Beauty; The Shining
'Smooth finish." "High gloss shine." "Polished veneer." If the modern hair vocabulary sounds like the menu from a car wash, there's a reason: the fast track to shine on your hair -- or your car -- is slick with silicon.
Like so many high-tech beauty breakthroughs, silicon -- derived from silica, or sand -- was first developed in the laboratories of American industry and found to have such glamorous applications as car polish, glue, caulking -- and, of course, breast implants. Silicon is a naturally shiny, inert, nonreactive substance, considered so nontoxic that silicon gel is a principal ingredient in Mylanta.
But how did this cross over to beauty? The logic was simple. What polishes your car could shine your hair, right? The funny thing is, that's true. But in the course of proving it, a product was developed that is so versatile some people stop just short of calling it a miracle.
By coating the outer layer of the hair shaft and sealing in moisture, silicon not only repairs your split ends, it acts as a conditioner. Once the hair shaft has been sealed, a smooth surface is created. Light is now reflected rather than diffused -- hence the shine -- and frizzy hair is considerably smoother and more manageable.
"It's like pulling molten glass across your hair," says Pat Peterson Rohde, a senior chemist for Aveda.
"It's clean, clear and cosmetically wonderful," according to John McCook, vice president of research and development for Elizabeth Arden, who is developing a silicon line for Oribe at Arden.
In 1987, Procter & Gamble used silicon to create Pert, a shampoo and conditioner in one. But even before that, Shiseido had marketed silicon in Japan (QT Cross Cuticle Coat), purely for its shine-inducing properties.
Since then, shine agents containing silicon have been outdistancing waxes, pomades, and gels. Shiseido and Zotos recently introduced Senscience, a joint line devoted to silicon hair products said to actually restore the hair shaft. All tend to be expensive -- Sebastian Laminates Surface Polisher is $17.50 for one ounce; Aveda's Purefume Brilliant Emollient is $19 for three ounces.
Since you only need to use a drop or two, silicon doesn't weigh hair down. Used correctly, you should appear as though you've been lightly laminated -- a highly desirable look when buffed and gleaming skin, glossy lips and hair like glass is the most up-to-date fashion finish. But sadly, if you overdo, you'll probably end up looking like an oil slick.
Most stylists agree that silicon is terrific at detangling frizzy hair, adding shine and defining curl. There's less consensus about the product's other virtues, however.
Jennifer Lawrence, a hair stylist and makeup artist at Louis Licari Color Group, mixes Zotos's Bain de Terre Recovery Complex with mousse or gel, which she says can make the hair dull or feel dry. Silicon, she says, "gives it a shine you couldn't get with any other product alone. I use it before blow drying, and after. It protects the hair and makes it silky."
Frederic Fekkai of the eponymous salon at Bergdorf Goodman says silicon products are terrific on curly hair, but "I think it weighs down and flattens straight hair." (For shine, Fekkai uses his grandmother's rinse of one tablespoon of white vinegar dissolved in a cup of water.)
Richard Stein, owner of the Richard Stein Salon, calls silicon products "the emperor's new conditioner." They trap dirt and oil, he says, and create a dirty appearance. Other stylists claim just the opposite, saying that silicon creates a clean, shiny illusion even when the hair isn't particularly healthy
or
clean.
So who's right? Maybe all, maybe none. "The toughest part of this chemistry," explains McCook of Elizabeth Arden, "is making it permanent but not too permanent. You want the material to bond to the hair, but you don't want it to last so long that it builds up."
But beyond the qualitative difference in brands, there is the matter of application. Silicon is one of those beauty products that the user has to literally get a feel for. How much you use, and when you use it, depends on your hair and the product. Until you marry the two, it may be slippery going.
Correction:  April 25, 1993, Sunday
The Beauty column in The Times Magazine last Sunday misidentified a substance used in hair products. It is silicone, an organic silicon compound, not silicon.