Louise McSharry: GHD Duet or Dyson Airstrait? It’s the battle of the wet-to-dry stylers

Achieving it, as a teenager with access to very little money and hair with a penchant for frizz, was a challenge. I regularly used the household’s iron against a towel, before I started to hear whispers of the BaByliss Straight and Shine. Just like the iron, this straightener used heated plates and steam from a little pod within the tool to make your hair, well, straight and shiny.

I loved it, and used it obsessively until I managed to save up enough money to get my hands on the original GHD, which started blowing Irish minds around 2003. As a people, we were transformed. Gone were the fluff-haired Irish women of the past. Now we were sleek. We were shiny. We were powerful.

These days, we have a world of hair tools at our disposal (or at least on the market), but the latest one is taking us back to our straight roots (pun intended). The Dyson Airstrait (€499 via dyson.ie) is the latest launch from the company we used to turn to for vacuum cleaners but which now offers much, much more than that.

Dyson specialises in changing the game and solving problems with advanced technological research. As a result, its products usually operate differently to those that came before them. That’s mostly true for the Airstrait, but last year, GHD pipped Dyson to the post with the launch of the Duet Styler (€370 via petermark.ie) which, like the Airstrait, takes the hair from wet to straight (and dry) with one tool.

Both tools look and operate in the same way as a hair straightener. You clamp the tool down on the hair and slide it from the root to the tip. Both tools dry the hair straight using hot air, but the GHD also uses hot plates, which can heat up like a traditional straightener.

Having tested them, they are both good. As driers, they will both take your hair from wet to straight — the only drawback is that the hot air will not reach the root. The Airstrait can be used as a general hairdryer, however, and you can achieve a straight root by using a brush to create tension.

I was incredibly impressed by the soft, silky and shiny results achieved by the Airstrait, especially considering the absence of extreme heat in the air temperature. I’ve never encountered a less-damaging way to style your hair straight.

The benefit of the Duet Styler is that it also functions as a straightener — with the press of a button, the plates will heat up. You can then smooth any areas (like the roots) which aren’t as straight as you’d like them, or indeed curl or wave the hair as you could with any other straightener. This, however, is significantly more damaging to the hair, and the effectiveness of the Airstrait means I really didn’t need to smooth any areas other than the root.

Do you need to spend hundreds on a tool like this? Probably not if you’re not committed to straight hair. If, however, you regularly style your hair straight, you will see a significant improvement in your hair’s health by ditching the extreme temperatures of your straightener and swapping to the Airstrait.

Buying Irish

With Dubliner Deirdre McSharry’s experience as a fashion buyer and consumer goods executive, she knew she’d found something special when she encountered an incredibly fluffy and lightweight towel in a Chinese department store. Her discovery led her to the Japanese textile region of Imabari, where the towels had been manufactured, and her brand, Le Nudie, began. The range includes two products: the Air Face Cloth Trio (€24 via lenudie.com) and Air Face Rounds (€19 for eight via lenudie.com). Designed to be used forever, instructions are provided on how to clean them and care for them to achieve maximum longevity.

Something old…

It may feel like a long time since Britney Spears launched her first fragrance (2005, to be exact), but the line has been ticking away in the background while all of us aged (including Britney). Not only are the sweet scents still available, they’re still popular. A report in 2018 estimated that Spears still earned $50m per year from fragrance sales alone! Wouldn’t that be nice. Britney Spears Intimate Fantasy is a fruity floral fragrance which I immediately thought of when I smelled this week’s ‘something new’. It was originally released in 2015 but is still available, and popular, thanks to its fruity floral fragrance on a base of vanilla.

... Something new

Sol de Janeiro’s scents are nothing short of a phenomenon, particularly among young women. Over Christmas, I’m told, Brown Thomas was flooded with girls desperate to ensure the colourful bottles were in their stockings. It’s really something for a brand which originally came to most people’s attention via Brazilian Bum Bum Cream, a product which promises to deliver smoother, firmer skin on your body (yes, including your bum). There is no denying that the cream smells divine though, and the same can absolutely be said for the brand’s latest launch, Cheirosa 59 (€26.50 for a 90ml perfume mist via boots.ie), which includes notes of vanilla orchid, sugared violet and sheer sandalwood. Like the other options in the range, this is sweet and will be loved by teens and young women, but plenty of proper grown-ups will enjoy it too.