FASHION Magazine

Ever since Health Canada red flagged Brazilian blowouts, finding a salon that offers the straightening treatment feels like undercover spy work. An accessible (and formaldehyde-free) alternative, Living Proof Straight Styling Hairspray ($34, at Sephora) is an aerosol version of polyfluoroester—the MIT-born hair-smoothing molecule that blocks frizz  in the face of humidity.

During Milan Fashion Week, I promised you I would blog about a truly miraculous and life-changing experience–getting my hair straightened with Keratin Complex Smoothing Therapy Sure, it’s not baby-saving or rocket science miraculous, but amazing nonetheless. You naturally straight-haired girls can snicker all you want, but curly haired girls know what I’m talking about: I now have hair that goes down, not up!

For the treatment, I headed up to Donato Salon + Spa (Yorkdale Shopping Centre, 3401 Dufferin St., 416-789-4332, and 4 other GTA locations, donato.ca), where senior colour technician Mary Listi been quietly smoothing frizz-balls like me with the Keratin Complex (from $375), for a while now.  Once I caught wind of this, I eagerly signed up. (Actually, I made my daughter, Molly, go first, and the results were so staggering–her drying and straightening time has shrunk from an hour and a half to only 7 minutes–that I couldn’t wait to submit and transform.)

Read about the treatment, and see the results, after the jump.