There is a pathway in Manhattan, along the Hudson River, which isn’t a pathway at all—it’s a catwalk. The West Side Highway is where the girlies take their athleisure co-ords out for a spin on weekends, where the six-foot, five-inch finance bros run only with their shirts off—and where they all check each other out.
“How are you finding it?” a friend in the UK asks as I amble along the walkway on the phone soon after I moved to New York. “Well, the light switches go in the opposite direction here. So do locks on front doors. Then there’s the noise, filth and price of coffee. But mostly,” I say, as I look at three women strutting ahead of me, “it’s the hair. Oh, the hair!”
Back in London, where I spent the previous decade, hair was about being cool. It was scruffy and scrunchy and shaggy, with home-cut fringes and choppy bobs. Bouncy blowouts were considered a bit naff, with people apologizing as they arrived at the pub from the hairdresser, saying that it would look different after the first wash.
But everywhere I looked in New York, women had these long, perfectly blow-dried locks, shining, thick and healthy. Their hair looked as expensive as spun gold, moving like a curtain down their backs. How, I thought, has this happened? What are you all doing? Where are you all going? And how do I get it? I needed answers.
And so, after spending time on various Reddit threads, I decided to take it seriously and, in the name of journalism, have since been on a dogged, unrelenting quest to get hair like the rest of them.
Skin
“It’s genetics,” a New Yorker friend says, shrugging. “We just have good hair.” But what can I do, I whine. “Philip Kingsley,” she says, relenting.
So I start at the foundation—the scalp—booking in for a hair MoT at the Philip Kingsley Trichological Clinic with the consultant Elizabeth Cunnane Phillips ($500 for a two-hour consultation and treatment). “Hair is living tissue about a millimeter and a quarter beneath the scalp. It is the soil from which everything can spring, so you need to focus on it,” Phillips says.
After asking about my lifestyle, nutrition and hormones, then doing a scalp inspection, she tells me the condition of my hair is OK, but there are a few issues with my skin. First, I need to be eating more protein, preferably for breakfast and lunch. “The body can live beautifully without a rib of hair on our head, but we need to support our system so there is fuel left over for hair, which is nonessential tissue,” she says. “Iron, zinc and vitamin B12 are particularly important.”
My scalp is also “excoriated” in parts (a summer of festivals—brilliant for the vibes, terrible for the hair, which gets covered in dust and sweat and miscellaneous extras)—and so it has become itchy, with some follicles essentially becoming inflamed.
I should be washing my hair every day, she continues, if not every other, and shampooing twice. I thought washing too often was a no-no? “That’s not true,” she says. “The scalp flora is a busy tissue and it can get out of balance very easily, triggered by things like showering or exercising without washing your hair. The cleaner the better.”
Wash
I go home with three products available only from the clinic and picked specially for my needs: a shampoo, Philip Kingsley No. 6,which is antibacterial and helps regulate oil production, and Conditioner No. 2, which is super-thick for hydration but not so much that it adds weight.
For the next few weeks I also follow orders to do my own treatment once a week. First, with the clinic’s Scalp Cream No. 4, umassaging it on to the skin in rows about an inch apart, from the forehead to the nape of the neck. This is followed by Philip Kingsley Elasticizer, a deep-conditioning treatment for damaged hair that is applied to the mid-lengths and through all layers. Both feel heavenly, leaving my hair velvety, liquidy and soft, my scalp soothed.
Another winner for a once-weekly deep condition is Shiseido Fino Premium Touch hair mask, a little-known and inexpensive formula that gives a mirror-like effect and is used by a friend with quite possibly the best head of hair in the city.
Growth
But I want more — longer hair, lots of it and quickly. These are two tricks I’ve picked up from friends and hairdressers along the way:
1. Use a scalp massager—Vegamour does a great one—to work shampoo into the roots, remove dead cells and unclog hair follicles. I also go to the center of the Manhattan universe, the Plaza hotel, for a scalp treatment at the Guerlain Spa, where oils are slathered into the roots, which also promotes growth.
2. Use silk scrunchies or a clip to prevent breakage when you put your hair up, and never tie it up while it’s wet. The supplement everyone is talking about is Wellbel, with biotin (for keratin production), betaine HCI (breaks down protein) and saw palmetto (for glowing skin and hair follicle development). I was skeptical, but in the month I have been taking it, I can see the difference in my face, feel it in my nails and have more baby hairs around the hairline.
Heat
After some field research, which involves accosting friends with great hair, they tell me that, really, it’s all in the heat. Specifically the blow-dry. I try various oils and protective sprays, but by far the best are Bumble and Bumble Hairdresser’s Invisible Oil Primer and Hairdresser’s Invisible Oil. I was worried they would be too weighty, but they get rid of frizz (it’s humid as hell in New York) and add some bounce.
When it comes to heat, all the glossiest American chicks are repeating the same two words to me: Dyson Airwrap. And yes, for that much money, it does change your life. I start with the large nozzle to dry most of my hair—downwards to stick down the flyaways—then use the flat brush if I want a straighter, swisher look, or the round brush if I want a real blowout vibe.
If you just have a muggle hairdryer, use a paddle brush, with rigid bristles across a cushion, which gives a smooth result. For shape with more hold, you’ll need a 1½-inch curling barrel for the ultimate loose wave.
Cut
My hair is trying so hard to look great, but it desperately needs a chop. The ends are dry and I have terrible layers from a traumatic haircut in April. I want it gone.
Just down the road from Taylor Swift’s town house in Tribeca is Fourteenjay, with an A-list clientele (Jennifer Lawrence, Claudia Schiffer, Elle Macpherson, Kylie Minogue). “The London, grungy look is all about disconnection,” Sean Gispert, one of its stylists, says. “So at the moment all the weight is in the middle of your hair, which removes the weight from the length.”
Instead, there needs to be “connection and flow” between the shortest strands at the front and a heavy line at the back. “You need support in the length to create fullness,” he continues, “then it’ll all hang together.” What is everyone asking for? “This,” he says.
Honestly? Best chop of my life. It’s shorter but looks longer, the blunt cut holding the weight at the bottom. And so I head outside, along the cobbled street and then on to the West Side Highway, now one of the basic girlies with great hair.
Megan Agnew is a features writer at The Times of London and The Sunday Times
