It doesn’t matter whether you are Shakira, Beyonce or Victoria Beckham.
Come to a place with as high a humidity level as Singapore and you’ll find yourself battling with frizz every day!
Victoria Beckham Fighting her Frizzy Hair in Singapore
Bad hair days like the one Victoria sported can be really irritating, particularly if you have to deal with it EVERYDAY!
In this article, we hope to explore the reasons behind frizzy hair and what you can do about it!
Why Does Your Hair Frizz?
Before we talk about frizziness, we have to first understand a little more about hair. If you look at your hair through a microscope, you’ll realize that your hair is made up of many layers.
The cortex of your hair is made up of bundles of keratin proteins, which are held together by chemical bonds created by sulfur atoms or hydrogen atoms. Sulfur atoms give hair its strength while hydrogen atom bonds give hair its temporary shape.
Picture Credits: Hairkeratins.com
When hair absorbs water, a single strand of hair will form a lot more hydrogen bonds between keratin strands. This causes the hair to form an S shape as it forms bonds and swells with water until the outermost layer of hair, the cuticle is disrupted. Multiply this one strand of hair by your entire head of hair and that’s where you’ll get an extremely frizzy bedhead!
But Singapore is so humid! I can’t move out of Singapore just to avoid humidity, can I?
You may not be able to avoid going out into humid Singapore but you can try to minimize the amount of water that the hair absorbs.
1) Make sure your hair cuticle is sealed (as much as you can)
The more your hair absorbs water from outside, the more hydrogen bonds form and the frizzier your hair will get.
Your first line of defence against water entering your hair is therefore the cuticle – the outermost layer of your hair.
Although not completely closed, healthy cuticles can keep out most water molecules, keeping your hair relatively straight and frizz free.
However, if your hair becomes damaged due to chemical services, environmental factors or age, it will become more porous.
More water can now enter the hair, resulting in frizziness!
Ladies with curly, wavy hair tend to have more issues with frizziness as well. As curly wavy hair has a spiraling shape, cuticles cannot close completely. Therefore, water enters more easily, causing frizz.
2) Make sure that your hair is properly nourished and moisturized
It is important for the cortex to be full and swelled with nutrients as it forms the core structure of the hair. It determines the colouring, flexibility and tensile strength of the hair.
Even if your cuticle is properly sealed, the hair strand will lose its shape faster if the cortex is devoid of nutrients. Your hair will also break more easily and it will not be easy to saturate your hair with colour!
So, what can I do to make sure that the cuticle is sealed and the inner layers of the hair are properly nourished?
Proper home care is possibly the most important in helping you manage your frizz. Most of us stick to some sort of a facial care routine… why not put a little more time to maintain a proper haircare routine too?
A proper haircare routine should include washing, conditioning, application of heat protectant and blow drying your hair properly and finally application of serum.
Of the above steps, we find that Singaporean women tend to skip blowdrying of hair which is to us one of the key steps to preventing frizz. Although heat opens cuticles, blowdrying is important as it helps gets rid of the excess water in your hair and helps you style it the way you want it to look. Once your have completed drying your hair, remember to turn on the cool shot button to close the cuticles and set your style.
There are more things to include in your homecare routine so look out for our next article on Minimizing Frizz at Home!
My hair is already so frizzy! Are there salon services that can help me give me frizz-free hair fast?
Homecare may be important but most are not strong enough to repair your hair cuticle or nourish your hair from within.
Some ladies therefore turn to salon treatments to tame their tresses.
Here are some popular hair services people go for:
1. Rebonding
For wavy haired ladies, one popular treatment of choice is Rebonding.
Rebonding essentially changes their hair texture from curly to straight, making it easier for their cuticles to close and their hair to be a lot more manageable.
MUCOTA Omega Rebonding at Focus Hairdressing
The MUCOTA Omega Rebonding also includes a lot of treatments within the rebonding process, saturating the hair cortex with nutrients and repairing some of the hair cuticles. It is therefore a great choice for ladies with slightly wavy hair.
Note that other rebonding chemicals may not contain as much treatments so your hair may end up drier and more damaged than before.
Rebonding is also not the perfect choice for ladies with curly hair. This is because Rebonding is ultimately still a process which breaks all your existing bonds, creation of new style and fixing the new bonds you have just built. The hair still undergoes some level of damage. Also, the final hair texture tends to be quite different from the natural hair texture. This means that your hair may be smooth and straight now but the hair that grows out will still be really wavy. The hair regrowth will therefore be really ugly!
It will also take away all your beautiful natural curls, which isn’t the ideal thing to do!
2. Keratin Treatment / Brazilian Blowout
We mentioned earlier that sealing of cuticles helps to keep water out of the hair. Both Keratin Treatments and Brazilian Blowouts rely on that principle and basically seals the hair cuticle with a layer of keratin / protein. Once coated, the hair is flat ironed (heat activates the keratin!). Both keratin treatments and brazilian blowouts can give you frizz free hair for 1 to 3 months depending on the quality of keratin used, how many times you shampoo and how strong your hair cortex is. Every time you shampoo, more keratin falls off, making the sealing less and less effective over time.
Note also that the Keratin Treatment / Brazilian Blowout seals your cuticle and does not contain any treatment to nourish your hair. Therefore, the treatment may also be less effective if your hair is malnourished or damaged in the first place.
Having said that, Keratin Treatment / Brazilian Blowout is one of the few hair treatments you can do even if your hair is completely damaged! Even if your hair feels completely like hay after multiple rounds of bleach, Keratin treatment will coat your hair with keratin and make it possible for you to comb through your hair… at least until the keratin falls off!
3. Various Salon Hair Treatments
Many hair treatments promise soft, shiny, frizz-free hair and in fact successfully delivers… for only about a week or so!
The soft shiny outer coating can be attributed to the silicone coating within the treatment that coats and closes the cuticle.
Very unfortunately, the silicone coating last for only a brief period of time (a week or 2?) depending on how often you wash and how strong / advanced the coating is.
The treatments may also not be very effective for ladies with extreme frizz like Agent C.
5. Revolutionary Retexturizing cum Treatment Services
In recent months, we saw the rise of two retexturizing services that we feel are truly innovative!
1. Resculpting Supreme by Chez Vous Hair Salon
Launched as part of the new Trilogy Hair System by Chez Vous Hair Salon, Resculpting Supreme is the first service of its kind we’ve heard that somehow fuses Keratin technology with typical retexturizing technology (perm / rebonding)!
It basically contains 3 steps:
1. Shape: In this step, only a small percentage of hair bonds are broken to allow for reshaping of the hair later on. Depending on how much natural curl you want to retain, the stylist can customize this step to adjust the amount of hair bonds that are broken.
2. Smooth: In this step, keratin and some other satin ingredients are infused into the hair. Hair is then retexturized with heat to achieve the desired shape and activate the keratin treatment. Neutralizer is also applied to fix the shape achieved earlier.
3. Refinish: In this step, skincare-inspired ingredients are applied to nourish the hair from within and strengthen the silicone layer that will coat the keratin treatment.
Overall, this can help manage frizz significantly as keratin coating will prevent moisture from entering. The hair cortex is also strengthened with the numerous treatment chemicals applied during the service.
Resculpting Supreme is revolutionary because on top of being able to close hair cuticles with the keratin treatment, it allows curly haired ladies to keep their curls. For Resculpting Supreme, much of the natural curls are retained as not all bonds are broken in the first step! This sets it apart from Keratin treatment which usually causes hair to be straightened.
Agent C tried Resculpting Supreme and the results of the treatment can be seen here!
The more natural curl you retain, the more frizziness is retained as well. In Agent C’s case, frizziness will probably cut by about 30% with the keratin-infused retexturizing service!
Note however that it relies on Keratin treatment to seal the cuticle and manage the frizziness. It is therefore important to use Keratin Shampoos to extend the effectiveness of this service as long as possible and even come back to the salon for “retouches” every 2-3 months to keep the keratin in place!
2. Texture Control by Salon Vim
Launched late 2015, Texture Control is the hair solution Salon Vim has created to help ladies manage their natural curls.
The steps of the treatment are as follows:
1) 2 step Pre-Treatment: The 2 step pre-treatment contains large amounts of protein that is infused within the hair cortex to help it swell up as well as chitosan silicone layer to seal the hair and protect the hair from later steps.
2) Application of Texture Control Cream: Unlike typical rebonding and perming creams, Texture Control cream breaks a small percentage of hair bonds. This allows more treatment chemicals to enter the hair later on and prepares it for retexturization. As not all bonds are broken, much of the hair’s natural texture is retained.
3) Application of Treatment: Proteins applied in this step are most easily absorbed by the hair cortex now because hair bonds are broken. The addition of proteins help to plump up the hair even more. This will strengthen the hair cortex further, making it easier to saturate colour into the hair and making the core of the hair stronger.
4) Retexturizing: Depending on whether you want to straighten your hair or add some curls, the stylist can customize the shape for you in this step.
5) Application of Neutralizer: In this step, the created shape is fixed with a neutralizer.
6) Texture Care 3 Step Post Treatment: This 3 step post treatment contains a protein spray to plump up the hair with proteins as much as possible. Anti frizz cream to add moisture into the hair and finally a mask to seal the protein in. All three steps uses the nano mist machine to improve penetration into the hair.
The focus of Salon Vim’s Texture Control is clearly treatment. At every step of the way, treatment is applied to minimize hair damage and make sure that hair cortex is fully pumped with proteins and essential hair ingredients. To us, the innovative part is the use of the typical retexturizing technology to help seal the treatment within the hair cortex and repair the hair cuticle.
It is also interesting to us that like RESCULPT, Texture Control uses a cream that breaks only a small percentage of hair bonds, allowing for most of your natural curls to remain if you so wish.
Although the retexturizing part of Texture Control can last 4-6 months, we suspect that the cuticle sealing probably last for a shorter period of time. We think that you probably have to go back for regular treatments to “top up” on your hair protein and external cuticle sealing.
A lot of people say that frizz is unevitable especially in humid Singapore. That is why many prefer to go for rebonding so that they don’t have to worry about unmanageable frizzy hair.
As people improve their knowledge about frizz and salons innovate and create new techniques to manage frizz, we wonder if there will come a day where most Singapore ladies can have frizz-free hair without rebonding?