the dyson airwrap i.d. and the blowout that died in a parking lot

The last salon blowout I paid for died in the parking lot of the wedding I bought it for. Eighty five dollars, forty minutes under a dryer hood, and then one ride in a car with the windows cracked and my cousin's dehumidifier-less venue and it was gone. Fringe. A texture I did not choose. I sat in the passenger seat touching it like it was a dead houseplant.

That was june. The airwrap came home in january.

the honest bit, wince included

I paid $649.99 plus tax for the airwrap i.d. in the straight and wavy long set, in prussian blue, full price, straight from dyson's website, no code, no sale, because I have never once in my life caught a sale on the thing I want. The i.d. is the 2024 version with the app and the smarter barrels, and the same money buys either version, which is the least helpful pricing I have ever studied.

For the record, I have since watched the price wander down to $550 and dip to $520 on labor day, and yes, I felt the specific feeling of a person who paid full freight. Anyway. It has been on my bathroom counter for a year and a half and this is what happened.

what i actually care about, in order of care

The barrels are a magic trick and the trick has a tutorial. Air comes out of the side of the barrel and drags your hair around it like water going down a drain, no clamp, no hot plate, no burning your ear. The first week I produced limp waves that looked like a shrug. Somewhere in week three, mid-podcast, the hair caught and wrapped itself and I stood there with my mouth open. It took that long. Nobody at dyson will tell you the learning curve is three weeks, so I am telling you.

The app is the part I rolled my eyes at and then obeyed. It syncs over bluetooth and hands you wrap times and styling times based on your hair type and length, like a tiny balding stylist in your phone. I thought it was a gimmick for people who buy connected water bottles. Then I learned from it that I had been giving my curls half the time they needed, which explained eighteen years of hair that fell out of shape before I got to the car.

The cool shot is the whole secret ❄️ There is a setting at the end that blasts cold air to set the style, and for the first month I skipped it because it was late and I was tired and I wanted my bed. That is why my curls lasted exactly one hour. Thirty extra seconds of cold air and the same style holds through a full workday. This is the least glamorous sentence on this blog and the most useful one.

The heat is low on purpose. The barrels top out way cooler than a flat iron, the kind of temperature that does not make hair smell like a burnt haystack, and my ends have visibly calmed down since I switched. The trade is speed. This is not a fast tool, and if you are a person who styles at 7:15am for a 7:30 meeting, it will not be your tool.

The cord got fixed and the case is still a monster. The older airwrap had a brick halfway down the cord that slammed into the wall, and the i.d. finally built the adapter into the plug, which made the whole thing feel less like operating machinery. The storage case, though, is the size of a small suitcase and it lives under my bed with the wrapping paper and a rolodex of old stickers. Every bathroom cabinet I know is too shallow for it.

It will not hold every head of hair, and the price is the price. Thick hair that refuses to hold a curl tends to shrug this off, and smoother styles on coily hair may want more heat than this machine will give. My hair gives up at hour six on a humid august day, and no barrel changes the weather. At six hundred fifty dollars, that is a lot of asterisk to attach to a purchase, and I would rather say it than not.

the blowout economy, a tangent

Here is what I did with my numbers last winter, out of pure curiosity: I counted four salon blowouts in a year at about $85 each, $340 total, all for events where I was photographed and wanted to feel like a person who has her life together. The styler cost $649.99, so the math only balances if you actually use it, the way a gym membership only balances. What surprised me is that it stopped being about the math. Sunday night, one playlist, the barrels, thirty seconds of cold air, and my hair behaves for most of the week. I stopped wanting the salon version, and I have not been back for a blowout since the parking lot.

My coworker with the cold brew ordered a $75 travel dryer last spring and told me "it's about the ceremony." She is right and I think about it in the shower.

the soft landing

I keep meaning to do the full curly routine on my one wavy friend who keeps asking, the long version with all the attachments laid out on the counter like surgery, and every time we schedule it one of us

The truest thing: this is the most expensive way I have ever found to feel like the version of myself from the salon chair, in my own bathroom, in socks, and that is worth more than the number on the receipt.

go be gentle with your ends

ava