I Flew To Brazil For Victoria's Secret Hair — & Found Something Better

“What if they burn off all my hair and I’m bald for our wedding?” I cried to my fiancé as our Uber driver jostled over a busy cobblestone street on our way to Laces And Hair Salon in São Paulo, Brazil. Four thousand miles from New York City, I was finally visiting the hair mecca Victoria’s Secret models Candice Swanepoel, Barbara Fialho, and Alessandra Ambrosio have gushed about for years. The salon’s main draw? Velaterapia, otherwise known as candle cutting.

“4,000 miles away from the runway show in New York City, in a fire ceremony by the light of a full moon, Gisele waves are born.”

“Then we’ll get you a really nice wig,” he replied, pushing me out of the backseat and into the three-story shopping center where I was meeting with Cris Dios, the salon’s CEO. Since taking over the business from her mother in 1987, Dios has expanded Laces to five locations in São Paulo (with plans to launch in even more cities throughout Brazil, and eventually in the U.S.), and still visits each one to perform the hair-burning procedure herself.

“My mom learned this technique from my grandfather who came to Brazil in 1920 from Spain,” Dios explains to me, mimicking the way she twists one-inch sections of hair so the split ends stick out, then effectively cauterizes them with a candle flame. The process, which aims to get rid of dry, dead ends without losing any length, remains largely under-researched, and many experts have come out against it based on the risk factor alone. But that hasn’t stopped Brazilian women from doing it. “Alessandra does it. Candice does it," Dios says. "But it’s a dangerous technique. It’s fire! You have to do it with a professional who has experience, not alone.”

That’s the reason supermodels fly from all over the world, sometimes up to four times a year, to receive the treatment directly from Dios — and it’s the reason I’m here, 10 months before my wedding, to see if it’ll give me the long, lush Victoria’s Secret waves I’ve always dreamed of having on that day. For the models, many of whom arrive straight from the airport with their carry-on bag, Laces represents more than a salon: It’s a total hair retreat from a life of constant photoshoots and styling.