Last year I bleached my hair one too many times. Then I bleached it again. No shock here: My normally very-resilient strands became more damaged than they'd been in years. It was own fault — and it's a common story in our era of icy and pastel hair color trends . I called in the big guns for rehab — Olaplex, masks, pre-shampoo treatments — and they all made a major difference. But, as we all know very well, you can't really fix split or fried ends; you have to cut 'em off before they get worse. So, what's one to do when you need to lose the dead, fried, split weight, but aren't looking to go much shorter? Enter: Hair dusting. L.A. hairstylist Sal Salcedo introducing me to the technique — and he literally saved my hair in one dust."Hair dusting is a technique in which you don’t get rid of any hair length, but only the damaged hair tips," Salcedo explains. "This can be done by snipping the very bottom of each hair strand." So how does that work? "Think of it in terms of removing fuzz from clothes," he says. "You want to smooth the hair out the best you can first, because you need to allow the bad hair to pop up. That's what you will be getting rid of." Here's the reason why many hairstylists don't do it: It's really time consuming. In fact, it's almost like a second haircut after your strands are shaped and trimmed. "It's more of a grooming technique, rather than an overall haircut," he says, noting that it's by no means new. "It's been done for ages, some cultures even use different techniques, like fire or razors."