‘What Products?’: The Tools You’ll Need for the Perfect Slick Back Pony
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Michael Douglas is a celebrity hair stylist with a passion for empowering beauty fans to feel more confident with their hair. He is also a regular Live That Glow columnist, answering readers questions on all things hair care. Here, he advises on getting the perfect slicked pony.
I’ve been growing my hair and it’s now long enough that I can finally try a slick back pony. What products should I be using to keep my hair securely in place?
Michael says:
Doing a slick back ponytail depends on what type of hair you’ve got.
If you’ve got naturally very straight hair then it’s actually quite simple to do by using a wide flat bristle brush, something like the Mdlondon PADD. The more bristles you have on a brush the more control you have over all the strands of hair.
It’s obviously up to you where the ponytail is situated. I like it high up towards the crown of the head. You can essentially follow the line from the bottom of the cheekbone, near the nose, above the ear and keep travelling till you reach the back of the head and that is a great place for the ponytail to sit.
It helps to have big hands and long fingers, but if you don’t, then you can try leaning forward and tipping your head semi upside down to help gather all the hair together into the ponytail position you want.
Make sure you use a covered pony tail band, and you can also get waxed coated hairbands which can be good to use, just avoid using a rubber band as it can tear the hair.
With regards to styling products, assuming your hair is naturally straight, adding a small burst of hairspray over the surface of the hair before you pull it back into the ponytail can work really well. I really like the product Got2b Glued as a hairspray. It’s really strong and holds really well. If you want a very wet look sheen from the hair, just use more hairspray and the hair will start to look wet.
If you’ve got naturally wavy, curly or textured hair, you may well need a stronger product to get it to have the slicked effect and I would suggest using a gel for this.
You could use a gel like the Umberto Giannini Curl Jelly Scrunching Jelly. Whilst this is good for curly hair, it also works really well for getting loads of sheen on the hair for a slick back ponytail. This is also a great product to use if you’ve just got a few shorter hairs that don’t quite reach the ponytail band.
The choice you have with a slick back ponytail is whether you want the hair on the head slick and the ponytail itself slick too, or whether you want hair close to the head slick but the ponytail to be dry and maybe have some texture wave or bounce in it.
If you would like the latter, then put texture and movement and bounce in it before you do the ponytail with a heated curling tong, then obviously only apply the gel or hairspray to the hair that sits before the ponytail band closest to the head.
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