As already mentioned elsewhere, I’ve always had the kind of frizzy hair that would make a population explosion in a triffid patch look restrained, so unlike most other girls I actually began crimping my hair because it made it look straighter, rather to boost it’s body. This was in the early eighties, when straighteners weren’t widely available – if you didn’t crimp, you curled. My first set of Babyliss crimpers made such a positive impact on my life and confidence that I haven’t been without one since.
These days I’m more likely to reach for my straighteners on a morning simply because it’s quicker, which is important by the time you’ve had four kids, but for a night out it’s got to be my crimpers, which are currently the Babyliss 2165BU Pro Crimper 210.
Babyliss Crimpers
Babyliss styling tools aren’t generally thought of as being up there with trendsetters like GHD or even Tresemme, but I’m convinced that this is as much down to how cheap Babyliss tools are as it is down to the performance of their competitors. In my experience, Babyliss crimpers might well be cheap (and they are), but for the most part they are every bit as durable and effective as their competitors. I have owned five sets of Babyliss Crimpers since my first, and since the most recent is only a couple of months old, this gives them an average life span of seven years.
Performance-wise, I’ve only ever been slightly disappointed with one, a three in one effort with interchangeable plates, two were for different sizes of crimp and the other was a straightener. It’s often the case that multi-function appliances aren’t as efficient as those that simply target one function well, and for me these were no exception. I found the straightener plates to be useless (I suspect this was because my hair is too thick and they just weren’t long enough to grip that kind of volume), but there was nothing wrong with my regular sized crimping plates and I got nine years use out of these crimpers until they dropped dead just before Christmas.
Typically, I was just about to head off to see Buster Bloodvessel and Bad Manners in what turned out to be their farewell tour. Who goes to an eighties revival gig with straight hair? Not a situation I was going to let happen again in a hurry, so a few days later I was clutching the Babyliss 2165BU Pro Crimper 210 in my hands and eager to play with my new toy.
The Babyliss Pro Crimper
Unlike the crimpers of a decade or so ago, these heat up pretty much instantly and so I didn’t have to wait long. There are four different heat settings, but since my hair is so thick I always use the maximum (210 degrees C) and so can’t comment on the rest. The crimps were crisp and perfectly defined, and just the right size – too large and the results are more like waves than crimps, too small and you risk looking like a poodle. Three days later, the crimps were still in my hair, although there was a bit less definition by then.
My only reservation with the Babyliss Pro crimper is that the on/off switch is on the side, rather than on the top, which is where switches used to be on the more prehistoric models I’ve owned. This happens to be right where I put my thumb when I’m holding it in my hair, and so it’s a bit too easy to turn it off while I’m using it. This might well just be a ‘me’ thing – I’m told that I hold my pen oddly too when I write, and I’ve not seen any of the the dozens of reviewers of the Babyliss 2165BU Pro Crimper 210 on Amazon complain about the placement of this switch.
An Alternative To A Heat Proof Mat For Hair Straighteners And Crimpers
One thing that I have seen them complain about though is that the design of the crimpers means that they keep falling over whenever you put them down. They don’t come with a heat proof mat, so this potentially means a lot of burnt, scorched or melted surfaces. Back in the days of Rubik’s Cubes and ra-ra skirts, a hair straightener mat was as unheard of then as straighteners were. Crimpers were generally much wider and so didn’t fall over unless they were in the hands of someone as clumsy as me.
I soon learned to rest crimpers across the top of a large glass ashtray – the type with little indentations on the edge where smokers are supposed to rest a burning cigarette will prevent crimpers or straighteners from spinning around on their cords and falling on the floor. You can use the ashtray to hold your sectioning grips if you use them. I’ve seen a cheap heat proof mat that folds up for travelling and keep thinking of buying it to take away on holiday, and if I ever get round to that then I’ll demote my ashtray, but so far it has not been a priority.
Hair Crimping Tips
Me and my various Babyliss crimpers have been through a lot together, and I’ve learned a few things with them along the way.
- Pretty much my first discovery was that hair has to be bone dry, for me at least, before I can crimp it effectively. I’m not just talking about going beyond that disturbing point where you can hear hissing and see steam rising from faintly damp hair either. Even when I think I’ve dried my hair thoroughly with a hair dryer first it’s usually not enough to stop crimps falling out by the end of the evening. If I know I’m going to be crimping my hair then I will wash and blow dry it straight with heat protecting serum the day before. This results in better definition and crimps that last much longer.
- Crimp hair that isn’t heavy with product. I’ve known quite a few people who insist on plastering their hair with hairspray or mousse before crimping, insisting that it produced better results. My sister used to be the worst offender, and although her crimps were indeed long-lasting, the same could not have been said for her locks, which suffered quite a lot from breakage and splitting. I often pushed open the door of her room (which usually smelt of fried hair) to find her scouring away at her crimpers in an attempt to remove the build up of baked on hairspray. A small amount of heat protection serum should be fine, but it’s kinder to your hair and to your crimpers not to put anything else on.
- Crimp close together, but don’t crimp your crimps. Try to crimp each section of the length of your hair pretty close to where you crimped the last, but err on the side of leaving a tiny gap between your crimps rather than risk overlapping, as this makes the smaller and uneven crimps which create the ‘poodle look’, even without taking the additional risk of heat damage into consideration.
- Crimp as close to the roots as possible to create more body, and a little further away for less. The one thing my hair has never needed is extra body, and so it was with gratitude that I realised that I needn’t look like something out of The Hair Bear Bunch if my crimps started a little bit further away from my roots. If this is important to you too but you want to look like your hair is closely crimped to the roots, just do it to the top layer and start your crimping a bit further from the roots for the layers beneath.
Babyliss crimpers are cheap, and even if you’re not a hardened and regular crimper they make such a fun and inexpensive way of ringing the changes that I think they should be part of every woman’s hair styling tool collection. You can buy the Babyliss 2165BU Pro Crimper 210 here.