I spent a year asking the wrong person
Ask a woman of sixty five what she does to her hair and she will tell you the truth. The truth is that she does almost nothing, and she is not being modest about it. I asked, more than once, in the slightly lowered voice you use when you would rather not be caught asking. Nothing, really. Same shampoo for twenty years. My mother had it too. Every answer was honest and every answer was useless, and it took me an embarrassing length of time to work out why. I was asking the woman.
This page is written by VALEVA. The lines set in quotation marks are from letters our customers wrote to us, printed word for word and published with their permission.
It moves the way this kind of thing has always moved. Sideways. From a colourist to the woman in her chair, from a mother to a daughter, from one end of a lunch table to the other, and never once from a stage.
Somebody at this table knows. She is not going to be the one who tells you.
The answer is never in the woman you asked
It is in whoever touches her hair for a living, and in the two or three other women that person also touches. A colourist keeps a list of names she does not publish. Some of it is craft, some of it is superstition, and one or two things on it are simply true. The way you find out which is which is that the same name keeps arriving at you from women who have never met each other.
That is the entire distribution system in this category above a certain age. Not a campaign. A sentence said quietly to somebody sitting in a chair.
We know the shape of it because our customers keep writing to tell us who asked them about it, and it is the same four people every time.
“My colorist asked what I’d changed when I came in for my last appointment; the color is holding longer between sessions and the hair has a sheen to it that I hadn’t had in years.” Eleanor V., 62
“I want it to look cared for without looking done. This oil does exactly that: a little in the morning, and by evening it looks as though I’d spent an hour on it, which I hadn’t. My hairdresser has noticed, and her opinion is the only one I’ve ever trusted on the subject.” Catherine H., 58
“My daughter bought me this for my birthday, and I’ll admit I was skeptical, I’m not a woman who does things to her hair. But it’s simple: a few drops in the morning, and that’s all there is to it. The hair looks softer, and I get compliments from women my own age, which are the only ones who notice these things.” Patricia G., 68
“The oil itself does what it says: the shine holds through a week of fittings and travel, and my stylist has stopped suggesting I try something new. That’s the highest compliment she knows how to give.” Elizabeth W., 45
Nothing to see, which is the point
Here is the only argument on this page, and it is also the reason the thing stays quiet when nobody is trying to keep it quiet.
Everything you can see of your hair is finished work. It was made underneath, weeks ago, and nothing done along its visible length changes what it was made of. You can wash it, cut it, colour it and light it kindly, and it is still the same material it was on the day it was built. The one part of your hair still being made this week is the part under the hair, where nobody looks and nothing photographs.
So that is where the two or three minutes go, and it never turns into an event. No appointment, no day it happened, nothing to show anybody afterwards. A woman doing this has genuinely nothing to report, which is why the honest answer to the question is nothing, really.
What she is doing, in full: about a millilitre of a botanical oil on damp hair after the shower, worked into the skin under the hair for two or three minutes, three to five times a week. Some women leave it in daily instead. Nine ingredients, and all nine are printed on a small glass bottle that sits on the counter looking like nothing in particular.
It looks like nothing in particular on a counter, which is most of the reason nobody has ever asked her about it.
The other side of the question
There is a moment in almost every one of these letters and it is always the same moment. Somebody asks. A colourist, a friend, a woman at the next table who has been meaning to say something for a month. And the answer is nothing, really, delivered with a completely straight face, because it happens to be true.
For a long time I stood on the asking side of that exchange. It is not a good place to stand. You get an honest answer you cannot use, you feel faintly ridiculous for having asked, and a year later you ask somebody else.
The other side is not a secret and it is not clever. It is a few minutes on damp hair, three to five times a week, starting tonight.
The one thing at that table nobody can borrow for the afternoon.
The good answer is a boring one
Nothing on your head today can be argued with. It is finished, and it will go on being finished until it has grown out. The only part of this anybody can still act on is the part being made this week, underneath, in the minutes after a shower, and that part is either being kept in condition or it is not.
Two or three minutes. Three to five times a week. On damp hair, into the skin, and then you go and get on with your evening. The label, the nine ingredients and the number are one click away.
And when somebody finally asks you what you have been doing, you get to say nothing, really, and mean it.
Buy Golden Oil