One of the many things that I regret taking for granted for so long is glossy hair. There your hair is, all glossy and lovely, and then one day there it is, dull and a weird texture from decades of coloring, heated implements and, frankly, age. I spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to restore my hair to its shiny youth, and I won’t lie — it’s something of an uphill struggle.
The horrible irony is that in order to look naturally glossy hair has to be submitted to highly unnatural processes — more coloring, more blow-dries, more heated implements. The result is temporarily satisfactory but, of course, the processes themselves are cumulatively damaging, so that you’re trapped in a very unsatisfactory circle. In my view the best thing to do with damaged hair is to use K18 (which is a product of genius), let it dry naturally and then leave it alone as much as is feasible, but whether you are able to do that or not very much depends on how messed up your hair is in the first place. My naturally dried hair can result in me wandering about looking like a dandelion. And there’s still the issue of shine.
The horrible irony is that in order to look naturally glossy hair has to be submitted to highly unnatural processes.
Having had success with L’Oréal Elvive Dream Lengths in the past, and having heard good things from a friend, I thought I’d have a look at the L’Oréal Elvive Glycolic Gloss range, which is designed specifically for dull hair. It consists of four products: a sulphate-free shampoo, a lightweight conditioner, the 5 Minute Lamination treatment and a leave-in serum. I haven’t tried the shampoo and conditioner because there is no room in my shower for any more newish hair products, but the treatment and the serum are impressive. Pleasingly they work best on porous hair, which is exactly what overprocessed hair is—the reason it looks dull is that the poor old cuticle has been messed about with so much that it won’t lie nice and flat anymore, and nice and flat is what makes hair shiny.
Glycolic acid is an AHA and therefore an effective exfoliant. In the skin it can get quite deep down and slough away dead cells, sort of like hoovering off all the debris that is sitting there making skin look dull. In the case of hair it can burrow down in between the poor damaged cuticles and evenly distribute the various conditioning agents that are part of Elvive’s complex. It glazes them, basically. You apply the lamination treatment from mid-lengths to ends, leave it on for five minutes and then rinse it off. Next you apply the leave-in serum. I would use both these products together and am quite hard-pressed to choose between them, but if I had to pick one it would probably be the laminator, which is 17 percent glycolic gloss complex to the serum’s 14 percent.
Having said that, these are not expensive products and the combination of the two is what produces strikingly effective results—and for all I know the shampoo and conditioner amplify those too. The serum, which I was not expecting to do anything much (I had blow-dried my hair post laminator and was very pleased with the results), turned out to be the excellent cherry on the already pretty impressive cake, turning hair from smoothed and shinier to really smooth and actively shiny. Frizzy bits were tamed too. I have fine hair (woe), but a friend with thick hair also uses and recommends the product; it’s for you if your hair is desiccated and dead-looking, regardless of what type of hair it is. Do not apply the serum to your roots: it will make it hilariously flat.
India Knight is a U.K.-based journalist and the author of India Knight’s Beauty Edit: What Works When You’re Older
