Marie Claire UK Hair Awards 2021: Styling Winners
When it comes to getting creative with your hair, you are only ever as good as the tools you have at your disposal.
You can tease, backcomb and straighten to your heart's content, but it's the best styling products that can make or break a hair style.
Luckily, we've found the best of the best...
Best Texturiser
Winner: Alterna Caviar Professional Styling Perfect Texture Spray, £31.95
This is like if a dry shampoo married a hair spray and they had a baby. It adds just the right amount of texture to the root, body to the lengths and holds it there. And thankfully, it doesn't leave behind any powdery residue, which so many other texturisers do.
Best Hairspray
Winner: Alterna My Hair. My Canvas. City Slay Shielding Hairspray, £27.05
This hairspray is multi-talented. It acts as a heat protector, it shields against pollution and stops hair from getting out of control in high humidity. All the while, being a cracking buildable spray that holds your hair in place.
Runner up: Indola Act Now Hairspray
Best Heat Protecting Product
Winner: Bumble and bumble Hairdresser's Invisible Oil Heat/UV Protective Primer, £24
Bumble and bumble's Invisible Oil range is outstanding and it is no surprise to us that their Heat/UV Protector Primer is a winner here. It can be used as a leave-in conditioning product or on dry hair to protect. Hair is left soft, supple and glossy. One judge marvelled at its ability to really make 'a difference to the finished result.'
Runner up: Aussie SOS Heat Saviour Conditioning Spray
Best Hair Oil
Winner: Chãmpo Weightless Hair Oil, £24
This 100% naturally derived hair oil smells incredible. It should win the award purely based on that, but of course it does so much more than smell nice. It leaves hair feeling so soft and nourished and looking oh-so shiny.
Runner up: Kérastase Elixir Ultime L'Original Hair Oil, £39.90
Runner up: Schwarzkopf Professional Oil Ultime Barbary Fig Finishing Oil, £22.24
Best Styling Product For Natural/Textured Hair
Winner: Charlotte Mensah Manketti Oil Pomade, £52
This is so much richer than your typical pomade - it's buttery and creamy, which is exactly what curls crave. However, if you're worried that it'll weigh hair down, don't. It's weightless on the strands and adds definition and shine to your spirals. Oh and to top it all off, it smells delicious.
Runner up: Curlsmith Hydro Style Flexi-Jelly, £23
Best Curl Enhancer
Winner: Color Wow Dream Coat For Curly Hair, £25
Colorwow's Dream Coat is one of those staple beauty cupboard products and their version for curls is no different. It contains the brand’s proprietary Elasta-flex™, which basically makes this a formula that moisturises, conditions and de-frizzes. The super lightweight, alcohol-free mist leaves curls feeling soft, refreshed and bouncy.
Runner up: Curlsmith Weightless Air Dry Cream, £22
Best Shine Product
Winner: Function Of Beauty Custom Hair Serum, £29
Function of Beauty allows you, the customer, to tailor your products to suit your needs. This hair serum is made using a universal base that enhances shines, smoothes frizz and flyaways and makes hair more manageable. You can then customize it to your own hair's demands - dry and thirsty, coloured and damaged, and so on.
Runner up: Bumble and bumble Hairdresser's Invisible Oil Dry Oil Finishing Spray, £26
Best Dry Shampoo
Winner: Living Proof Perfect Hair Day Dry Shampoo, £19
If you thought that all dry shampoos were created equal, you were wrong. So very, very wrong. Living Proof's Triple-Action Cleaning Technology is incredibly smart. First off, there are powders that absorb sweat and oil, then this whizzy molecule removes those powders from your hair. Pair that with the odour neutralisers and what you have left is a head of clean hair that smells fresh.
Runner up: Klorane Dry Shampoo with Oat Milk, £9
Best Split-End Treatment
Winner: Monat Rejuvabeads Split End Mender, £45
Split-ends are the antithesis of sleekness. No matter how healthy the rest of your hair is, if the ends aren't playing ball you can forget a smooth look. So imagine our judging panels joy when they found that this highly concentrate treatment seemed to banish breakage altogether.
Runner up: L'Oréal Professionnel Série Expert Pro Longer Ends Filler Concentrate, £8
Best Volumiser
Winner: Nioxin Diaboost Xtrafusion Treatment, £50.60
When you seek volume, you don't just want you hair to look thicker, you want it to feel thicker. This leave-in treatment does just that. Its rather clever technology actually thickens each strand's diameter. It also creates the appearance of up to 11,000 more hair strands.
Runner up: Rossano Ferretti Parma Grandioso Volumizing Spray, £32
Best Blow-Dry Product
Winner: Sebastian Professional Potion 9, £27.20
Products to help improve your blow-dries are so often overlooked. But they shouldn't be. Especially this one. Potion 9 does all the hard work for you, so all you have to do is hold the hair dryer. There are nine active botanical actives in the formula, which look after and care for your hair. Then there's the styling technology that has flexible hold that allows hair to be styled multiple ways.
Runner up: Color Wow Dream Coat, £25
