10 Magazine Issue 05: HEAD TRIP

PHOTOGRAPHS: MATHILDE LANGEVIN

Because your hair needs a spa day too.

Think about a classic facial: deep cleansing, exfoliating, smoothing, hydrating, all in the name of making your skin look and feel its best. But what if you took those steps and adapted them elsewhere? Enter the hair spa. From Barcelona to Beverly Hills, there’s a flush of new clinics and pampering treatments specifically geared to the scalp and hair.

Our skincare routines have been optimized to the hilt, and there’s no shortage of biohacking for every limb and organ in the body (as our story opposite highlights), so it makes perfect sense that we’ve become obsessed with getting to the root of things, literally. At the product level, you may have noticed that pretty much every brand is adding scalp exfoliators and serums to their lineups, and that the classic hairbrush has even come back into fashion—in large part thanks to brands like Crown Affair and La Bonne Brosse.

At a hair spa, your wash-and-dry regimen is taken to the next level. Though the products are vastly different, one diagnostic tool is used everywhere: the trichoscope. This intensely magnifying lens takes close-up photos of your scalp and follicles to assess things like dryness, redness, excess sebum, breakage, and density (the camera allows the technician to see things like exactly how many hairs are growing out of each follicle—two or three sprouting is a good sign, just one can be cause for concern). From there, treatment plans and product recommendations are made.

At the Hair Spa by Miriam Quevedo in Barcelona, the camera is put to use before clients are ushered to rooms nestled deep in the Mandarin Oriental hotel. Each one is a pink cocoon equipped with a vibrating red-light brush to stimulate the hair follicle. The treatments blend a mix of trichology (the study of the hair and scalp), ancient massage, and styling. They are done on horizontal beds, where one’s head is positioned at the edge of a sink, so washing and masks can be done while you rest.

Quevedo first became interested in treating hair while spending time at her mother’s apothecary. In 2005, she began formulating products to treat what she calls “the wrinkles of the hair,” damage that comes from things like age, pollution, heat, and stress. She utilizes everything from exosomes to peptides to biotech ingredients to feed and repair strands. “Beautiful hair,” she often says, “begins with a healthy scalp.”

OMI, meanwhile, is a new brand that got underway when the serial wellness entrepreneur Naomi Whittel saw a photo of herself with a visible scalp. Instead of panicking, she got to researching and debuted a line of peptide-centric capsules and gummies designed to fortify the hair cuticle so you can hang onto the strands you have while encouraging new growth. At the OMI Follicle Fitness Gym in Beverly Hills, just above Tracey Cunningham’s Mèche Salon, clients come for comprehensive follicle analysis and protocols. Density and growth are tracked at follow-up appointments.