This is not a story about skincare, though it starts with a person who spends all day thinking about how things look on a face. Her name is Elena Doukas, the head designer at Garrett Leight, and during a trip to New York a few weeks ago she told me about a beauty hack I’d never heard before. I’m on the heels of almost a decade of working in beauty, and to hear something new, something I’d never considered before? Oh, baby. It’s the spice of life, and of my profession. “I hate sea salt sprays for my hair,” Elena said, “too drying.” But she still wanted the waves that those sprays delivered. Her solution? “Champagne. I spray a little on my hair every day.”

She had my ear. Salt sprays never really made much sense to me—salt, on your hair? Doesn’t that just sound drying? OK sure, the alcohol in champagne must certainly have a drying effect of its own, but Elena, who sprays her highlighted hair every single day with the stuff, says she hasn’t noticed it. She picked up the trick a long time ago from her old French teacher, who actually rinsed her curls with champagne after shampooing. Elena’s method is more conservative. Every two weeks she decants some cheap bubbly into a spray container, along with a few splashes of orange blossom oil because, “I don't want to smell like I just got done partying when I'm at an 8AM meeting.” Then she sprays away—all over her hair, every day. “It's like a sugar spray,” she explained. “It gives me texture—a nice wave—especially after I’ve sprayed it at night and get a chance to sleep with it.”

And so now I’m passing her little trick on to you. If you’re not in the mood for the DIY method, Cuvée sells a champagne spray with “champagne extracts” that promise to deliver tasteful texture to limp hair. It’s up to you on what you choose, but might I add that a bottle of André is only $6? Let's say you give the DIY a try, and you don’t like the results. You’ll be left with a bottle of champagne. Worse things have happened.

—Ashley Weatherford

Photo via ITG.