While the market for hair products has become much wider and more diverse over the past five years, and we are thankfully seeing a vast and creative array of styles across all hair types, trends in “real”, wearable hair are mostly looking backwards.
The past two years have brought back the love-it-or-hate-it shag haircut originally created by Paul McGregor for Jane Fonda in 1971. It was a feature of subversive femininity through the 1970s and appeared on the heads of people like Joan Jett. A more universally wearable revisited trend, though, is volume – it works in different ways for every hair type.
Hairdresser Adam Reed has worked on every famous head from Madonna's to Diane Kruger's, and recently launched his own haircare – he calls it "headcare" – brand, Arkive into Boots. The range is beautifully and holistically constructed. I go to see Reed at his east London salon to learn the principles of getting volume into volume-resistant hair for myself. In a fit of self-aggrandisement that would have likely horrified the founders of the Irish State, I dispense with my usual understated "beachy wave" and ask Reed for full-on 1990s supermodel volume. "Like Cindy Crawford, " I say, "but just from the follicles up, obviously."
I walked out with the best blow dry of my life. Of course I did – Reed didn’t earn an international reputation by giving people lacklustre supermodel blow dries. The key to oomph, he tells me, is really clean hair that isn’t weighed down by rich products, patience, a round brush and a good blow dry spray to encourage the hair to lift from the root. As he works section by section through my hair with the dryer and round brush, coaxing the roots up from the top of the scalp and out from the face, he talks me through the birth of the brand.
Reed has been very open on social media about learning to manage his mental health issues, and his frankness has been a source of comfort and relief to many in an industry that is vulnerable to focusing more on optics than substance. Inspired by the vast fragrance collection Reed displays at his salon – which he encourages clients to explore and try – he developed the products’ fragrances almost obsessively. He wanted a brand to rival premium haircare, but be more accessibly priced, to minimise waste, and to make people feel better in a deeper than cosmetic way.
He works through the sections of my hair, boosting each one liberally with the New Form Blow Dry Spray (€17). It doesn’t weight my hair down but seems to encourage immense bounce and smoothness. It’s 90s volume, reimagined and it really is almost traffic-stopping. I feel like I’m wearing a piece of art. No, I can’t recreate this level of perfection at home, but the Arkive products knock more volume into my hair than anything else I’ve tried in some time, and even I can achieve some of that bounce myself.
To try
Arkive The Crown Scalp Scrub (€18 at Boots)
Arkive The All Day Everyday Shampoo (€16)
Arkive The Good Habit Hybrid Oil (€17.99 at Boots)
Product of the Week
Up Cosmetics Peach Glow (€20 at upcosmetics.com)
