Dear Jenna, The short answer is this miraculous mask. The long answer involves what to do with it.

The New York stylist Andrea Linett is one of the most stylish people I know, and her brilliance extends to beauty as well as fashion. (When we were editors at the OG Lucky magazine, she was forever casually dropping, “Oh have you heard of X beauty product everyone’s talking about?” And I, the beauty editor, would of course not have heard of it yet.)

Andrea is in a constant state of looking/checking out/noting what people—virtually all the people she sees—are wearing. “Hypervigilance!” is how she characterizes her all-seeing style eye. The old tennis sweater Kurt Cobain’s wearing in that famous shoot with Courtney Love for Sassy? Andrea nabbed it from her dad’s closet. She took one look at a teenage Chloë Sevigny on the street and offered her a style-intern job. Andrea’s blog, iwanttobeher.com, encapsulates this stealth appreciation/appropriation aspect of style: “I love the idea of seeing some cool girl on the street and following her home to see how she puts it all together,” she says.

On a recent afternoon, I had the full follow-a-stylish-person-back-to-their-lair experience—Andrea herself was the stylish person, and her secret: a tiny East Village salon, Headdress. While Andrea’s haircut and color are iwanttobeher.com gorgeous, I didn’t need a haircut—I go to the brilliant Sally Hershberger and would never cheat. Nor did I want color—between Marie Robinson and the Christophe Robin temporary color, I’m more than set. “What about a shine treatment?” asked Andrea. “A clean one?”

My assumption about hair treatments is they’re essentially some conditioner that someone else (nicely) puts on you—maybe not something worth a salon visit. But I was dying to see Andrea, so I figured I’d catch up, plus get some nice conditioning and see a cool space in the bargain.

Headdress is indeed as cool—and relaxed—as it comes. Everyone there is iwanttobeher-level offhandedly chic, each in their own particular way. Andrea strode in in some old wide-leg jeans, a tiny-flower-print shirt, leather sandals, and of course, gorgeous long, wavy hair. Classic Andrea.

A Headdress operative washed my hair and gave me an incredible massage, applied an incredible-smelling mask from Rahua, and put me under a heat lamp for fifteen minutes. Andrea got her already-fantastic cut trimmed, and while these services were performed, Andrea and I discussed everyone we’ve ever known.

My hair was definitely shinier than usual after the treatment, which did not surprise me: conditioner, doing its job! The way its subtle scent—the faintest bit of flowers and anise—lingered in my hair was delightful. As we walked away down the street, I kept catching the scent as the breeze blew through my (noticeably gleaming) hair.

But the biggest surprise came several days later, after I’d washed my hair: It was still shiny. (The only time a conditioning treatment had ever lasted in my hair was in India, when I had an hour-and-a-half-long treatment of warm oils streamed through my hair. That extra shine lasted a month but required, beyond the hour and half, six consecutive shampoos to get the initial oil out before I could even step out of the shower.)

Even more remarkable, my Rahua-ed hair remained unusually shiny and bouncy for about five shampoos—over a week and a half. (And the scent remained, too, soft and pretty, through three shampoos. My boyfriend twice asked about my perfume.)

If you’re in NYC or you’re visiting NYC, make time for an appointment at Headdress, and top off whatever you get there with a Rahua mask treatment. You might even get a bonus Andrea Linett sighting (if so, know that she’s definitely checking you out).

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