No Bad Hair Days: Top Styling Products

Thick, curly locks that tend toward frizz + no time for styling = a bad hair day.

“Time to get some professional advice,” offered husband Pat. “You’re starting to look like Phyllis Diller.” I resisted the urge to throw a skillet at him. Instead, I phoned stylists from around the county and asked them to discuss their top styling aids.

“My favorite is Moroccanoil,” offered Luis Tafolla, stylist at Bellagio Salon & Day Spa in Mission Valley (619-297-7601). “It’s good for everything. It adds a lot of shine, and it really nourishes the hair. The most important thing is that it’s a heat protectant. Apply it when your hair is wet, so when you start blow-drying — before you flat-iron — you are protecting your hair from the heat. You can add more, and it doesn’t build up. It’s also soothing for your hands. Sometimes, when I am working, I tell my clients that there is more oil on my forehead from sweating than there is on my hands from using the product. That gets them. The beauty of it is, it works with all kinds of hair. Our price is $44.99 for 3.4 ounces. I use it all the time when I am styling.”

“Our Bumble and Bumble Sumotech [$25 for 1.5 ounces] is number one, especially for guys,” answered Lana Moser of Jet Rhys Hair Salon in Hillcrest (619-291-7511). “It’s a flexible, molding kind of wax or paste.” Her second recommendation: Bumble and Bumble Spray de Mode hairspray ($15 for 4 ounces; $25 for 10 ounces). “It is a flexible working and finishing hairspray — it doesn’t give you that stiffness. The other one would be the Bumble and Bumble thickening spray [$9 for 2 ounces; $25 for 8 ounces]. It’s kind of like a root booster. You can spray it all over your hair when it’s wet, and it gives you a thicker feel to your hair.”

“We used to have many different products,” said owner Doug Yeagley of Tops Salon in Mission Hills (619-295-1525). “But now we work with Enjoy exclusively. The Enjoy product is probably the most superior product I have used in 24 years. They were one of the first companies to come out with sulfate-free products.” Sulfates are the foaming agents in cleaning products. “People would be having trouble with dry scalps, and what they were experiencing was a reaction to the sulfate. Sulfate-free is the best thing you can use in terms of color safety. Enjoy carries sulfate-free conditioners, hair-stimulating products for people having hair-thinning issues, and all the styling products. You can go to their website and put in your hair type and texture and how you like to style, and it can tell you which products are best for your type of hair and what you are trying to do with it. People go out and buy all this stuff that a hairdresser told them to use, or from some commercial, and they don’t realize that a lot of the products don’t relate to each other. Like, why would you put this wax and that wax on the floor at the same time? It’s similar to that.”

Dee Alvarado, one of the owners of House of Hair in North Park (619-255-0388), is also an Enjoy fan. “The Enjoy shaping lotion [$20 for 10.1 ounces] is great for curly hair. It controls frizz and gives a nice sheen. I also love Enjoy’s leave-in spray conditioner [$18 for 10.1 ounces]. For all types of hair, you put it in when it is wet, and it helps detangle.”

“I’ll tell you what our top sellers are,” answered Rita, owner of Shear Illusions in La Mesa (619-466-4166). “In the Redken line, we sell a lot of the Color Extend shampoo [$14.30 for 10 ounces] and conditioner [$15.40 for 8.5 ounces]. If you have trouble with your color fading, those help. In the Enjoy line, the hydrating shampoo [$13.94 for 10 ounces] and conditioner [$18.95 for 10 ounces] is one of our top sellers. And I like the Enjoy shaping lotion [$20.94 for 10 ounces] because I have naturally curlier hair, and it works great on naturally curlier hair. You apply it when it is wet and then kind of scrunch it in.”