CONTINUE READING: I can’t use most salt sprays, including Bumble & bumble’s Sea Spray, which — when I was but a young tot, sweeping hair at a Bumble salon in San Francisco — I would carry around in my bag like it was the coolest thing ever invented (“Oh don’t mind this, just dipping my hair in these portable waves”). Salt, unsurprisingly, dries your hair out, and this is precisely what my fragile hair did not need.
I had high hopes for Ouai’s Wave Spray, which contains rice protein instead of salt. Rice protein is supposed to act as a super volumizer for hair: “plumping up the hair cuticle the way that water plumps up a grain of rice” is how it was explained to me, though I have conducted no scientific experiments myself to see if this is true. Following multiple applications, in three of the four seasons, my hair got puffy but not wavy. On the last application, I did what for me is the hardest step of all: I let it be. Thirty minutes later, my hair still looked like garbage. For fine, limp, damaged hair (hello, that’s my hair), I cannot recommend Wave Spray. Next!
This brings us to Ouai Air Dry Foam, which promises “the perfect air-dried waves.” Now this…is actually true! I’m not sure what the difference is between beachy waves and air-dried waves — for me, they are the same thing — except these products delivered two very different results: As much as I wanted it to work, Wave Spray and its rice proteins just made my lank hair even lanker. Air Dry Foam, however, separated all those lovely waves — and what’s more, kept them silky and separated for 24 hours: For my fragile, breakable hair, that is a record. The application, of course, could not be easier: scoonch. I do it with dry hair — and what’s even more miraculous, there’s no crunch afterward, and none of that faux-wet effect. Just lovely, and possibly beachy, waves.
- Want the same air-dry philosophy…but more about fighting frizz? Try Bumble and Bumble Seaweed Air Dry Cream
- Want to try something from Ouai…that smells even better? Try Ouai’s Rose Hair and Body Oil
