Pop quiz: What’s the downside of every curling iron? If your answer is waiting for it to heat up, you’re wrong (although that can be annoying too, especially if you’re late to class). The answer, of course, is the damage it does to our precious strands. But a life without curling irons would be a life without Kim Kardashian-West-inspired waves. So what’s a collegiette to do? Enter: Forstyler’s Hair Twister ($39.99), a hair dryer-attachable styler that simultaneously dries and curls hair.
After my shower, I dried my roots and left the rest of my wet hair untouched as the pictorial on the back of the box advised. I attached the blue barrel to my hair dryer and after that, I will admit I was a tad clueless. Initially, I thought I had to manually wrap sections of hair around the twister (what looks like a squiggly black stick) then insert it into the barrel for it to dry/curl my hair. Much to my delight, I was terribly mistaken—all I needed to do was take a section of my hair and fit it into the opening of the barrel then turn my dryer on. And so I did.
I watched in awe as the air from the dryer forced my wet hair to cling to the twister. I left my dryer on for about a minute and a half then removed that section of hair from the barrel to see it had been transformed into a soft, tight curl. You’re probably thinking: Well what if I want loose, beachy waves, the key to which requires curling your hair in alternating directions? Located on the barrel is a switch that lets you control the direction of air that flows from your dryer. I proceeded to dry-curl the rest of my hair with the Twister, alternating this valve as I went along.
It took me exactly sixteen minutes to finish dry-curling my entire head of medium-length hair. I ran my fingers through the curls from roots to ends. The curls didn’t appear as polished as they do when I use a curling iron, but I attribute this to my hair being naturally wavy and frizzy, which the intense heat of a curling iron does a good job at taming. But with major heat comes major damage to my hair—the reason I'll be using the Twister a lot more (yay for softer hair!). Afterwards, I ran Nioxin’s Definition Creme with Lightplex ($15.00) through the curls to flatten flyaways and banish frizz, and below is the result.
If every collegiette could ask a beauty genie for one thing, I’m pretty sure it would be the Twister. Its ability to curl and add body to hair much like a curling iron sans added heat damage is remarkable. But the number one reason this product is a must-have in my book is its simplicity. Unlike with a curling iron, you don’t have to wait ten minutes for it to cool down before packing it in your bag. Best of all—you will never burn yourself again.
Would you ditch your curling iron and give the Twister a go?