The new Dyson Airwrap Styler launched this week after six years of product development and £24 million in research. The company first entered the beauty industry with the Supersonic Hair Dryer two years ago. The Supersonic offered unprecedented power with a smaller, lighter motor and the promise of less heat damage than other dryers on the market.
The Supersonic’s €399.99 price tag horrifies some people, and not everyone likes the machine. Along with colouring my hair less, I credit the Supersonic with materially improving my hair quality - it uses power rather than heat to submit the hair (and mine certainly required submission).
It is also the only hair dryer I have ever been able to use to successfully blow dry my own hair. I don’t have the dexterity for twisting and faffing with a round brush - with a paddle brush and my Supersonic, I can have a full head of thick, waist length, naturally frizzy hair silk and tamed in less than seven minutes. It may be expensive, but it saves on time and fulfils its promises.
However, curls have - until now - been impossible to achieve using a styling tool without significant heat damage, which causes the hair to darken in colour and snap over time. Even the best heat styling products should not be used more than once a week.
Enter the Airwrap Styler, a damp hair tool which can create a variety of styles from curly to straight using unprecedentedly low heat (it is safe to use every day, if you want to) and air. It costs - deep breath - €499.
You get a lot of technology and jargon for the price: According to Dyson, it utilises a phenomenon known as “the Coanda effect”, where a high speed jet of air will curve around a surface due to differences in pressure, the styler wraps the hair strand around its conical barrel without you having to do much but hold the hair next to the device.
After the hair has wrapped around the barrel (this happens through the effect of the air flowing through and around the static barrel, so there’s nothing to tangle or catch the hair in), you simply hold it there for six to eight seconds, then switch the air to cool for the same duration. Once you turn off the Airwrap Styler, a perfect frizz-free curl, wave, or whatever other style you are aiming for drops gently off the barrel.
You don’t have to move the styler at all. I got a demonstration of the styler, and got to have a quick go, but wouldn’t put forward a recommendation or otherwise until I have used it properly. But it looks very promising indeed - giving glossy, professional looking results without skill and without the usual heat damage that styling results in.
The styler comes with a variety of attachments from a pre-styling dryer for rough drying the hair (it needs to be damp but not wet for styling), soft and firm smoothing brushes (for a salon blow dry effect), a round volumizing brush for bounce, to thirty and forty millimetre barrels for curling and waving. You choose a kit from three based on your hair type. The Dyson Airwrap Volume + Shape (€449.99) is for finer, less dense hair types and includes the styler, the pre-style dryer, two thirty millimetre barrels, the soft and the round brush. For thicker, denser hair types, there is the Dyson Airwrap Smooth + Control (€449.99). This contains the styler, the pre-styling dryer, two thirty millimetre barrels, two forty millimetre barrels and the firm brush. The Dyson Airwrap Complete (€499.99) contains a styler and all of the above attachments.
The temporary Dyson Air Salon on Dublin's South William Street will be open until October 21st for walk-in and pre-booked styling appointments, so that you can try the Airwrap Styler for yourself.
