Grow Your Own Way

Today’s power hair is all-natural and celebrates individuality, but that doesn’t mean it’s wash-and-wear. Meet the high-performance products helping us look low-maintenance.

- Sara Mclean

Full disclosure: I’m really into The Bachelor. I love the drama and the dresses. I love watching the “journey to find love”, even if it’s neatly packaged into a 75-minute episode including ads (remember those?). But when the latest season starring the unlucky-in-love, but really-lucky-in-face, Matty J premiered, something was askew, particularly to this discerning beauty director’s eye (and I’m not just talking about the lack of ethnic diversity). Instead of the standard sea of identical barrel-curl blow-waves tumbling out of those black limousines, this season’s contestants sported an array of hairstyles from short bobs to air-dried flips and diffused waves. It seems Channel Ten’s stylists have picked up on the cues from catwalks, red carpets and social feeds that a more natural, laissez-faire approach to hair is happening. Product sales and Pinterest boards are also showing signs of a fresh-hair era, where embracing individual, authentic hair is the new power beauty move.

For further proof, just look at Katy Perry, who ditched years of wigs in favour of a pixie cut when her new album Witness dropped, or Olivia Wilde when she made a political statement by distancing herself from her perfectly styled “Melania hair” last year. Then there was Michelle Obama, who created an internet frenzy when she stepped out with her locks au naturel.