Blow Up.(hair spray)

Byline: Photographed by Patrick Demarchelier

Thanks to a few genius updates, hair spray--the styling staple most used by American women--has left its bulletproof-helmet reputation behind. Julia Reed gets misty.

Three years ago I was sitting in John Barrett's chair in his salon on the top floor of Bergdorf Goodman watching him--armed with a blow-dryer, a round brush, and an assistant spritzing hair spray at my roots--create glamorous, full hair that I do not actually have. My hair is superfine, possessed of absolutely zero body, and, even after most professional blowouts and copious back-brushing, tends to fall almost immediately flat upon my head. But in Barrett's hands, with Barrett's own private-label product, it is springy, voluminous, and infinitely workable. If I run my hands through it, it doesn't stay stiff but has what in the trade is known as excellent "shape memory." So when he told me that day that he was shelving the spray to rework the formula, I was not just a little panicked. Before I left the salon, I bought every bottle left in the place--more than $1,000 worth. Now, this month--finally--his reworked version (John Barrett Elementage In Control) has arrived, slightly lighter, even better, and just in time to save me (I was down to a terrifyingly small stock of two bottles).

I am not the only one whose hair--and self-esteem--is heavily dependent on hair spray. Though it is a product most often negatively associated with the hyperteased bubbles of the sixties and the feathered wings of the eighties, hair spray's popularity actually never dimmed. (Though, "for a while, from the mid-nineties into the 2000s," hair sprays got such a bad rap that "it was all about serums to make your hair lie flat on your head," says veteran editorial stylist Garren.) In fact, it is one of the most commonly used beauty products in American households, accounting for $1 billion in annual sales. As Garren explains, "Today's hair has volume and movement, personality and shape, with a little bit of height in the back. Most people need a little help with that, and hair spray provides it." So perhaps it's no coincidence that we are suddenly blessed with a wide choice of new and improved formulations developed with the input of the world's most sophisticated stylists, who have joined forces with everybody from Redken (Guido) to John Frieda (Serge Normant). These guys are helping us nonpros figure out what they have long known--that used right, the best hair sprays can be versatile styling and setting agents, and that even though today's "look" is a far cry from the immobile helmet heads of yesteryear, spray remains essential to attaining it.

The latest hair sprays are designed to be undetectable multitaskers. When used with heat at the roots, they provide the lift and hold that Barrett gives me. Jimmy Paul uses Bumble and Bumble's Spray de Mode ("fashion spray")--which he helped develop for his backstage and editorial work--with a curling iron: "You spray it on and brush it out, and it keeps the memory." This October, Orlando Pita will debut T3 360[degrees] Control, a "conditioning," "heat-seeking" spray he created specifically to work with the company's justifiably famed ionic hair-dryers and flatirons.

And most stylists will confess, even if only in secret, that at least part of the inspiration behind their new wonder sprays was the lofty goal of matching Elnett Satin, the legendary aerosol from L'Oreal Paris that for years has been smuggled across the ocean by stylists who revered it for its virtual weightlessness and invisible set. Banned in this country since its inception in 1960 because it contained chemicals deemed harmful to the air quality, it has now been reformulated to meet the government's guidelines and will be introduced in October (exclusively at Target) to the American masses, who will find out what an elite group has always known: "You cannot overdo it," says stylist Tim Rogers of Manhattan's Hiro Haraguchi salon, who ...