It has recently occurred to me that you can use different hair products on different bits of your hair. A bit like using different SPF on different bits of you – 30 on face and shoulders, 20 everywhere else.
Why would you do this thing, which I now officially name “hair zoning”? Well, it is in the pursuit of having cool hair. I have written before about having cool hair, in that I don’t have cool hair.
I have nice hair, but not cool hair.
On its very best behaviour, just out of the hairdresser, my hair is like this:
But then most days it’s just like this:
BUT I WANT IT TO LOOK LIKE THIS!!!!
And I have come up with a way of making hair look (a bit) like Kate Moss cool hair, thanks to “hair zoning” (if I say it enough times maybe it will spontaneously generate cash).
What you do is put a mousse, blow dry spray or serum on the front and parting “zone” of your hair. So the bits that fall either side of your face and roughly along your parting.
I alternate between this:
and this:
And then on the rest of your hair “zone” generously spritz a texturising spray – like a sea salt spray. Pretty much any one will do, like this from Toni and Guy:

I love how it says “Casual” on the side. I’ve never seen a less cool thing. Never mind.
Then you style the shit out of your fringe/front hair bit, using a hair dryer on its hottest setting or a Babyliss Big hair to control unflattering kinks, cowlicks and frizz and blow dry DOWN your parting – but only your parting.
Then scrunch the rest of your hair upwards, in order to aid the texturising spray to form charming waves and that crucial but indefinable thing about cool hair: texture.
DO NOT BRUSH YOUR HAIR AT ANY POINT IN PROCEEDINGS. Hairbrushes are the enemy of cool hair.
I feel your pain. I have the bad hair trinity – thin, straight and oily (oh, so pretty!). The amount of money I have spent in my life on “volumising” products would cancel out the debt of some smaller third world countries, yet nothing works. Totally lost my rag a few weeks back and had it all cut off. Now it’s so easy and salt spray is my friend, however the ranks of “volumising” products in my bathroom look even more wasteful, and I’ve got several hundred hair elastics going wanting. 😉