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Hair · Chapter Two · Five Concerns

What it's doing this week.

Type is what your hair is. Concern is what it's doing this week. Concerns are cyclical and behaviour-driven — most resolve with three weeks of the right routine, not three new products. Frizzing in August is not the same situation as frizzing in February. Breakage from a new elastic is not the same situation as breakage from six months of ironing on high. Find the concern, find the cause, find the three-week calendar that fixes it.

Edited by Nelly Updated Spring 2026 Reading time 8 minutes
II. · Five concerns

Find the behaviour you have now.

35 protocols total →
01
/ frizz

Frizz

The hair is not misbehaving — it is responding to humidity by lifting the cuticle to absorb atmospheric moisture. The argument is with the forecast, not with the strand. Anti-humectants in the right weight, applied in the right order over a properly conditioned base, are the only reliable intervention. The mistake is reaching for a serum before the conditioner has done its job.

9 protocols
02
/ breakage

Breakage

Short pieces around the hairline. A pillow's worth of shed after a night on a cotton case. A section that refuses to grow past a certain length. Almost all of it is mechanical — the elastic you tie in the same place every morning, the brush used on soaking-wet hair, the iron pass at 220°C on a section that has already had three. The fix is a behaviour audit, not a protein treatment.

8 protocols
03
/ dryness & heat damage

Dryness & Heat Damage

Dryness is what the hair feels like today. Heat damage is what the hair is. They share a recovery direction but sit in different places on the same spectrum — the page covers both states in anchored sections, with the daily dryness protocol at #dryness, the cumulative heat damage diagnosis at #heat-damage, and the six-week recovery calendar at #recovery.

10 protocols
04
/ oiliness

Oiliness

The roots are oily by midday. The dry shampoo is becoming a daily habit rather than an occasional one. The scalp is producing sebum in response to being stripped — a reliable consequence of washing every day. The fix is washing one day less per week for three weeks and watching the scalp recalibrate. Most oiliness concerns solve themselves within a fortnight of adjusted cadence.

5 protocols
Editor's note Nelly · Beauty Director On concern
vs. type
The biggest mistake with hair concern is treating it like a type — permanent, fixed, requiring a permanent solution. A concern is a behaviour, and behaviours respond to changed conditions. Three weeks of the right routine fixes most of what a shelf full of treatments has not.
— Nelly Whitcombe · Beauty Director · Spring 2026

Four concerns, each briefly placed.

Most hair damage is mechanical, not chemical. Most frizz is a humidity argument, not a hair failure. The concerns below are calendars, not diagnoses. Three weeks of the right routine beats three new bottles.

On frizz

Frizz is the cuticle lifting in response to humidity. The strand is trying to reach atmospheric moisture because the cortex is dry — which is to say, the frizz is a symptom, and the symptom is reporting a dehydration problem in the hair's interior. The single most effective intervention is not a serum on top of the frizz but a conditioning step thorough enough to reduce the cuticle's need to lift. Anti-humectant products — silicones, oils, butters in varying weights depending on the texture — are the second step, applied over a properly saturated base. The mistake is skipping the base and going straight to the finish. A serum applied over dry, poorly conditioned hair is a polish on a cracked surface. It holds for an hour in light humidity and fails in everything heavier.

On breakage

Breakage is almost never a deficiency. It is a force applied to a strand in a place where the strand cannot absorb it. The most common forces: a hair elastic in the same position every day, creating a wear point that snaps; a brush pulled through soaking-wet hair, which has almost no elasticity and tears at the point of resistance; a flat iron passed at 220°C over a section that was already processed, already dry, already at the edge of what it can take. The single most revealing diagnostic for breakage is a pillow audit: switch to a satin or silk pillowcase for three weeks. If the short pieces around the hairline reduce, the breakage was largely friction. Most of it is.

On dryness and heat damage

Dryness is a moisture problem. Heat damage is a structural one. They look similar at the end of a dry day — both feel rough, both look dull, both resist conditioner — but the recovery protocols diverge. Daily dryness responds to a better conditioning step, less heat, and a slightly richer finishing product. Heat damage is the cuticle physically altered — the protein bonds changed, the cuticle scales raised or cracked — and it responds to heat reduction and a long-term protein-moisture balance protocol, not a single deep-condition. The page covers both. The distinction matters because treating heat damage like dryness (adding more moisture on top of a damaged structure) does not repair the structure. It temporarily softens it, which reads as improvement for a wash or two, and then the damage is visible again.

On oiliness

The scalp is skin. It produces sebum in proportion to how much sebum is being stripped from it. The reader who washes every day because the scalp is oily, and whose scalp becomes oilier over the years, is in a direct feedback loop: the washing is causing the oil it is trying to remove. The intervention is not a different shampoo; it is a stretch of the wash interval. One fewer shampoo per week, sustained for three weeks, is long enough for most scalps to recalibrate. The third week is often the hardest — the sebum production is still overshooting the now-longer interval — but by week four, the output has typically adjusted to the new cadence. Dry shampoo is an interval tool, not a routine substitute.

Also in the hair chapter
/ hair-type

Hair Type

Texture, density, porosity, pattern. The four-axis read that makes every concern protocol make sense.
/ routine

Routine

Wash cadence, drying decisions, travel routines. The operational layer most concerns resolve in.
/ ingredients

Ingredients

The two debates, protein and bonds, humectants, oils. The chemistry behind what's actually doing the work.