HAIRSTYLING - AS YOU LIKE IT
   
Healthy, well-groomed tresses, a beautiful hair color and the perfect cut—these are the basic requirements for a stunning appearance. Classic and modern styling products to style, shape and set offer endless possibilities for creating your own, individual look.
   
Styling Spray and Mousse
   
Styling products aid in creating a hairstyle. They are applied to damp or dry hair, allow for more elasticity and volume and help protect hair from damaging environmental influences. In addition, they prevent fly-away hair and provide stronger hold.

These products can be lotions, sprays or styling foams (i.e., mousse). Since the 1980’s, styling foams have replaced styling lotions because they offer several advantages in their application: They do not drip and are easy to portion out and distribute throughout the hair, so the hair does not stick together.

Aside from aerosol agents and tensides, foam and liquid styling products differ little in their basic composition. Both contain film formers as basic ingredients. Synthetic resins coat each hair with a stable film, giving it stability and hold. The proportion of film is set according to the desired degree of styling control. Cationic polymers make hair easier to comb and prevent static build up. Water and alcohol are used as solvents. Propellants in today’s styling mousse are ozone-safe gases, such as propane, butane or isobutene.

A new product variation is the so-called color styling mousse. It combines a fixing formula with a light, temporary hair coloring. The dissolved color ingredients create attractive color that rinses out with the next shampooing. Color styling mousse is therefore ideal for achieving a light, temporary nuance or for enhancing your natural color.
   
 

Gel, Cream, and Wax
   
Styling gel, cream, and wax are ideal for expressive shaping, either of particular sections of hair or an entire hairstyle. All three products are essentially similar in their formulas and primarily work to adhere individual hairs.

Styling gels are colorless, water-based and oil-free styling agents that obtain their particular texture through a thickening agent. With hair gel, hair is solidified and then shaped. The higher the hydrophilic proportion of the gel, the more the gel achieves a “wet look.” Additional ingredients such as oils give hair extra shine. Using gel is easy: simply apply it to damp or dry hair and sculpt into the desired hairstyle. This stays in place after drying, i.e., once the fixing agents have solidified.

Modern styling creams are mainly oil-in-water emulsions, in which oily substances are incorporated into a watery base. This type of emulsion is less oily than a water-in-oil emulsion, which is mainly used for rich skin creams and earlier for greased styling creams for men. The oil component in styling creams makes hair smooth, so that it looks natural and is easy to shape. Creams have less hold compared to gels, but are easier to shape. Styling cream is most effective when it is worked into the hairline of lightly damp or dry hair. Hair can then be shaped, either with your fingers or a wide toothed comb. Blow dry or air dry—and, you’re done!

Styling wax gives hold and shine to individual sections of hair. Wax is comprised of plant or mineral oils, in combination with emulsifiers in solid form. For extra shine, some waxes incorporate tiny, shimmering gold or silver particles. Wax optimizes the styling of trendy looks and is particularly suited for sculpted styles and dramatic accenting of individual portions or strands of hair.

Relatively new are styling products that combine the characteristics of various products into one, enabling a particularly quick and stylish finish. Examples include gel spray, in which a gel is finely distributed in spray form onto damp or dry hair, and mousse & wax, in which wax is embedded into a foamy mousse. These create fantastic effects—just try them out for yourself!
   

Hairspray and Lacquer
   
Hairspray provides the perfect finish to a hairstyle. It protects against wind, moisture and sun, provides necessary hold, creates shine and aids the effectiveness of other styling products.

Although also available as a pump spray, hairspray is a classic aerosol product. In other words, it is distributed onto hair in very fine form with the aid of a propellant. As with most other styling products, the base ingredients of hairspray include film formers—here in combination with solvents and propellants (ozone-safe, CFC-free gases such as butane, isobutene and dimethylene ether).

More demands are placed upon hairspray than upon any other styling product: it should hold a hairstyle in place, but also preserve its natural elasticity. It should be moisture resistant, but easy to rinse out. It should also spray finely and dry quickly. It should also protect the hair from environment and moisturize it at the same time.

Hair lacquer differs from classic hairspray as it contains specially concentrated film formers that set hair particularly firmly and form a glossy surface. Hair lacquer plays an increasingly large role in hair styling, because it gives fabulous shine.