I didn't really see my curls until I was in my mid-20s.
Growing up, my hair broke constantly. It wouldn't hold a curl. I'd catch a glimpse of definition in the shower, water still running through it, and by the time I stepped out, it was gone. Straight sections, no bounce, no shine. I remember watching other people with what looked like the same curl pattern as mine, wearing shiny, bouncy curls that lasted all day, and wondering what I was doing wrong.
For years, the answer I kept getting was about curl type. Buy the gel made for your curl pattern. Add an oil. Try a mousse. None of it worked, and I didn't understand why. My hair would drink a product in and still end up dry an hour later, or the mousse would seem to evaporate before it ever did anything.
It wasn't until I started studying hair anatomy more seriously, and paying much closer attention to what was actually happening on my clients' heads, that things started to click. The breakthrough wasn't about curl type at all. It was about porosity.
What was actually going on with my hair
My hair is more porous than most, which is part of why it never looked as shiny a raised, uneven cuticle scatters light instead of reflecting it. It also has low elasticity, which is why it couldn't hold a curl. Elasticity comes from the balance of protein and moisture inside the hair, not moisture alone, but in my case the moisture side was the bigger gap. Hair doesn't produce anything once it's grown out of the follicle; it isn't living tissue. What it can do is hold onto or lose the moisture it already has, depending on how open or damaged the cuticle is, and mine was losing more than it should.
Once I understood that, the rest made sense. Gel alone was never going to fix dryness, because gel is built to hold a style, not to hydrate hair. Mousse was "evaporating" because there was nothing underneath it to hold onto. My hair needed to be filled first, given something to mimic what its own natural moisture would normally do, and then it needed help holding onto that moisture rather than losing it within the hour.
That's the sequence that changed things for me: hydrate, then seal, then style. Once I got that order right, I started seeing bounce, elasticity, and curl definition I had genuinely never seen on myself before.
Porosity isn't just a high-porosity problem
That discovery also made me look more closely at low porosity hair, because it has the opposite challenge and it's just as often misunderstood. If the cuticle is lying flat and tight, it doesn't matter how good a product's ingredients are on paper. If they can't get past the cuticle, they just sit on top of the hair.
This is where I stopped trusting labels that said "curl cream for coily hair" and started reading ingredient lists and checking consistency instead. A product can be marketed at exactly your curl type and still be the wrong fit for how your hair actually behaves. It's also the thinking behind how we built our porosity match guide: start with what your hair is actually doing, not what pattern it falls into.
I saw this play out with a client who had never felt she could get definition, no matter what she used. We tried a hydrating cream underneath her gel first, and it barely changed anything, likely because sitting directly on the hair, underneath the gel, it got in the way of the gel actually gripping and clumping the strands. What worked instead was applying the gel on its own, then layering a lightweight bounce cream on top while the gel was still wet. The two didn't stay as separate layers, they dried together into one film, with the bounce cream softening and adding flexibility to what would otherwise have been a stiffer cast. She got the hold from the gel and the movement from the cream, without one undoing the other. Not a different curl pattern, not a different product line built around her curl type, just the right layering for how her hair was actually holding its structure.
Building this into STAUNCH
The more I understood porosity, the more I realized this shouldn't be something people have to piece together alone, the way I did. That's the thinking behind STAUNCH: we formulate around what different porosities actually need, not around curl type. It's why our True Defining Gel is built to hydrate first and hold second, instead of treating hold as a gel's only job. It's also why we made it part of a curl defining bundle, so hair that needs more sealing or moisture can layer in a richer formula rather than being forced into a single product.
Porosity still doesn't explain everything about hair. Elasticity, density, and how someone treats their hair day to day all matter too. But it was the gateway that let me see the rest clearly, and it's why I no longer start with a client's curl pattern. I start with what their hair is actually doing, what it's holding onto, what it's losing, and what needs to change first. If I could hand my twenty-something self one thing, it wouldn't be a curl chart. It would be a shorter path to understanding what her hair actually needed. That's what we're trying to build for everyone else now.
Common questions about hair porosity
What is hair porosity? It's how easily your hair absorbs and releases moisture, based on how open or tightly closed the cuticle layer is.
How do I know if I have high or low porosity hair? High porosity hair tends to absorb product fast but dries out quickly and looks less shiny. Low porosity hair often feels like products sit on top rather than sinking in, and can take longer to get fully wet or dry.
Does porosity matter more than curl type? Curl type describes the shape of your curl pattern. Porosity describes how your hair handles moisture, which affects shine, elasticity, and whether a product actually works on you, regardless of curl pattern.
Can hair porosity change over time? The hair itself doesn't regenerate, but damage, chemical processing, heat styling, and everyday wear can change how porous a section of hair behaves. Newer growth can act differently than the ends.
Always rooting for you,
— Sarah/ Staunch