As a busy mum and influencer on social media, Kelly Fitzsimons loves to get creative when it comes to hair, beauty, fashion and lifestyle.
She has a large audience on her @kellyfitzsimons_ Instagram account, with over 100,000 followers accessing her tips and tricks for achieving the best textured waves, an easy all-over tan, the latest trends, as well as delicious recipes and DIY décor that she's finessed during lockdown.
From Swords, the mum of one now lives in Meath with her fiancé Mark and daughter Ella May. Having originally set up her Instagram account to showcase the cute outfits Ella May wore growing up, as her daughter got older, Kelly decided to turn the camera on herself. She now focuses much of her attention on fashion and beauty.
Many of us have gotten to grips with styling at home over the past year as salons have been closed, and Kelly has kept her followers informed and entertained with her quick and easy hair and makeup tutorials. While helping others with their hair dilemmas, she was also determined to keep own colour-treated locks in excellent condition.
“The colour of my hair is really important. I like to keep it as blonde as I can with as little build-up from products as possible. As someone with blonde highlights and thick hair, frizz is my worst enemy. Dyeing your hair can cause breakage, so I want to reduce the reliance on heat when I style my hair,” she says.
Because of her caution around heat styling, Kelly has been impressed with the Dyson Corrale hair straightener. Flexing copper plates gently embrace the hair tress during styling. This stops it from splaying, so the tension is applied more evenly, engineered to straighten hair with less strokes and less heat, resulting in half the damage1.
“I have incredibly thick hair and I do find it hard to maintain, but the Corrale helps to make styling more stress free,” Kelly says. “I only do one pass through each section of my hair, which means I’m doing less damage over the course of a style. I can achieve the same straight, shiny results with less heat.”
“As well as this, there is the right amount of tension being applied to my hair when I am using it. The shape of the Corrale makes it really handy,” she says.
You can take it with you and fix your hair wherever you are
As someone who, pre-pandemic, attended lots of events and face-to-face meetings in a country where being continuously windswept is a given, Kelly says the fact the Corrale can be used both corded and cord-free is fantastic. She’s planning to pop it into her handbag for up to 30 minutes of cord-free styling on the go.
“You can take it with you and fix your hair wherever you are. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve attended an event and by the time I’ve gotten there my hair is all over the place,” she smiles.
Sleek, straight hair might be the obvious go-to when it comes to using a tool like the Corrale, but textured waves and curls are on trend right now – and both styles are extremely easy to achieve too, Kelly says.
“For a curl, you turn the straightener 180 degrees and it’s done, and that only takes one turn. For wavy, beachy hair, you turn it every three to four centimetres down along your hair and you get a lovely wave. It’s a textured beachy look that’s so easy to do and you fly through it. I find because there is so little tension used, the Corrale glides through my hair and there are no dent marks either,” she says.
In terms of heating controls, the instructions advise to start at the lowest setting, 165 degrees and work up to 210 degrees, but Kelly says that level of heat is rarely necessary – which is great news for her hair type. “Intelligent heat control responds to the thickness, texture and length of your hair and automatically controls the temperature for optimal styling results,” she says.
With lockdown easing, many of the looks she has spent months perfecting will get their first outing.
I am loving the textured, beachy wave, it looks effortless
“I’ll be going for cocktails with my sisters and my mum – definitely not my fiancé as we’ve seen enough of each other this past year,” she laughs.
“That morning I’ll do my tan first thing – I don’t wash it off as I like a deeper colour. I then put on my makeup while listening to a favourite playlist, and then I’ll do my hair. I am loving the textured, beachy wave, it looks effortless – so I’m going to go for that on my first night out.
“Usually my sisters are here getting ready with me, having a couple of glasses of wine. Getting ready is almost more fun than the going out,” she says.
“Everyone needs a good social catch up with people they haven’t seen in ages. I can’t wait.”
Discover the Dyson Corrale hair straightener at Dyson.ie
¹ Thermal damage measured by hair strength, when creating an equivalent hair style. Tested on Corrale with flexing plates vs Corrale with solid plates.