THE STRAIGHT STORY

Bazaar’s deputy editor finds the solution to frizzy, unruly hair

THE PROBLEM The great issue with Christmas, among all its other tribulations and joys, is keeping your hair looking reasonable through days of excessive feasts, wintry walks, lavish parties, Midnight Masses and unseasonably early stocking-opening wake-up calls. Where, in this packed timetable, is there time for a visit to the hairdresser? There’s not or even a spare slot for 15 emergency minutes of Babyliss’s Big Hair, the only at-home styling device someone with my levels of frizz can possibly recommend. However, praise be! I have the solution… Zoltan Vargyai is on a one-man mission to eradicate dryness and damage from London’s hairdos. He maintains that smoothness, weight, shine and silkiness are actually more important than colour and we British women pay them criminally little attention. I cast my mind back to a concert I went to last night. There were some very costly tints and highlights there, no doubt, but who’s looking at the precise shade of butter or honey when the general effect is of clouds of sorry brittle strands haloing the face. Condition, then, is the answer. And Zoltan is the messiah carrying this particular Christmas message.

THE TREATMENT Standing in the wildly busy Josh Wood Atelier, Zoltan is oblivious to the bustle of assistants and the deafening noise of blow driers wielded by experts. He weighs a curl of my hair thoughtfully, strokes it, looks at it in the light. Head tilted to one side he considers what would best suit me, how he can help my hair through the 10-day blowdry drought ahead. He decides I need a Keratin Smooth treatment with Nano Mist infusion. First he washes my hair and then coats it with the Keratin Smooth, a whitish creamy paste. With this, he says, my styling time will be halved, frizz, volume and puffiness will be banished and my look will last longer and be more weather proof. Crucially, when heated and ironed into the hair, it actually repairs damage using antioxidants, amino acids and collagen. The Nano-Mist is the theatrical part of the process. Once coated in Keratin Smooth, Zoltan carefully covers my hair with a large grey sack (hello Santa!). This is attached to a steamer so gradually the sack fills with vapour that pushes the treatment into the hair follicles. There are ultrasonic vibrations helping the steam on too, though I am unaware of them. And ozone which, he tells me, eradicates dandruff – but that’s one problem I don’t have. My head is gently warmed and I enjoy watching as my headgear billows out and emits little puffs of steam like a contented dragon. I am an object of some envy to the other women who are merely having a cut and colour.

THE RESULT After an hour and a half I emerge with magnificently smooth and sleek locks. They are not, as with some keratin treatments, stripped of body and hanging dead straight. They are just the best they could be and, Hallelujah, will last me through the last stroke of New Year and well into the spring.