Anti-aging shampoo gets to root of hair problem
By Beth Teitell
Boston Herald Columnist
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Will it ever end? I speak of the expense and toil of battling the signs of aging.
Just when I thought I’d heard it all - the antioxidant Gummi Bears, the skin-analysis tools that look beneath your epidermis to tell you where future wrinkles will form, the personal trainers for your face - now comes the latest must-spend-your-retirement-savings-on ‘‘cure”: anti-aging shampoo, conditioner and ‘‘damage-defense” capsules. These are the brainchildren of Frederic Fekkai, hairdresser to the stars, a man who charges $600 for a cut and slightly less for his new ‘‘Ageless” hair line.
As someone forcibly conscripted into the War on Aging, I’d yet to start worrying about my hair’s elderly appearance. Fighting on the front lines of line and wrinkle containment seemed like proper angst deployment. Oh, what a fool I’ve been. Yes, you grow new hair all the time, but guess what? This ‘‘virgin” hair is not really young. Why? Turns out that age-related scalp and follicle changes mean less oil and melanin and other good stuff is pumped into your hair.
I knew you could get a fuddy-duddy, middle-aged ‘‘ma’am” haircut - from personal experience, unfortunately. I knew your hair could turn prematurely gray. But ‘‘uneven texture” and an ‘‘increase in porosity?” Those sound like challenges for the face, not the hair. Ignorance is bliss.
While Fekkai’s products aren’t the first entry into the anti-aging shampoo category, the segment is surprisingly young, especially considering that there are anti-aging products for every other body part. There’s Botox for the feet, brow transplants, voice-lifts, a cream for just your upper lip.
It was with mixed feelings that I stepped into the shower with my Fekkai arsenal. At $35 per bottle of shampoo and conditioner, and another $45 for the mysterious damage-defense capsules, I wasn’t sure I even wanted the products to work; alas, the next day, I awoke with hair so youthful it could be carded in a bar.
But is it a good thing? On the one hand, with youthful hair you can pay slightly less attention to your face. But on the other, if someone sees you from the back, it could raise unrealistic expectations.
Hmmm. Young hair: Friend or foe? Not even your hairdresser knows for sure.
