I have stick-straight hair, and a lot of it, at that. The first time I went to Seoul, over a decade ago, I made it my mission to get a cheap magic perm, in which natural-looking waves would simply cascade down my head, even after six months with zero product. That first time, I got my hair done at a teaching salon called something like Hair Art and paid under $30 for the perm — and that included a cut. My hair looked incredible.
I was spoiled by the experience, and as much as I wanted to get a new perm once my hair grew out, I couldn’t justify paying over $200 for it in the States. But I still wanted the occasional head of curls, especially for the inevitable tidal wave of weddings coming my way. I’d never owned a curling iron before I bought the Remington Pro Curling Wand and became (almost) a hair genius.
Instead of fussing with getting your strands into the clip as with a traditional curling iron, all you had to do was wrap your hair around the barrel of the wand, hold for a few seconds, then release it. Depending on how much hair you grabbed and how tightly you wound it, the curls would range from bouncy to wavy to tight corkscrews. The power was in your hands.
The last time I went to Seoul a couple of years ago, I couldn’t locate Hair Art, which had most likely shuttered, so I ended up going to a fancy salon that charged me more for my perm than I had ever paid for my hair. Long gone were the days of a sub-$40 perm. My hair did look phenomenal, but this trip to the salon was definitely a splurge. When it grew out, though, I knew I’d be going back to the Remington, which yielded nearly the same waves but for a fraction of the cost and time spent under a dryer hood.
Alison Freer called the rotating Beachwaver curling iron a “miracle gadget” for its ability to produce “loose, beachy waves” found on Victoria’s Secret Angels and women on television alike. All you have to do is insert a portion of hair into the clamp then press a button to rotate the barrel, which does all the work for you. It also happens to be on sale for Prime Day — and comes with a few accessories.
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