Picture this: You’re a college freshman and you’ve got lots of energy to try new things that offer very little value in return. You’re young! And that’s just what a youngin’ who’s avoiding several chapters of Moby Dick does. So you dye your hair (big mistake) using a box from the Target sale section (huge mistake), even though your hair has recently been treated with a relaxer (!!!). Honestly, you deserve what’s coming next.

Soon enough you notice that your pillowcase is accumulating an alarming amount of broken-off hairs. They’re sticking to your 200 thread count XL twin jersey sheets like Ahab on the idea of bold seafaring (ha, you read a little!). You do a little Googling...and you switch to a silk pillowcase. Except that it’s not silk silk (you’re in college and that semi-weekly check from the Levi’s store is what, $250, max?). It’s some man-made blend that’s got a little bit of natural silk in it, along with what you think is polyester. Does your hair break less? Absolutely. Is your hair less frizzy? Certainly! Should you have splurged for the expensive silk made from silkworms who eat a balanced breakfast and went to a good school? Only if it came in a cool color or design that you just had to have.

You don’t need the expensive, most luxurious, 1 million momme, Golden Globe Award-winning silk pillowcase for soft, less breakage-prone hair. This is what I discovered many years ago when I had no money but a hell of a lot of split ends. It truly does not matter what kind of royal family silkworms your “silk” pillowcase came from. Your hair does not care if your pillowcase was sourced from the Beyoncé of insects. It just needs something smooth enough to not snag and snap it. Even when you look at it from a skincare lens (which is really hanging on by a thread here—jury’s still out on whether a silk pillowcase does a wrinkle-free face any good), you only need to concern yourself with the actual texture of the fabric and not the size of that momme number (momme weight is the silk equivalent of thread count). Which is why these days I recommend the cheapest ones I can find on Amazon. Right now it’s this $22 one from SLPBABY—I have it in Ivory. Sure, 100-percent silk, high momme weight pillowcases might be a little softer and smoother and generally feel more luxurious than the cheap alternatives, but $90 for one pillowcase? In this economy? Just head over to Amazon and call it a night.

—Ashley Weatherford

Photo via ITG