(Late-breaking addition: the Josie Maran hair serum this post is about is now 10% off with free shipping at their site with the code: CHEERS.)

We spend a lot of time trying to get beachy waves right, and untold amounts of money—like, trunks full of gold amounts of money—on our two favorite “surf” sprays, Bumble + bumble’s Salt Spray and Sachajuan Ocean Mist. These are meant to be super easy: prime, spray, scrunch, done. We don’t know what it is—whether our hair’s too fine or what, but this technique gives us nothing but flyaways and frizz. Frustrating.

The closest we can get has been our go-to Kiehl’s Creme with Silk Groom twirled into a bun overnight when wet and then de-raveled in the morning, when it’s closer to dry. Curls, but not beachy, piece-y waves, which was the original goal.

Now: We’ve tried every frizz product on the market, from Kiehl’s Silk Groom Serum to John Frieda Frizz Ease and never got the results we wanted. That was until: Josie Maran Argan Oil Hair Serum. It has a slightly thicker consistency—more like, er, silicone? Lard? Delicious? We don’t know. But we work it into our hair (along with a tiny bit of Kiehl’s Creme)—and presto, beachy waves. We first tried it with our tested overnight method, but the real proof was in this: Generally, if we let our hair air dry, we end up with a nightmare of frizz. With a lot (really, quite a lot—four or five pumps) of this in our hair, it dried to the waves we wanted. This was a shock—like, so shocking we mentioned it to the friend who was lucky enough to be getting lunch with us at the time. Honest to God, we couldn’t believe it when we saw them. Speaking of gold, it was like finding a pot of it at the end of the rainbow.

One thing: We’re not like … obsessive about daily shampooing—the woman with the best hair we’ve ever known, our editor at Lucky, washed hers once a week. By 10 o’clock at night, though, our hair definitely looked like it needed a wash—so we’d have some dry shampoo around if we were planning a long day and would definitely need a wash if we were headed to an office in the morning.

In short, the review:
Josie Maran Argan Oil Hair Serum
Price: $30
What it does: Calm frizzies and define curls
The good: The easiest way we’ve found to recreate beachy waves
The bad: It did leave our hair greasier than it found it
Bottom line: We’ll buy it again, for sure.
Grade: A