Sam McKnight’s Cool Girl Body is the hair product flat-haired girls need to know about

I’ve never met a Sam McKnight product I wasn’t besotted with. (Picture: Metro/Getty/Sarah Bradbury/Sam McKnight)

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As someone with famously fine, stubbornly flat hair, I’ve spent years chasing volume.

Not the big, Texan beauty-pageant kind. Just the sort of hair that doesn’t collapse by 11am after I’ve spent 30 minutes blow-drying it.

I’ve tried every trick in the book. Volumising mousses that leave my lengths feeling crispy. Texture sprays that somehow make my hair both dry and greasy at the same time. Endless rounds with a hot brush in the hope of creating lift that lasts longer than my commute.

So when Sam McKnight, the hairstylist behind some of fashion’s most iconic hair looks, launched his new Cool Girl Body Plumping & Volumising Cream (£29), I was immediately intrigued. After all, I’m already a huge fan of his ‘Cool Girl’ range, and the smell? Divine.

Unlike most volumisers promising instant va-va-voom, this isn’t just a styling product. It’s a hybrid formula that sits somewhere between haircare treatment and volumiser, designed to create bigger-looking hair while helping strengthen strands over time.

And frankly, my limp hair needs all the support it can get.

What’s different about Cool Girl Body?

According to the brand, one of the biggest reasons hair loses volume isn’t always because we’re using the wrong styling products. It’s because the hair fibre itself has become weakened by heat styling, colouring, environmental damage and general life.

When hair becomes compromised, it struggles to hold shape and elasticity, meaning those freshly blow-dried roots slowly flatten back down throughout the day.

Cool Girl Body has been designed to tackle both problems at once.

It’s the step that my hair’s been missing! (Picture: Metro/Sam McKnight)

The cream uses a cocktail of ingredients that work to plump individual strands, create separation between hairs for fuller-looking volume, and provide flexible hold without stiffness.

It also contains conditioning and strengthening ingredients designed to improve resilience, alongside heat and humidity protection, which is particularly welcome considering Britain’s ongoing commitment to serving us four seasons in a single afternoon.

Or, as Sam himself describes it, volume that looks ‘healthy, smooth and soft, never stiff or overloaded.’

The science bit, made simple

I’m not usually someone who gets overly excited about ingredient lists, but the technology behind this formula is actually pretty interesting.

One of the hero ingredients is Voluminis™, which works by increasing the density of individual strands while helping push hairs away from one another, creating the illusion of fuller hair.

There’s also Biostyle CGP™, a sculpting polymer that provides lift at the roots and helps hair maintain shape, even when humidity attempts to undo all your hard work.

After drying my hair, it felt nourished, soft and thick too. (Picture: Metro/Sarah Bradbury)

The formula also features Yerbaluxe® Crown, a conditioning ingredient designed to strengthen stressed hair fibres and improve elasticity, plus SymHair Thermo™, which provides heat protection up to 230 degrees and acts as a shield against humidity.

Essentially, the idea is simple: stronger hair holds volume better.

Which, when I think about the years of bleaching, heat styling and aggressively brushing my hair when I was running late for school, feels entirely logical.

My review

‘As expected, the texture and scent were everything I’d expect from Sam McKnight. It has a silky, thick consistency – the kind I’d usually run a mile from with my fine hair, as I’d expect it to leave it feeling greasy or weighed down. But this did anything but.

I used around a 10p-sized amount, working it through my palms and fingers before running it through my hair. Once dried, my strands definitely felt thicker than they would have done without the product, which I really noticed. The volume is subtle, rather than dramatic, but I think there’s plenty of potential to build on it with a little more time and practice, particularly using the right tools.

After styling my hair, it definitley looked like it was thicker than usual. (Picture: Metro/Sarah Bradbury)

I’d love to try it with a hot styling brush next to see if I can really maximise the volume. And what I loved most was that, despite the added thickness, my hair didn’t feel heavy or as though I had any extra product in it at all.

With a bit more experimenting, I’m sure I could get closer to the ‘higher the hair, the closer to God’ level of volume Dolly Parton is always talking about.

While I’ve learned not to trust every product that promises ‘big hair’, Cool Girl Body feels like a more thoughtful approach to volume. Instead of simply masking the issue with heavy styling agents, it focuses on creating the conditions for fuller-looking hair while helping support the health of the hair itself.

And as someone whose hair naturally sits flatter than a week-old prosecco, that’s a concept I can absolutely get behind.’

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