Better...not younger

Now’s the time to bring frazzled heatwave hair back to life

LOOK around you at europe’s most arid summer for decades, with conditions predicted to wither on in some areas until October. Many of us are experiencing our longest parched period since the 1970s. Rivers have run dry; soil is too scorched to farm.

‘We could be in Tuscany,’ I muttered to the dog on this morning’s walk/ stagger, meaning not cathedrals and gelati, but grass shrivelled to straw, leaves withered at our feet.

Now look at your hair. Sorry, I know I’m supposed to be a friend, but you take my point. Forest fires are not merely threatened in our wilds, many of us are setting up danger zones on our heads.

Apart from insisting on SPF 50 at all times, I’m not too much of a

killjoy. Normally, I’d say crack on with summer, then offer up some hair recovery tips come autumn.

However, I wouldn’t be looking after your best interests if I didn’t stage an intervention now. After all, it’s what I’ve had to do with my own fine-yet-frizzy, constantly thirsty locks.

First off, I had my preparatory back-to-school cut done in sweltering summer with the brilliant Michael Van Clarke (from £75 for a stylist, vanclarke.com).

Michael’s dry-cutting technique allows him to assess your face, hair texture and the way it grows to give you the ideal cut — no hiding behind a glossy blow-dry. This means that even if you do no styling yourself (guilty as charged), your hair will fall effortlessly back into place, day in, day out, still looking glorious months later.

Once experienced, you won’t want to go back to a bog-standard wet chop.

NexT, colour. When Magda, my beloved blow-dry queen, saw how pinky-orange much of my natural shade was becoming, she painted irregular chunks of glossy, dark brown L’Oreal Inoa ammonia-free colour over it to take out some of the sun bleaching; a sort of low-key, reverse balayage, if you will (from £45, cilahairdressing.com).

Meanwhile, I am raising my maintenance game. You may want to throw a little money at this. Names to conjure with shampoo and conditioner-wise include Moroccan Oil, Philip Kingsley, Michael Van Clarke’s 3 More Inches range and Living Proof.

Grey-haired pals rave about Living Proof’s No-frizz Intense Moisture Mask (£33, livingproof. co.uk). Or there’s its Restore range (from £22), which draws a line under damage and brings back shine, especially with hair that has lost pigmentation and gone brittle. Me, I’m limp and lacklustre so I love Living Proof’s volumising Full line (from £12).

If you’re budgeting, continue with what you normally use, but leave your conditioner on for longer as a mask. Then add L’Oreal’s aptlynamed elvive Dream Lengths Wonder Water into the mix, currently down to a fiver at Sainsbury’s (sainsburys.co.uk).

Suitable for all hair types, in eight seconds of gently squeezing it into lengths, it just sorts matters, washing out without any lingering heaviness. I’ve also been experimenting with John Frieda’s recently reformulated Frizz-ease during the great swelter, and have only good things to say about this 1990s classic.

Try a little of its All-In-1 Lightweight Serum (£7.99, boots.com) on the lengths and ends of your tresses if you used to find the original weighed hair down.

With sunburn searches up 3,200 per cent on Google, I’m deploying Charles Worthington Sunshine UV Protection Leavein Spray Takeaway (£2.99, boots. com) as a slap-it-all-over hair shield that will protect it from sun, sea, sand and chlorine.

There’s a salty, scrunch-in version for those who want beachy waves: Sunshine Salt Spray Takeaway (£2.99). However, if you’re over 40, I’d save this for the actual beach and go for protective conditioning instead.

As final proof that recovery measures need not be expensive, L’Oreal elvive’s new Hydra Hyaluronic Moisture Plump Serum (half price at £6.49, boots. com) is basically spray-on face moisturiser for your hair.

It doesn’t flatten and is terrific first thing for refreshing your pillow-ravaged locks without changing anything up other than to make you look human; a small, but extremely welcome triumph.