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Credit: Instagram @taylor_hill

It’s the ultimate catch 22 of the beauty world: Regular trims keep your hair healthy while you grow it out, but one visit to a scissor-happy salon and you’re right back at square one of your journey to Rapunzel lengths. Enter, ‘hair dusting,’ a haircutting technique that everyone is talking about, which lets you keep your length and only lop off those pesky split ends dragging you down.

A pioneer of the technique, LA hairstylist Sal Salcedo explained the process to Refinery29, saying, “Hair dusting is a technique in which you don’t get rid of any hair length, but only the damaged hair tips. This can be done by snipping the very bottom of each hair strand.”

A similar concept to hair burning, which flamed its way to fame in 2015 when Alessandra Ambrosio posted about the popular Brazilian split-end singeing service on Instagram. “The point is to get rid of hair that no longer serves you. Hair gets damaged because of weather, colouring, bad haircuts, hot tools, and most of time, just the age of the hair,” Salcedo told the site. “”It’s more of a grooming technique, rather than an overall haircut,” he said. “It’s been done for ages, some cultures even use different techniques, like fire or razors.” 

So why isn’t every hairstylist doing this for their client’s asking for Gigi-level lengths? It’s super time consuming and more of a grooming gift-with-purchase that won’t take the place of a proper haircut. Alas your best bet for warding off split ends is still regular hair treatments and your quickest way to getting rid of them is a traditional, dust-free trim.