By now, you may have seen the headlines that Blake Lively doesn’t use conditioner—spoiler alert, she uses a hair mask in its place—but that’s not her only unique hair hack. At the launch of her new brand, Blake Brown, she revealed a couple of her best tricks to getting her iconic, voluminous, effortless-looking hair, and one tip is something we definitely never thought of doing, but if Blake Lively swears by it, we’re taking an oath too.
We all love dry shampoo for its intended use, refreshing dirty, days-old hair, but Lively has another suggestion on how to use the hair-care staple. “I use it on clean hair because my hair can be quite soft and kind of ill-defined on a day that I wash my hair, so if I put some dry shampoo in it, it just gives it that extra oomph and volume,” she says.
While most people crave shiny, glossy styles, Lively says she loves a dry look. “I actively put tons of dry shampoo on fresh hair to give it that look because I love that grip to it.” This tracks with a philosophy she shares that she likes things that are both pretty and imperfect. “That’s what I like with hair. I’ll do it. And then I’ll just mess it up.” Of course, Lively also counts on dry shampoo for its original purpose, noting that the Blake Brown Amber Vanille Dry Shampoo ($20) is so good that “you could honestly let your hair get to questionable levels of you need to wash it.”
Another secret to her big, beautiful hair? Mousse. She knows most people think it’s kind of old school, but she credits a good mousse for quadrupling her hair in thickness and volume and helping the style hold for days, which is why she created the Blake Brown Blackcurrant Vanille Glam Mousse ($19). “Mousse is what makes your hair really voluminous where you don’t have to wear extensions, and it looks like you have this big fabulous hair,” she says. However, she notes that she only uses it if she’s going to put heat on her hair, not on your average air-dry day.
Lively’s hair’s reputation proceeds her, and she knows it. “I saw a meme recently that said ‘Serena van der Woodsen didn’t have a job, didn’t have anything but berries for breakfast, didn’t have a degree, and didn’t have a hairbrush,’” she says laughing. “I’m from California. I like to pass as a New Yorker, but I really have always had sort of beachy hair.”
The star says hair has always felt like the most constant thing in her life. “People used to chase my mom around trying to hand her a hairbrush like, ‘brush that kid’s hair.’” As a self-proclaimed shy person, Lively has found that hair is a way to express herself or, conversely, conceal herself. “If I’m feeling like I just want to breeze through the city and kind of be anonymous, I just tie my hair up, and oddly enough, literally just my hair being in a bun, I can walk around anonymously,” she says. “It makes you believe the Superman thing where he takes off his glasses, and they don’t know he’s Superman.”
