Beauty Game Changers Take Two: Hair

Welcome to the second part of our three-part series on making sure you’re primed and prepped for your Big Day by dealing with your beauty bugbears right now. We’ve already covered face, next up is shiny, healthy hair.

TREATMENT?Kebelo Advantage

WHERE?Dylan Bradshaw

WHAT?An improved version of what you may know as the 12-week blowdry, this new incarnation replaces scary formaldehyde (which forced the first of this kind off the shelves, due to safety concerns) with carbocysteine, an ingredient that offers similar effects, but is claimed to be safer.

WHY?I’m not exaggerating when I say that this treatment changed my life. Ever since I cared about what my hair looked like, I have been devastated by its frizziness, unmanageability ?and general unGoddesslike qualities. People were always surprised when I voiced this problem because my hair pretty much always looked what you might call perfect. Wig-like was a more accurate description… and that was due to the intensive straightening. Every. Single. Day. What I longed for was soft, flowing, mussed-up, beachy locks.

HOW?The Kebelo people call Advantage “100 days of smooth hair”, promoting its hair-health-giving qualities with words such as “support, “strengthen” and “revitalise”. In fact, the scientific process centres on injecting each hair strand with cysteine (an amino acid already present in the bonds, which gives it its shape); this creates the right conditions for you to force the strands into a straighter shape, using heat. The process begins with an intensive cleansing, to rid hair of product build-up; after shampooing, the treatment cream is combed through, left to settle, then blast dried and straightened using a flat-iron, in tiny sections. Once completely straightened, hair is washed and blowdried (the process takes about three hours, depending on the length and thickness of your hair).

AFTER In the days that followed, my hair was actually too straight and flat, but after a few washes it was smooth, shiny, bouncy and, well, amazing. Two months on, I have used neither a hair-dryer nor a straightening iron nor even a serum; actually just washing and going. Kebelo has given me hair without frizz or volume; not perfectly straight; that falls in exactly the carefree, tousled manner I’ve always dreamed of.

CATCH?I generally try to live my life as naturally as possible, I eat organic, I use clean cosmetics and take all the right supplements to keep my body free of baddies. So, of course, I researched the heck out of Kebelo’s safety – what I found was inconclusive. Yes, it’s FDA-approved, but so are many things that I wouldn’t let touch me with a barge pole. Though on this occasion, I’ve decided the risk is worth it… as long as the windows are kept open while the treatment happens.

COST??200-?350 depending on the length and thickness (consultation required).

*This article first appeared in Volume 5 of BASH Magazine (now IMAGE Brides). Check back on Friday for Take Three: Body