At the tail end of last summer, I ended a hot but ultimately destructive ten year relationship. I gave up using my hair straighteners for good. I'd always envied those 'oh, I don't really do anything to it' girls, whose straight, glossy hair actually looks like it's been attended to by Jennifer Aniston's loyal stylist. ‘I just leave it to dry naturally', they'd humbly crow. ‘It’s so boring though’. Boring is definitely not something you could call my hair, although shaping the erratic pouf of irregular curls into anything that doesn’t make me look like Barry Gibb circa 1979 is certainly tedious.

But when quality ceramic straighteners hit the mass market a decade or so ago, smooth, shiny hair was suddenly well within my reach and I, like many others, straightened it into a glossy mane worthy of the hair-tosses Beyoncé did in the Crazy in Love video. It was amazing and I devotedly straightened the frizz right out of my hair almost daily for years to come until one day, it snapped. Literally.

All that heat might helped me achieve the style I wanted, but it’s also seriously damaging if not used sparingly. Addiction to it came at a cost, in the form of broken lengths, split ends, and a total inability to ever grow my hair past my shoulders. 

"I straightened it into a glossy mane worthy of the hair-tosses Beyoncé did in the Crazy in Love video."

‘It’s very hard to wean someone off hair straighteners because they are basically like drugs’ Sidney Sinclair, stylist at the Aveda Institute, sympathetically notes when I tell her of my woes. ‘No matter what anyone does, even professionally, you’re never going to get that flat, sleek ironed look’. For the good of my hair health, it was time to retire my straighteners to the great salon in the sky and that meant learning to love my hair in its natural state. 

‘The idea of natural texture doesn’t exist anymore’ super-stylist Paul Windle, one half of London salon duo Windle & Moodie, told me when I sought his words of wisdom. Thanks to our new-found ability to achieve (albeit, damagingly) beautifully coiffed Gisele hair, ‘there’s a desire to be so finished all the time now’. He continues, ‘what was once an American blow-dry trend has caught on here and people want this insanely manicured look’. The problem is though, ‘90% of women don’t have time for that pursuit of perfection and glamour. It’s political, working women can’t keep it up!’ he laughs. As such, Windle’s on a one-man mission to ‘talk clients into accepting their natural texture’, insisting that ‘If you get a good haircut every 8 weeks then the shape should sit well and the texture will look good’.

I’m dubious as I tell him that I’m simply cursed with really wild hair, only to eat my words when a good soak in Bumble & Bumble’s Quench range and his expert scissor work leave my hair looking desirably ‘beachy’ messy as opposed to the head-first into a hedge kind. 

Lucy Welling, senior stylist at Percy & Reed’s new Shoreditch outpost agrees that a fresh cut is key, and when she gives my still heat-ravaged ends a trim eight weeks later, I actually leave the salon feeling almost like it’s starting to look longer as continued cutting makes it increasingly less rambunctious.

But let’s not pretend this is all plain sailing. There have been strings of sad-face emoji illustrated iMessages to friends detailing my ‘terrible hair trauma’, and a lot of compensatory red lipstick as I’ve learned to love and rehabilitate my acquired-taste hair. When you get a spot on your skin you can cover it with make-up, and if you put on weight you can alter your wardrobe to better flatter, but there’s no hiding from your hair – its recovery must be made in full view and that's feels incredibly exposing. 

There’s only one word you need to know when it comes to hair rehab, and that’s protein. ‘The best way I can describe hair, is like having a house’, Aveda’s Sinclair explains. ‘You take some bricks away [which in hair terms means any kind of messing with it – styling, colouring and what-not], it becomes a bit wobbly and doesn’t know what it wants to do’. Protein then, in the form of reconstructing products such as Aveda’s Damage Remedy range, is what can be used to fill in those missing bricks and build hair back up. ‘You can do it yourself at home, but a professional one will rock your world as it’s more bespoke and intense’ she continues. ‘We have a botanical express treatment which is a mist that's able to penetrate right into the cuticle of the hair and make it stronger from within’. Said treatment did indeed leave my hair feeling stronger and looking shinier, as did a dose of L’Oreal Professional’s Fiberceutic fiber-filling treatment, touted as the ‘botox for hair’, at the impossibly luxurious Neville’s Hair in the spa of Mayfair’s Bulgari Hotel.

"It was time to retire my straighteners to the great salon in the sky and that meant learning to love my hair in its natural state."

It’s now been four months, three trims and more protein than you’d find in Hulk Hogan’s fridge since I ended things with the love of my beauty-life, and things are going strong. Sure, I’ve had the odd sneaky straighten (Fashion Week and excessively humid weather made me do it), and only time can turn broken lengths into flowing tresses, but I’ve begun to believe that there is nice hair after straighteners. ‘Embracing your natural texture is actually quite liberating’, Windle tried to convince me, when I sceptically allowed his assistant to blow-dry freestyle. But do you know what? I think he’s right.