By Kelly Hushin
Every month, BeautyNewsLA chooses a fabulous Los Angeles salon to visit and reveal to our readers its best assets. It has been a regular part of our monthly repertoire for quite some time now and almost every month, the story that comes out of it is a result of someone from BN (like myself) going to a salon and getting the usual: a haircut and/or color.
Well, not this month.
Although we love this aspect of our publication, and hope you do too, we realized something that has been creeping up on us but we’ve avoided addressing. All that color is in fact NOT good for our hair. It was time, we thought, to explore a different sort of salon treatment (still at an NYC hotspot, of course, don’t fret). If there was ever a time to see a true hair doctor for a deep conditioning treatment at a top-notch NYC best salons, it was now. After the summer sun has started to hide behind fall colors and the beach has become all too chilly to visit, we decided it was time to repair a season (or more) worth of damage.
A visit to the Philip Kingsley hair clinic did just the trick. Kingsley is the founder of the Trichological Clinics in London’s Mayfair and Harrods as well as the location in New York. A practicing trichologist (someone who practices the branch of medicine that deals with the scientific study of the health of hair and scalp) for more than 50 years, Kingsley has collaborated on several published research papers both in the UK and the United States, and has published three books on the subject of hair and scalp care. His clinics in London and New York have created precise hair and scalp products for celebrites like Cher, Audrey Hepburn, Barbra Streisand, Kate Winslet, Candice Bergen, Kirsten Dunst and Renee Zellwegger. We were sure his clinic would do just the trick in getting our scalp back in shape.
It turns out we got more than we bargained for. The appointment was more like a doctor’s visit than a trip to the salon. When I arrived, I was promptly seated in the clinic, with its unforgiving bright lights, sterile-kept hair brushes, medicinal looking containers of treatment and lab-coated “patients.” Brian Thompson ““ essentially a counterpart to Kingsley ““ approached me with a comb and started examining all parts of my hair and scalp. After thoroughly mussing up my hair, he said he’d like to “talk to me about my hair’s density,” and invited me into his office. There, he told me that he was somewhat concerned that my hair was thinner on top, a very early sign of hair loss that wouldn’t have phased him in the least if I was 35″¦but I’m 24.
Immediately, the panic set in. Fortunately, my anxiety was quelled when Thompson told me that it wasn’t time to worry and I was doing the right thing by taking steps toward proper hair nourishment. The consultation was followed by a menthol-infused conditioning treatment that was applied onto my dry hair and then steamed in via a steam machine that hovered over my head for 15 minutes or so. This was followed by yet another conditioning treatment that was applied via an extended scalp massage. I was then put under heat lamps for the conditioning to bake on, after which I was shampooed twice. Finally, a tonic was applied to my scalp and I was left to style my hair as desired ““ they don’t do blowdrys at the clinic, but they have all the tools you need to do so yourself.
Since The New York Times called Kingsley “˜The Hair Guru,’ and Vogue called him “˜The Hair Wizard,’ BN gave him and his team our own name: Our Strand Saviors. After experiencing the conditioning prescription at his clinic I couldn’t debate it ““ he’s a hair expert. Though I didn’t come away with a brand new look or style, I came away with something even more important: knowledge. I understand now how important it is to look beyond the aesthetic to find out what’s really going on at the roots.
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