Latest news with #Hyrolox
Times
21-06-2025
- Health
- Times
This defrizzing hair treatment has changed my life
I have had the most amazing hair treatment. It used to be marketed as 'Hair Botox' before actual Botox objected, but that gives you the idea. It irons out all the frizz, but without the hideous formaldehyde component of comparable treatments of yore. It is also much more effective — life-changingly so, for me. For the first time in my entire life, I can wash and go. I appreciate that most people have always been able to do this, but not me, or at least not for years. As my hair has got finer and as I have had to colour it more often, it has become a hellscape of frizz if left unattended. The treatment is called Hyrolox and comes via Ondine Cowley at Gielly Green, London (from £400, She didn't invent it — that was clever Brazilians — but she refined it and then imported it. When she suggested it might work for me, I was highly sceptical: I do not think of my hair as robust, and for this reason I try to keep well away from chemical treatments. But the idea of it being smooth was irresistible, and she kept saying she thought it would change my life — without harming my hair. On the contrary, she said it would rejuvenate it. Ondine, smooth and gorgeous of lock, has — or had — unmanageably frizzy hair herself (though you would never believe it to look at her), and I'm always encouraged by people who are brilliant adverts for their product. So I went for it, feeling slightly mad for doing so: how could it possibly work on my nightmare hair? It has changed my life, more than anything I've ever had done other than micro extensions (also at Gielly Green, courtesy of Charlie, a stone-cold genius. I wouldn't dream of seeing anybody else, anywhere. She is amazing at doing extensions for volume on thinning hair, ie me). Tragically the extensions had to come out before the Hyrolox could be applied. It goes on for however long Ondine determines, and your hair is then ironed straight but, crucially, not flat. I don't know how it's not pancake flat, but it isn't. You then have to sleep on it overnight and go back the next day. It also leaches colour out of your hair: I left the salon not only very thin of hair, but also half grey — I was having my long overdue colour and extensions redone the following day. The bit that wasn't grey was a really startling shade of pale orange. I walked from the salon to my hotel with, literally, a bag on my head, and went to dinner that night with a huge headscarf that kept slipping off. No matter: it was worth it. • Read more beauty product reviews and advice from our experts This isn't going to mean anything to many of you, but it will mean everything to those of you who have the same issue: I can wash my hair, rough dry it, and it is perfect. It is shiny, younger-feeling, with not an iota or frizz, dryness, flyawayness or anything else. It is sleek but not flat. It's the best it has looked in years. I have gone from actively avoiding washing it because it takes so long to make it look reasonable to washing it every two seconds because I can't quite believe how smooth and pliable it looks three minutes later. No product, no nothing. Not only that, but it's in the best nick it has ever been in, even though before the Hyrolox it was in the worst nick imaginable. It's the best hair treatment I've ever had and I could not recommend it more highly. I could actually weep with gratitude. Buy Nighties from If Only If, several of which are more than nice enough to wear as summer dresses (I love the brown gingham, also the lemon yellow). Before I discovered these people, nighties were a grim nightmare of faux-sexy or faux-prim. No longer! From £85, The Sunday Times Style Beauty awards are back for 2025. You could win a luxury five-star holiday at Sani Resort in Greece, plus we have more than £25,000 worth of beauty prizes up for grabs. To be entered into the prize draw, vote for your favourite products at
Telegraph
30-03-2025
- Lifestyle
- Telegraph
How to go grey and still look like you've made an effort
My dad had shoe polish-black hair with silver at his temples. I remember being fascinated by his streaks when I was a kid, wondering how they got there. To me, his greys were both dramatic and distinguished, and entirely him. Maybe that's why I didn't mind when grey strands began to appear around my temples in my mid-20s. There was something comforting in this hereditary legacy, an aesthetic nod from generation to generation. It helped that I liked how they looked: a slash of silver added an appealing sense of drama to my brown curly hair. That only increased as they grew more prominent. Which was lucky, because I couldn't be bothered to take action against them. I hesitated to embark on a futile campaign against signs of ageing or commit to yet another expensive, high-maintenance beauty regime. Over time, they became part of my look. So much so that when my kids asked why I had grey streaks, they knew I'd answer, 'That's where I keep my memories.' Lately though, the greys have sent out scouts, claimed territory. They're still clustered around my temples, but when I pull my hair back into a ponytail, I see more grey than brown. It's less Bride of Frankenstein, more granny. And the texture! My greys are somehow frizzier and more wiry than the rest of my hair. It's enough to make a gal feel unkempt. 'Grey hair by nature is coarse due to the lack of melanin,' says Jessie Renyard, senior colourist at Nicola Clarke at John Frieda. 'Imagine that the hair shaft is a clear drinking straw filled up with little balls of pigment, representing your natural colour. When that pigment goes, you're left with just a hollow straw, which is a lot drier and coarser.' Integrating the greys doesn't have to mean covering them completely, she says. Her suggestion is to emphasise the contrast by adding in more of my base colour. This would only take a few foils and would last four to six weeks. 'If you've got that lovely white streak there and we can get a bit of depth back next to it – chef's kiss.' But what if I don't want to commit to colouring my hair? After all, my main complaint isn't the colour, or lack thereof – it's the textural difference between the flyaway greys and the hair on the rest of my head. 'Once hair grows through white, the texture changes completely. A lot of clients come to me because although they actually love their white hair, they don't like its texture, or the frizz that comes with it,' says Ondine Cowley, artistic director at Gielly Green. 'They'll say, 'Hang on, my hair has been smooth my whole life, but it's not smooth anymore. What am I meant to do?'' She prescribes Hyrolox, a smoothing treatment (free from formaldehyde or keratin) that conditions and straightens hair for three to six months. 'But all smoothing treatments will relax the curl,' she warns. For someone with straight hair, Hyrolox and similar treatments can be godsends. I'm not interested in straightening my hair or even risking change to the naturally curly texture, so it isn't right for me. 'The most important thing is understanding that grey hair is porous. Hydration has to be your number one priority,' says Charlotte Mensah (when it comes to curly and Afro hair textures, she's a UK expert). She recommends exfoliating the scalp with her Manketti Oil Salt Scrub ('it loosens product-build-up on the scalp and helps bring the moisture and hydration to a much higher level'), steaming and drenching the hair with hydration-boosting products. A few days later at the Hair Lounge, Mensah's warm, lively salon on London's Portobello Road, a stylist sprays my hair with diluted conditioner to detangle it before the salt scrub, a high-friction head massage over the backwash. My scalp tingles as she slathers on a hair mask and tucks me under a steamer, a slice of Mensah's signature pound cake and a cup of ginger tea within reach. Twenty minutes later, my hair feels softer than ever. Scrubbing and steaming are effective but temporary. Ultimately Renyard's idea – emphasising the grey by heightening the contrast with a touch of colour – proves too intriguing to resist. So on no less auspicious a day than my 41st birthday, I sit in her salon chair and watch as she paints small sections from the front of my hair with colour before folding them into foils. 'I'm just putting some of your natural depth back in, but in a way that looks natural rather than like I've taken a Sharpie to your hair,' she says. 'There will still be greys, but let's knock it back a couple years.' How did it look? Natural, but better. The greys appeared brighter against the darker brown strands (she also used a toner to take down the brassiness of the sun-damaged ends of my hair, which made a difference), but the overall effect was subtle enough that no one's asked if I've changed my hair. And it's a minimal enough intervention that even if I don't go back for another session, the colour Renyard added will fade in an undetectable way. It's ideal given that I didn't set out to dramatically alter or repudiate the way I look – all I wanted was to make the greys look like a more deliberate choice, a little sleeker, a little less random. In fact, I'm not thinking of this intervention as a makeover. Let's call it an upgrade instead.
