Strange and wondrous things happen at MIT's Langer Lab. This is where renowned engineer Bob Langer perfected a Necco-esque polymer wafer that is used to treat, among other things, brain cancer (surgeons implant it post-op to continuously release medicine while cutting off blood supply to a tumor, inhibiting regrowth). It's also where Langer's team of 100 or so students and scientists—who, incidentally, look more like Abercrombie extras than the pocket-protected nerds one might imagine—chip away, day after day, at the next big breakthroughs: artificial pancreases, biodegradable cardiac stents, synthetic nerves and cartilage, and miraculous new...hair thickeners?
Can it be that Langer and his team are so finely attuned to the winds of fashion that, like us, they sense the reemerging necessity of lush, glamorous volume (Veruschka, Raquel Welch, Sophia Loren, Pam Grier, Marilyn—indeed, all of the most potent sex symbols of our time)? Doubtful. But Langer is a world-famous problem-solver. And last year, he and a group of scientists and investors introduced Living Proof, a brand that aims to tackle mankind's biggest beauty problems using never-before-seen (in the cosmetics realm, at least) molecules. Their first assignment: Quell loathsome static. Judging by the response received, ELLE readers are already hooked on Living Proof No Frizz, a silicone-free smoother that debuted last year.
Joining the beauty biz yields funding for MIT, but Langer is also hooked on another aspect of the industry: speed. "With a medical discovery, it takes 20 years from when you find something interesting until it becomes widely available," he says. "Here, in just a couple of years, you can make tens of thousands of people happy."
According to the hairstylist Oribe, who made his name crafting glamorous, cloud-scraping coiffures in the supermodel era, nothing makes a woman quite as happy as "gorgeous, voluptuous, beautiful hair." After all, he points out, extra-large dos tend to balance out substantial derrieres. Back in the day, though, the supes had to suffer for his art. "Once, on a shoot with [Steven] Meisel, I used a whole can of hairspray on a girl's hair," he recalls. "She fainted! It was great." These days, it's still "the bigger the better," with a key caveat: "It's about quality big hair," he says. "Not dry, crunchy. That's mall hair."
MIT to the rescue: While traditional "hold" products employ brittle resins, which create space between each strand but break when, say, your date runs his fingers through your waves, Living Proof's new Full Thickening Cream features an innovative molecular structure called poly beta amino ester-1. When applied to wet hair before styling, the cream coats each hair shaft with thousands of invisible dots, or "thickening points," which work a bit like Post-it notes: They grab at one another, leaving pockets of space between hairs, but they also separate and re-grab easily. One ELLE editor who tried it reported that her Bardot-worthy, driving-with-the-top-down bounce lasted a miraculous 36 hours—with zero crunch.
While bombshell-begetting products may have evolved, Oribe says that the techniques necessary to get the look remain endearingly classic. Hot rollers and curling irons will yield a tight wave, but "for smooth, straighter big hair, like I used to give Cindy and Claudia," he advises drying hair with a round brush, taking care to pull upward at the root. Wrap each section around a large Velcro curler while it's still hot from the dryer. After strands cool and "set," brush them out with your head upside down, backcomb a little at the root, "and run your fingers through it to make it more modern," he says. We suggest inviting your date to help with that part.
