Fine hair is truly disheartening. Every day is a bad hair day. It feels as though you can’t do anything with the wispy nothingness and everywhere you look there are great, swishy manes whooshing around in a kind of insulting slo-mo.
My hair has always been badly behaved — fine and ready to go flat and kinky at any given moment, and horribly responsive to heat and damp. And so I was grimly determined that it would not fall out after I had a baby.
Josh Wood, that remarkable colourist, took one look at my newly luxuriant preg-hair, murmured, ‘the harder it comes the harder it falls’ and booked me in to see trichologist Ricardo Vila Nova at his Holland Park atelier. Cue hair samples taken. Needles in the scalp I tell you. Oof. Trace elements and minerals and vitamins. Pain. And then… no shedding. None. So now what? Make it even thicker, of course. And fuller. And fatter.
Aveda Thickening Tonic is due to land in stores at the end of the month and it’s a winner. Full of plumping agents that provide a lightweight (this is crucial — anything heavy can’t be supported by slender strands) way to add muscle to the follicle, it also adds grit, so no more slidey, softy limpness. It thickens, root to end, so ponytails need no longer be slender and weedy, and a big blow-dry stays big rather than flopping like a neglected soufflé. Very satisfying stuff, ladies. And gents maybe?
Aveda Thickening Tonic, £20 (aveda.co.uk)