Guy Christian: further experiments in girling

A few weeks ago, a hairdresser and man-about-town of my acquaintance was looking for people to participate in his bizarre mad-scientist-style experiments.

My response was basically "Heck yes, this will be easy and fun! Plus, free stuff!"

I leapt at the chance, having been to Guy Christian Salon enough times before to know that Christian's got the expertise. He knows what he's talking about. The idea was to pick three products from http://www.guychristianshop.com/ and have it delivered, but being local (and clueless), I thought it'd be easier (and less likely to result in disaster) to drop into the salon and have a chat with the big man himself. It went a lot like this:

He asked how I dry my hair, and I sort of mumbled something inconclusive because I didn't think he'd take too well to "I put a hat on it." (I've said it before, I'm NOT GOOD at girling.)

The products he recommended for my (longish, wavy, thick-as-hell hair) were the following:

• Wella SP Hydrate Shampoo
• Wella SP Smoothen Conditioner
• Wella Professionals Flowing Form smoothing balm

ooh so shiny

The packaging says that these products are only available in salons, and I've certainly never seen them around before, but they're on sale at the link above, so you can get hold of them too!

So, I followed the guru's instructions and now, five weeks later, I'm ready to report back with my findings.

The first thing I noticed was the the da- wait, no, the FIRST thing I noticed was that smoothen is NOT A WORD. The second thing I noticed was that the dandruff problem got worse. Quite a lot worse. I was starting to worry, but he did say that my scalp would need to readjust or something? I don't know, hair science is not my Mastermind subject, but he said I'd have problems at first as my hair got used to not being drowned in shampoo. This was true. But, after enough time that I'm pretty sure I'm getting a realistic result, I'm happy to say that everything is much much better!

The shampoo and conditioner feel, look, and smell as nice as you'd expect them to (i.e. very - I mean they're luxury products, you know? - but in a subtle way). SP shampoo lathers up great (and he's right, you do only need to use a little bit on your scalp), and the conditioner feels great and does seem to have made my hair softer.

The smoothing serum I use after blowdrying my hair (yes, I've abandoned the hat as a styling technique) is fantastic! It smells like watermelon and I have much less problem with frizz now than I did. I'm pretty happy with the result, and am spending a bit more time thinking about interesting things I could do with my hair, but to be honest it's high time I headed back to the salon and had it sorted out properly! When the loan comes through...