A youthful lift... ‘but Kate braid ruins hair’

SHE is already famed for one muchderided hairdo, the Croydon facelift, named after her home town. Now Kate Moss has attracted criticism for promoting another style designed to combat the effects of ageing. The 43-year-old supermodel has revealed that she ties her hair into braids tight enough to pull her skin back, helping make her face look wrinkle-free.

But as with the Croydon facelift – scraping the hair so tightly into a ponytail or bun that the face is pulled back – experts warn that it can do so much harm that wearers risk causing bald patches.

Ms Moss, above, spoke about her youth-boosting tip to Vogue magazine. ‘A great trick they do on photoshoots is doing these little braids underneath your hair to pull your skin up, like a little lift,’ she said.

‘That’s another old Hollywood trick. I think they had to know all that stuff before there was retouching, they had to do it all by hand. It’s amazing.’

But trichologists (hair and scalp experts) strongly criticised the method. ‘It’s about the worst thing you could do for your hair. I can’t believe she said that,’ said Steve O’Brian of London Centre of Trichology.

‘It’s a terrible bit of advice. It’s just a ridiculous thing to say, because if you care at all about your hair then that’s the last thing you’d want to do.’

Eleanor Richardson, trichologist at Fulham Scalp and Hair Clinic, warned that the pulled-back style could result in traction alopecia, a type of gradual hair loss. ‘The tension caused by pulling the hair really tightly, so tight in fact that it will pull the skin up, actually puts a lot of pressure on the follicle,’ Ms Richardson said.

‘And so you have hair starting to give up – and essentially you get hair loss where you’ve been pulling it really tight.’