Don't feel like shortening your long hair despite your split ends? How about trying hair dusting? Discover this technique which promises to eliminate split ends without losing precious inches in length.
Split ends are the preserve of long hair. Located mainly at the tips (the oldest part of the hair), they grow as the hair ages and gets damaged until they are duplicated. That's why the longer your hair, the more likely you are to have split ends! The first ones warning signs ? The ends dry out, the hair becomes dull and a sort of small white dot appears at the end of the hair, a sign that its cuticle – which is its protective sheath – has deteriorated. At this point, there is still time to take extra care and precautions to put things right. We limit styling devices and coloring techniques that weaken the hair shaft and we do not skip its leave-in treatment to be applied daily to the ends to avoid having to cut.
But if we don't do anything … it's climbing, literally and figuratively, since the famous forks tend to go higher on the pitch. And no cure exists in terms of care to repair those split ends. Then there is usually only one option left to get rid of it permanently: cut! One thing you can't always resolve when you don't like your long hair.
Fortunately, there is a less drastic solution to get rid of it without losing the few inches of hair that it took so long to gain : the hair dusting.
Hair dusting : What is that ?
It's a split-cut technique that invites us to play with scissors in a different way so that we don't have to shorten the entire hair. This practice which can literally be translated as "Hair dusting" in French, is more precisely to cut only the ends damaged by the forks and not the ends of the whole hair in order to keep as much length as possible. In short, this fork cutting technique saves us a real haircut.
Los Angeles hairstylist Sal Salcedo was the one who brought this not-so-new practice up to date. hair dusting. The trend-setting hairstylist spoke on the subject in an interview with Refinery29: “Hair dusting has always been used, some cultures have different techniques such as using a razor blade or burning the fork in a fire.” he said to explain his bias to cut the forks one by one. He also popularizes this practice by comparing it to the removal of lint on a sweater to better understand the gesture and affirms that the technique works on any type or texture of hair, provided they are straightened beforehand. so that the damaged parts are clearly visible and that there is no risk of making a mistake when cutting with the scissors. It is indeed unthinkable to grab scissors directly from curly or frizzy hair because in your hair rebellious curls could be mistakenly targeted for cutting.
So why is this practice not used in salons? Simply because it takes a long time!
The hair dusting : how it works ?
To spare your tips from the fatal cut, the hair dusting offers a strand-by-strand cut, and even almost hair by hair, hence the fact that it is time consuming. The technique consists in selecting fine strands of hair and using two fingers to take turns holding them, straightening them and bringing out the split hair so that they can be cut without touching the length of the hair.
There are actually two ways to do this:
- slide each strand between the index and middle fingers, from roots to ends over the entire length, exerting light pressure to smooth the strand so that only damaged hair sticks out and cut the small hair that protrudes as you go along the scissors.
- twist each section on itself so that the forks come out even more easily on their own from the section of hair in question and cut them with scissors.
A video of hair dusting performed by hair stylist Sal Salcedo
Adopt the hair dusting oneself
If you do not want to go to a salon to have your forks cut by a professional and you want to try the experience of hair dusting at home, first make sure you have a pair of scissors specially designed for the hair in your possession. Paper scissors could indeed damage your hair fiber (remember that they are not made for that).
Next, it's important to take small bits and slide the scissor blades along the bit you are dealing with, perpendicular to the forks, to cut the forks drastically without ever risking an unfortunate scissor blow, just like you can see it in the video available above.
Hair dusting : an interesting technique but not a miracle!
If the hair dusting is undoubtedly a smart practice to preserve its length in case of slightly split hair, and one should not hesitate to adopt it occasionally to keep hair healthy when a few tired strands stick, However, it is not a miracle solution for hair that is really damaged and whose forks are already mounted a good ten centimeters on almost all of the hair. In these cases where the majority of the tips are dead, it is still important to cut as soon as possible to prevent the situation from worsening – that is to say the forks going up even more towards the roots – this would require you to cut even shorter soon.
After reading this, you never use a hotel hair dryer again:
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