I was super curious about Chris McMillan’s brand new line of products. He’s the man behind Jennifer Aniston’s hair, which is cool, but neither she nor her hair have been a big figure in my life—I think I was the only teenager growing up in the nineties who didn’t watch or care about Friends?—but I loooooved the super short bob he did on Leslie Bibb for the most recent season of White Lotus.
So I called in all the products in the idea that I would do a proper review of the whole line and have him offer some tips on how to use them. And then I of course started overanalyzing the whole impulse. Is this corny? Am I basic? Did being an 11-year-old who read Glamour magazine just completely rot my brain? Maybe to all of those, but also fuck it, this is service journalism at its finest.
I often resist writing about hair because more so than skincare or makeup it’s all so so deeply individual and, at least for me, forever changing. My preamble is that my own hair is super, super dry, doesn’t have color in it, is curly, and is fine but there’s a lot of it. My relationship with it is medium dysfunctional. And then on top of that, I don’t love the current curly aesthetic of volume-volume-volume. All those round cuts with curly bangs will never be for me.
My goals with it are to keep it hydrated so I can convince myself it doesn’t look like wiry old lady hair and then use gel to give the curls some shape. I’m looking for a balance where my hair doesn’t look crispy or overly defined but also doesn’t look like cotton candy, which is sort of its natural state.
After shampooing and conditioning my hair, I worked some balm, around the size of a quarter, through my wet hair and the scrunched in maybe twice that amount of gel. Maybe hair kind of swallows products so I’ve learned to use a lot. Then I go around my hair and sort of twirl pieces in the front and on top to shape them, then I clipped the front pieces down so they wouldn’t dry into ringlets. One of my great fears is looking like Shirley Temple.
I didn’t take a photo the next day because I was sick and even I, as someone who routinely and without shame posts deeply unflattering selfies, could not deal. But also I think the law is that your hair always looks and feels the best when you have nowhere to go or a mild cold. The gel felt denser than the previous Phillip B one I had used. It didn’t make my hair feel crispy but even the next day I could feel and see definition and it gave my hair some weight.
Two days later I was feeling better but hadn’t washed my hair. This is where mousse comes in. Usually I use mousse in the winter or in dry climates where I want a little more volume and need less hold. I like the softness. And honestly, this is childlike but spraying the foam onto my palm and slapping it on my hair is fun. The McMillan one has a very light scent of neroli or pettigrain—it’s kind of a Nuxe-y, Bain de Soleil scent but not remotely heavy.
In the morning after showering (with shower cap on), I scrunched in a lot of mousse, like maybe enough to fill a small juice glass? This re-wet my hair and I could re-style the curls, this time all swept away from my face, follow up with some hair spray to keep it back and some of the wand on the edges and around the hairline to keep it in place.
The next day I still didn't wash my hair. This is normal for me, I’d say I wash it about every 4 days or so unless I’m swimming or, like, hiking. More mousse to give it some shape on an extremely humid day with some rain showers, and topped with a tortoise shell pattered headband I think I got at CO Bigelow years ago. My summer MO is to keep everything away from my face.
The only product I didn’t try was the blow-dry spray because I really only blow mine dry in the winter. The fact that I only learned how to blow dry my hair around age 45 is a story for a different time. The gel and mousse I’ll probably use the most. The hair spray is a good dupe for Euro formulations of Elnett, so I’d use that if I ran out of my stash. The wand could be achieved with some gel on a tiny brush but having it all in one tool/product would be nice for traveling. Styling balm is something I imagine people with more straight hair might respond to more. It’s nice to have around and I use it as a kind of layer, but it’s not a core thing in my routine.
And here’s Chris McMillan answering some of my embarrassingly specific hair styling queries…
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