The blurb
The John Frieda Aldford Street salon has no sign above the door, no overt branding, just quiet, consistent excellence in hairdressing. It doesn’t even have a website, but the vast salon is packed to the rafters with word-of-mouth and repeat clients.
Keratin treatments aim to eliminate frizz and curl, offering immediate results to restore and restructure hair, making it more manageable, easier to style and noticeably softer, smoother, shinier and sleeker.
The process:
The lovely Melanie was bubbly, reassuring and warm. She was super sweet, and listened to my concerns about hair breakage when it’s combed after being triple-washed without conditioner (three deep cleanses are necessary for the treatment to penetrate the cuticle, but this stage often breaks my hair so badly it’s a toss up whether the treatment is worth doing at all). So she rough dried it before combing, which makes a huge difference.
My only criticism would be her statement that the treatment ‘doesn’t contain chemicals’, which is frankly ridiculous, as any chemist will tell you. Even water is a chemical. What she meant, I imagine, is that their product doesn’t contain the oh-so-effective-yet-toxic-and-now-illegal formaldehyde of old-school keratin treatments.
When I was first brought back from the wash station her assistant attempted to rake a comb through my triple-washed, unconditioned hair—needless to say I balked in the manner of someone who’d just been offered a puppy kebab. Bar this one oversight, he was equally friendly and good company—important when a treatment takes around three hours.
The salon is very large, too large for my taste—I find supersalons impersonal; in order to run smoothly there can be something of the conveyor belt, and it can feel more about the brand than the individual and what they want. But apart from its size, which is very much a personal preference, John Frieda Aldford Street is spotless, sleek and super-professional.
The result
My hair was left sleeker, shinier, but still with natural texture and body. Subtler than previous treatments I’ve had, my hair was still frizz-prone, but less so than before. My understanding is that while keratin treatments improve the hair while they’re active, some stronger ones can potentially damage the hair structure on a fundamental level, meaning that once it wears off the hair could be left in a worse state than it was originally. The fact that this one had a milder effect could correlate with lower damage long-term… I think.
Either way, my hair is silkier and more manageable, while still moving naturally. This encompasses the John Frieda ethos—subtle, natural-looking improvement, as opposed to loud, glaring artifice.
