Just before Christmas I was contacted by Babyliss and asked to try a product from their Boutique range.
Specifically they mentioned the Salon Soft Waves, which is a curling iron designed for creating glamorous waves on long hair and I sent them a very nice reply back saying I didn’t think it would really work as I had short hair, but thanks anyway.
Then they suggested I try the Salon Power Hair Dryer instead and I thought “Oh, go on then”. It arrived, and I thought “that’s pretty!” then I stacked it in the corner of my room and left it there for most of December because I was busy and I already had a hair dryer and swapping out my elaborate dressing room plug set up for a different one was a bit complex.
So, lets just rewind a little for some Retro Chick hair history.
Back in the days before I knew what a blog was I used to use whatever hair dryer was the cheapest one at Argos. It was pretty rubbish. Then my Mum bought me a good hair dryer for Christmas one year. It came in a bag and had all kinds of accessories that I immediately lost. It was a revelation to have a good hair dryer, I was amazed at how much easier it was to style my hair!
Then in 2010 I learnt how to wet set my hair, got a middy cut and started to create elaborate vintage inspired hair and mostly abandoned heat styling at all.
Fast forward to 2012 and I took up running, and then Roller Derby, and suddenly week long wet sets were a thing of the past. I still only wash my hair twice a week, but curls don’t last too well under a helmet and getting all sweaty and rained on meant I wanted something lower maintenance that I could turn from sweaty to glam with just half an hours change around time and a can of dry shampoo, because pub time is far more valuable than hair faffing time.
So I got a bob, but the truth is I quite often still wet set it in a simple fashion, because blow drying it properly smooth and bouncy seemed to take ages, even with my good hair dryer.
Fast Forward…….
When I finally got the hair dryer out of the box on Boxing Day and gave it a try I discovered what the problem was.
I didn’t really have a good hair dryer at all. I DID have a good hair dryer, in 2007 when I got it for Christmas, but I suddenly realised that was 7 years ago, and once I’d finished feeling very old I realised that good hair dryers don’t last forever. Especially if you leave them on the floor under your dressing table where they fill up with dust, and occasionally do things like try and use them to dry tights in a hurry and overheat them. Not that I’ve ever done that. Obviously. But, you know, if you did.
So where as I thought blow drying my hair was a total pain, it was now a breeze! Before if I wore my hair straight I’d been giving it a blast upside down for a bit of volume, then using a round brush to smooth it out, then, normally, getting impatient before it was completely dry and ending up putting dry shampoo on the roots to pouf it up a bit when it fell flat and using straighteners to curl the ends and my fringe back under when they stuck out at funny angles.
The Boutique Salon Power, however, has a 2400W motor that hasn’t yet been clogged with dust and make up, so my hair dried in half the time and the directional attachment that I have not yet lost made my hair smoother. It also apparently uses an active ionic conditioning system to reduce frizz, but I don’t know what that is really so the less said about it the better.
I could show you a before new hairdryer and after new hairdryer photo, but it would just look like my hair, so you’ll just have to take my word that it took a lot less faff to get it looking like this with new hairdryer than it did before new hairdryer.
So the moral of this story folks, is if you use a hairdryer on your hair, take a long, hard, look at it. I learnt long ago that cheap hair dryers were rubbish for styling hair, but even if you bought a good one, remember to look after it (The Babyliss Boutique comes with a fabric bag to keep dust and junk out of it) and take a good honest look at the state of it every now and again and see if it’s still *really* a good hair dryer, or if you really need a new one.
