A few months ago, Misikko contacted me to ask if I'd like to review their hair straightener, and I jumped at the chance. Before I get into my review, though, I'd like to give a short history about why being offered the chance to use a high quality hair straightener was such a huge deal to me.
I have not quite curly, not quite wavy, very thick, oddly puffy hair. I hate it. So ever since I was old enough to style it myself, I've been wearing it in an updo of some kind. But at the same time, I've always wanted desperately to wear it down. From my pre-teen years to today, I've gone through an endless series of curling irons, hair straighteners, straightening hair brushes, curlers, straightening cremes, thinning hair-cuts and basically anything that might make me love my hair. Here is one of the most embarrassing videos from my youth (I can't even believe I'm sharing this!!) It was the first day of 8th grade, and my mom was using a curling iron to try to tame my extremely puffy hair.
A pretty surly 12 year old, right? It seemed like all the other girls at school, even at 12 years old, had perfect locks while mine were frizzy, puffy and thick enough to hide a small animal. After the failed attempt to subdue the monster on my head, I ended up wearing it back in a ponytail, as usual. Over the years the puffiness has sort of deflated a little bit (thankfully) but I'm still uncomfortable enough with my hair that I rarely wear it down.
Right now I own a conair hair straightener, and while it technically straightens my hair it doesn't seem to smooth it out and help control the volume as much as I'd like. Enter, the Hana 1" ceramic flat iron that Misikko sent to me. I hoped so badly it would finally help me manage my unmanageable hair. The instructions suggested the lowest setting for bleached hair, but I had to put it on a higher setting to get it to work, because my hair is so thick. It worked a lot faster than my conair, and it glided over my hair more smoothly (not as much catching and tugging, which can really hurt!) but the end product seemed pretty much the same. (You can see how my hair looks straightened with the conair straightener in this post.) My hair ended up being pin-straight, but still sort of frizzy and puffy. I like it a lot better than my natural texture, but it's still not like this:
I guess maybe my particular hair texture is just never going to get that straight. I had a friend in high school with tight ringlet curls, and hair straighteners worked fantastic for her! Gliding hot ceramic plates over her tresses turned them perfectly silky straight. So I'd imagine this iron would work a lot better on curly hair or wavy hair, but as for me? If a high-end hair straightener can't get my hair the way I want it, I basically give up, lol!
I will admit though, being unaccustomed to anything fancy, the presentation and packaging was pretty impressive. It comes with a silicon pad to put on your counter so that you don't burn it, along with like 4 different carrying cases and lots of little extras like makeup, an eye mask, a hair towel, sachets and more! It was sort of like a hair product equivalent of hotels leaving a mint on your pillow, haha!
