As Oscar gowns have become more formal, so too has the hair that accompanies them. Gone are the days when actresses would walk the red carpet with their locks tucked under a crocheted cap (Ali MacGraw, 1971), raked into an outlandish Bob Mackie headdress (Cher, 1986) or casually combed (Michelle Pfeiffer, 1990). On Sunday, viewers will see a parade of stylized looks, like Reese Witherspoon’s Veronica Lake waves at the ceremony last year and Emma Watson’s stern bun at the most recent Golden Globes.
And now, thanks to a new generation of hot tools, more women are attempting to create these looks at home.
Erika Angela, a model and actress in her early 30s, said she used to spend more than an hour, using four tools (a flatiron, blow dryer, curling iron and round brush) to style her long, dark brown locks, which are straight at the roots but frizzy at the ends. But her routine got a reboot this year, she said, when she started using the InStyler Wet to Dry styler ($130). The tool, which has a rotating hot barrel and brush, can straighten or curl wet hair.
“I don’t have to carry around so much stuff for my hair anymore, and I’ve also saved hours of time every week,” said Ms. Angela, who lives in Los Angeles. “It’s completely changed my approach to my hair.”
The Wet to Dry is one of several new appliances changing the way hair is styled in salons and at home, like blow dryers with LCD screens that customize styling to hair type, devices that simultaneously dry and style hair, and automatic curling machines. They are a long way from the simple round brush that was standard equipment a generation ago.
According to Virginia Lee, a senior research analyst at Euromonitor, the market research firm based in London, the number of hair styling appliances sold globally was close to 209 million in 2012, up from 190 million in 2007. Ms. Lee said this is thanks in part to the rise of how-to videos on YouTube. “Manufacturers are realizing that women are trying to create salon looks at home and are coming up with products to help,” Ms. Lee said.
And data from NPD, the research company in Port Washington, N.Y., shows that sales of these specialty stylers, tools that go beyond the traditional flatiron or hair dryer, increased 16 percent from October 2012 to September 2013 compared with the same period a year earlier.
“There is big innovation going on in hair care right now,” said Polly Blitzer, founder of beautyblitz.com, a beauty blog. “Before, something really wow used to be a flatiron with beveled or rounded edges. But now we’re seeing another level of tools which do their promised job without being harsh on the hair the way standard ones can.”
Automatic curling devices are perhaps the flashiest of the new devices. For example, FHI has introduced Heat Runway IQ, heated Velcro rollers for which a green light blinks when curls are formed.
And the Infiniti Pro by Conair Curl Secret ($100), which took five years to develop, according to Robin Linsley, the company’s global vice president for marketing, uses a motor to draw hair in and beeps when finished with a range of styles.
The Curl Secret has plenty of fans. Julie Steinberg, 24, a teacher in Baltimore, says it has given a gentle bounce to her thick, frizzy and long dark brown hair. “Using a curling iron or straightener, my hair would either not hold or the curls would be uneven,” she said. “But now, it looks so good that people ask me all the time if I had it professionally done.”
Blow dryers are also becoming more glamorous. The CHI Touch Dryer, which costs $200, uses a ceramic heater and has infrared and ionic technology and a three-inch color LCD touch screen that allows users to choose speed, temperature and hair type. Jenn Karlman, 31, a weekday news anchor at KSWB, the Fox affiliate in San Diego, said the dryer has helped undo some of the harm from the repeated styling of her shoulder-length blond hair. “I definitely have fewer split ends, and the customization feature helps me get a sleek blowout in less than 10 minutes,” she said.
Even more expensive is the Pro Tools dryer introduced last summer by the stylist Harry Josh. The device weighs 18 ounces but is said to have airflow at upward of 80 miles an hour to speed drying time. Mr. Josh said he used the dryer and his $250 styling iron to create Sofia Vergara’s straight hair with a slight bottom bend at the Golden Globes. Others who have expressed their love of the device on social media include Miranda Kerr, Gisele Bündchen, Rose Byrne and Ellen Pompeo.
But these women all have the regular help of professionals; the average consumer doesn’t always find it so easy. A YouTube video from early 2013, which has had more than 32 million views, shows a young girl giving a tutorial on how to use a curling iron only to have the chunk that she clamped burn off.
Ms. Steinberg admitted that the Curl Secret from Conair took a few tries to master. “I had to experiment with how much of my hair I needed to put in and how exactly to hold the machine to get that perfect curl,” she said. And Ms. Karlman said that her first week using the CHI Touch Dryer resulted in frizz because she had the incorrect setting for her hair type.
But now her styling process is going smoothly. “The blow dryer has completely transformed my life,” Ms. Karlman said. “At least when it comes to my hair.”
