Vain Glorious Going to Great Lengths

Ricardo RojasThe author, extended.

If you’ve been noticing more and more women sporting longer, impossibly perfect locks, it’s not your imagination. Hair extensions are practically de rigueur. The newest are Platinum Seamless Hair Extensions, which are tiny, sticky strips applied to the hair in under two hours (not the seven or eight that other methods require), and are said to be less damaging to hair and more natural looking. Stylists say these last up to three months, which is just as well. Platinum can cost $2 France Soccer Jersey,500 — no small chunk of change. At Ricardo Rojas, one of the few salons offering Platinum, that fee includes color match, installation, cut and styling. I tried them out last week and Rojas, whose clients include Eva Longoria and Bar Rafaeli, told it to me straight: “You don’t need these.” But now that I have them, I know why women become addicted. My hair attracted a bizarre amount of attention, so much that I decided it deserved its own diary.

MONDAY: Dinner with a girlfriend at Minetta Tavern, who squeals when she sees me and declares that it makes me look “at least six years younger.”

TUESDAY: My postman, who never even says hello, cocked his head at me and pronounced, “You look very nice today.”

WEDNESDAY: My husband asked me to stand in front of a fan and pretend it’s a wind machine, à la Beyoncé. It occurs to me that the amount of attention my hair is receiving is strange, bordering on freaky, but I continue to wear it loose, tumbling down my shoulders.

THURSDAY: At Café Falai over a beet salad, the woman perched next to me asked who did my hair. She offered me a pen and paper to write it down.

FRIDAY: My 4-year-old son, Jack, told me: “Mommy, you look like a mermaid princess.” Later that night, on the dance floor at Mr H at the Mondrian Soho, a girl with very long, white-blond hair approached me and asked if mine were Platinum. She has worn extensions for years (first clip-ons, then a brand called Great Lengths and then Platinum, which she swears by). She “lost” much of her natural hair when the other types of extensions were removed.

SATURDAY: At Joni’s in Montauk, N.Y., breeze blowing, I heard a woman behind me discussing my hair. That’s a first. “The curl is too perfect,” she said. Her friend, a handsome guy, said, “I like it.” Bonus: Big hair is a total distraction from no makeup, and wearing the same dress all weekend at the beach.

SUNDAY: A mom friend with a new baby, and thinner locks, saw my hair and said: “Sign me up. I need hair, and I need to feel hot again.”

Of course, being a mermaid princess is not all fairy tales. The extra hair is damn heavy, and incredibly hot unless it’s up in a ponytail (which was Rojas’s idea — French chic for summer). Running your fingers through your hair close to the scalp may reveal the strips used to layer extensions onto your own hair, but they are otherwise undetectable. The key is the positioning of the extensions, which are made from real hair, along with an expert cut and color, Rojas says. The downside is you still have to style your own hair, and depending on hair type (wavy, straight), that might mean blow-drying and then using a curling iron on your own hair. The extensions need no work at all but can get a little knotted. Blowouts need to be gentle, with no brutal tugging. It is easy to look a little like a wild lioness if hair is not tamed. That works for some. A man stopped me on the street with a clear focus on my mane. “Wow. Can I touch your hair?” Extension fetish?

Go to ricardorojassalon.com or platinumseamless.com.