Ditch the heat - Michael Douglas just showed us how to air-dry our hair like a pro using just 1 product
For effortless, tousled texture with zero heat or crunchiness, Michael Douglas breaks down the simple air-dry routine to try
If you want to give your strands a break from heat styling, Michael Douglas just ran us through the easiest air-drying routine that requires just one product and a few tactical twists.
While yes, the best hair dryers can work wonders for quickly blasting away moisture and adding volume, they're not your only option for achieving body, and neither are the best curlers for adding movement. In fact, Michael Douglas, celebrity hairstylist and founder of MD London, showed us that actually, allowing your hair to dry naturally, with a bit of mousse and a couple of scrunches and twirls, can be just as transformative (but less damaging) to your hair.
"All hairstyling takes place the moment the hair goes from damp to dry; that’s where all the magic happens, really," says Douglas. As for how to get a beachy, done-but-undone look, he's shared a simple, one-product air-styling tutorial (and yes, we got it all on video).
1. Apply mousse to your damp hair
For starters, you'll want to begin with slightly damp hair. "Let’s assume that you’ve had a shower and you’ve shampooed your hair and all the rest of it, you can let it dry naturally," says Douglas. You'll then want to add a bit of mousse, and as we can see, he opts for MD London's The 12 Salt Mousse.
One of the latest additions to MD London's Numbers styling range, this Salt Mousse is ideal for adding an effortless, beachy tousle to your strands - especially if you're air-drying your hair. It offers a 'real sea-salt' texture, with a soft, touchable finish and no crunchiness.
Douglas takes about a palm-sized amount of the mousse. "We don’t need a lot; it’s very dense, quite thick and creamy. There’s very little styling property in it - so it won’t go crispy or crunchy or anything like that."
He then squeezes it into the hair, rather than smoothing it through: "I’m a big fan of not running your fingers through the hair, because that breaks up, if you like, the texture that you want. We'll pop it in, but just squeeze it into the hair."
2. Give your roots a lift
As he works the product into Digital Beauty Editor Fiona McKim's strands, he also takes a moment to 'pick up' her roots, lifting the hair away from her scalp slightly with his fingers. He notes that you can repeat this process once the hair is dry too, for extra lift.
3. Add twists
Now onto the fun bit. Once all the product is 'squeezed' in, Douglas sections the hair into two, and just twists each. You can leave it at that, but if you want to ensure the twists to stay put, you have a couple of options.
"One is we just try and leave it, and you’ll get a much more natural, softy-type texture to it." The other is to keep twisting the hair until it folds in on itself, creating a little bun on each side, which you can pin in place.
The former option will work best for mid to long hair, but both can be adapted for shorter styles too. Once your twists are in place, you can leave them to dry before carefully loosening them out again - that's quite literally it.
"You don't need to do anything. It's just put the mousse in, twist the hair back, you could clip it in place or just put it behind your shoulders and relax for half an hour and then start to grab it - you could put a bit of Number 6 in." Douglas also flips Fiona's parting to the side, which affords that extra bit of root lift we mentioned earlier. "All we're trying to do is encourage it into the shape."
