The other day a PR company sent me a package, all pretty with tissue paper and a note that told me that I, too, could have hair like Eva Longoria. Digging deeper into the tissue, I retrieved a brush. A round brush. I thought pityingly of the life of a marketer and thought nothing more about it. Brushes do not interest me much. It was perhaps more than a week later that I thought I should at least try it out rather than leave it to gather dust. I loved it. The brush that got my attention is the Solano Plasmium Gelgrip Handle Thermal Round Brush ($28) and it has become a key weapon in my anti-frizz arsenal.

The Solano comes in two sizes (44mm and 38mm). I have the 44mm, which is perfect for giving my just-past-shoulder length hair a bouncy wave. Contrary to my first impression, the Solano Plasmium is not any old round brush. First it has a squishy handle that it calls the “Gelgrip.” This soft rubber is really comfortable, purports to reduce wrist fatigue and makes the brush easy to manipulate.

The next thing that puts your Solano above your mother’s hairbrush is that the barrel is made of ceramic tourmaline. This is a material that is used in some hairdryers (including mine, which I’ll come back to in a moment) and is a natural source of negative ions and electricity. The negative ions counterbalance the positive ions that come with frizz. One of things that they do is break down water molecules so that some of them are small enough to enter the hair shaft and your locks retain moisture.

The Solano’s bristles rake through the hair gently, don’t snag or tease the hair. So along with ionic effect of the tourmaline, this brush helps counteract frizz.  In this, it is greatly helped by my Sedu Revolution hairdryer. As I mentioned en passant, my hairdryer is also made from tourmaline. As well as helping the hair retain moisture on not get fried and frazzled, tourmaline’s negative ions help break down the water molecules and the hair dries much faster. My Sedu dries my hair in about half the time of my other dryer.

The fight against frizz is also helped by a dropper of Yarok’s Feed Your Shine Serum Drops. A simple formula of natural oils that I find works best on damp hair pre-styling.

All of which means that while I can’t claim to have Eva Longoria’s sleek coif, I no longer look like Janice Joplin at the end of a concert.