Wella - Elements Hair Strengthening Serum 3.38 oz

When I was using this it was ok but it seemed to work better on my curls than for straightening..didn't help with frizz tho either. Glad I had gotten this for free at the time.

I received this product for free from my salon after my stylist gave me a bad haircut (very unusual for her). It's definitely not my favorite way to receive free products, but at least the salon gave me some compensation for my hair trauma! Anyway, this mousse comes in a very tall can that is completely useless for travel and even awkward on my vanity at home (and it's too tall to fit in my medicine cabinet). The one thing I love about the packaging is the dispensing mechanism, which I find easier to use than your usual mousse nozzle. As for the product, it claims to be strong hold, but fortunately for me, it has only a light hold (which is all I need). It's alcohol-free, which is great for my highlights, but sometimes it seems a little too heavy for my fine hair. I also hate the fragrance, which reminds me a little of men's cologne. Overall, this just doesn't come close to my (current) favorite mousse--KMS AMP Volume Alcohol Free Styling Foam, which has a pleasant pear fragrance. I'll finish the can I have, but this isn't a product I'll purchase. Ingredients: water, hydrofluorocarbon 152a, propane, butane, polyquaternium-11, laureth-4, peg-25 paba, panthenol, cetrimonium chloride, fragrance. continued >>

I like this product when I know for certain that I'm going to straighten. It seems to make it really shiny, and steams off well. When I want to leave it curly it does nothing for definition or frizz. I like it in conjunction with a curly product so I can wear my hair curly for a few hours and then straighten it that evening when it's dry. By the way, it's a very lightweight product.

I liked this product for awhile when I was wearing my hair straight. It didn't seem to work as a dual product for my wavy/curly hair since it is very fine and just seemed to weight it down.

The more I experiment with other varieties of hair-straightening product, the more I realize the merits of this one in particular. I have voluminous and tri-textured (that would be straight near the scalp, wavy along the hairline and in same cases all the way down to the ends, and curly at the ends in other places) hair that really needs to be "reckoned with" in a serious way when it comes to the straightening process. No gel-based straightener is up to the task, nor are many of the cream-based substances I've tried; I suspect it's because most of these don't have enough hold built into the formulation. In other words, with these various other products my hair stays very straight and smooth for about as long as it takes for my blow dryer to cool down and then it commences going curly-wavy-frizzy. By contrast, the Cross Trainer has some kind of a subtly gluey thing going on, a stickiness that helps it do the job yet leaves only run-your-fingers-through-it, lasting sleekness as the end result. (I will admit that as a trade-off, it doesn't leave my hair quite as glossy as some other straighteners do probably because that same glueyness that works so well to straighten has a slightly dulling effect but it's nothing that a spritz or two of something like Bumble gloss spray can't fix.) Don't know anywhere near enough about chemistry to know what exactly in the Wella helps it achieve this result, but it seems to be unique to this product, at least in my experience.