The One Twist-Out Cream That Delivers On Hang Time

When the new DevaCurl Super Stretch cream launched on social media, my group chat lit up with questions. The primary concern: Will this work on our hair?

It’s a question I’ve asked many times since I went natural 11 years ago. If a product doesn’t live up to its hype, I have to endure a week of bad hair days (which is a total waste of the hours it takes me to style). On the flip side, there's nothing like that feeling when you try something new and your twist-out is bomb — like Lion King-level length and volume, BOMB.

With a name like Super Stretch, the brand is clearly targeting the main frustration for women with natural hair: shrinkage. Take my 4B hair for example. If I let my hair air dry without any product, it will look like the close-cropped Afro that my dad has been wearing since the ‘70s. But when I straighten my hair, it’s down to my collarbone. It’s a cruel optical illusion.

My entire styling routine is built to avoid this shrink up, so anything that promises to elongate my curls has me curious (but skeptical). The Super Stretch cream smells like a coconut smoothie, and it’s got all the ingredients you would expect from a product meant for Afro hair types: aloe for moisture, coconut oil for shine, and shea butter to seal it all in and give the product weight. The texture is somewhere between a gel and a cream, but it's not sticky. It actually feels a lot like a body lotion, but for your hair.

I styled my hair using the L.O.C. method. On damp hair, I smoothed on a leave-in, then an oil, and finished up with this cream. For every one-inch section, I used about a silver dollar-sized dollop. Immediately after layering on this thick gel-cream, I could see my hair clumping together in bouncy, defined ringlets. I considered letting my hair air dry for a wash-and-go look but stuck to my signature twist-out for maximum stretch. The next day when I unraveled my hair, it was soft, not crunchy like with some gels. And as for length gains, my hair was hovering around my shoulders the next day. I even got enough hang time for a proper hair flip.

I sent my "after" photo out to the group chat, and got so many thumbs-up emojis that I can safely assume all my curl-friends (who have pretty different hair textures) will be trying this out soon.

DevaCurl Super Stretch Coconut Curl Elongator, $30, available at Sephora.