to this problem is extensions (for volume), but they’re not for everyone and
I also have prolonged breaks from them. As I’ve written before, Toppik is a brilliant product if
you do actually have bits of scalp showing — it’s sort of like hair dust and sticks to whatever
fluffy minihair is there, padding things out nicely. Don’t go too dark or it looks weird; go for
very slightly lighter than your actual hair shade. For volume, though, extensions aside, it has
traditionally been thin pickings. Texturising sprays work up to a point but aren’t long-lasting.
Dry shampoo, with or without colour in it, is a friend, because it adds texture and body, but it
makes hair quite matte and, anyway, nobody wants to dry-shampoo every day. One of my
friends deliberately bleaches her short hair to the point where it’s so fried that it looks like
there’s a lot more of it than there actually is but, again, it’s not a look that suits everyone, even
if they don’t mind the frying.
But now salvation, or as close to salvation as it’s going to get. I always rate the product
I write about on this page, but I really, really rate this week’s. It’s by Living Proof (whom I
love), it’s new this month and it’s called Full Dry Volume & Texture Spray (£28). You need
this in your life if you have fine or thin or sparse hair, though obviously it also works if you
don’t and just want more of whatever kind of hair you have. You will have come across textur-
ising sprays before, but this is a whole new beast. Living Proof has a new patented “volumin-
zing + texturizing molecule”, and what’s new about it is that rather than bulking out existing
hair by sticking to it, it instead creates space between hair fibres. This makes for big hair, but
also, crucially, for volume that lasts. It’s also very light, so that feeling of your hair flattening
and getting dragged down with product as the day goes on doesn’t happen. And it resists a
certain amount of humidity too. It has got loads of grip. No residue, either.
You spray it on in sections at the roots, rub it in a bit with your fingers, as with dry shampoo,
and then muss up your hair as needed (shake the can between each spray or it doesn’t work as
well). Seriously — three times as much hair. I couldn’t quite believe it. Still nowhere near as
much hair as I used to have, but enough hair to have solved a situation that has been bothering
me for ages. Utterly genius product. ■ @indiaknightIndia Knight
INDIA LOVES
TAKE As far as I can see there is a lot of noise but little evidence that collagen supplements
actually work, and they’re not cheap. But I was still curious and have now been taking Ingenious
Beauty capsules (£60 for 90) — made from marine collagen, not the stuff from battery chicken
cartilage — for two months. It may be the most excellent placebo effect, and obviously I try a ton
of beauty products every week so it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly is responsible, but I do think
my skin has improved noticeably. Hair apparently takes longer. I’ll report back.As I’ve got older, my hair has got thinner – but this product
magically makes it look three times thicker
That feeling of
your hair
flattening as
the day goes on
Victoria Adamson doesn’t happen
The Sunday Times Style • 49