Just two or three months ago, every glossy women’s magazine was encouraging us to create “mermaid waves,” “goddess hair,” or “beachy texture” with a salt-based hair-spritz product. Most of the products they recommended were ridiculously overpriced, full of damaging ingredients, or smelled like a piña colada, so I was able to pass…until I came across LUSH’s Sea Spray.

I bought it, and I tried it, and I didn’t review it. Why? Because I didn’t like it, at the time. My shoulder-length hair is a wavy-curly mix, so I’m not starting from scratch with the whole mermaid/goddess/texture thing: I just wanted a little extra hold and shine, which Sea Spray promised to deliver. However, the summer weather was hot and humid (as it tends to be), and this product left my hair feeling sticky and tangled. I tried it on dry hair; I tried it on wet hair. No luck. The bottle rolled to the bottom of my basket of haircare products and hibernated there for a while.

However! I pulled out the Sea Spray a few days ago and gave it another try, and it turns out to be just what my hair needs in cooler, drier weather. Applied sparingly, it really does give wavy volume to areas where my hair tends to go a bit flat (the crown of my head, the back) and it provides definition for flyaway ends. The salt does the former, while the seaweed extract and the PVP polymer and seaweed extract take care of the latter. And Sea Spray has an uplifting neroli scent, which makes my fall-into-winter morning feel a little brighter.

It’s all in the timing!

Here’s the complete ingredients list:

Carrageenan Extract (Chondrus crispus), Sea Water, SD Alcohol, Glycerine, Fine Sea Salt (Sodium Chloride), PVP, Fragrance, Limonene , Linalool, Neroli Oil (Citrus Aurantium amara), Grapefruit Oil (Citrus paradisi), Rosewood oil (Aniba rosaeodora), Hydroxcitronellal, Geraniol, Citral, Farnesol,Benzyl Benzoate, Methylparaben.

LUSH Sea Spray Hair Mist sells for $12.95. I purchased mine at a LUSH boutique in NYC.