Top Sante’s Yvonne Martin has decided to embrace her roots – here’s what she’s discovered and the grey haired goddesses (like the one pictured!) who’ve inspired her…
Ditching the hair dye if you’ve got grey underneath is no easy process.
Having spotted my first white hairs while still at school, I have been going grey for a long time. Nevertheless, I started dying my hair simply for fun, because I preferred red hair to my original mousey colour.
But as the years rolled by I gradually began to feel it was a necessity as more and more silver appeared. The result was 30 years of salon appointments and messy root touch-ups in my bathroom, but this summer I came to the decision to stop.
Although it’s a long and awkward process to embark on, I’m actually quite excited about doing it, and looking forward to seeing how my platinum white locks will look (and if I don’t like it I can always go back).
This is not giving up and letting myself go, it’s about the freedom from the monthly hair dye process, cutting out chemicals and stopping that awful feeling of constantly trying to hide something.
I was inspired by reading Silver Hair by Lorraine Massey (£11.34, Workman Publishing), which made me realise that white/grey/silver hair can actually look really quirky, stylish and cool. After all, lots of women are going to salons to pay to get these tones put in to their hair.
Anyway, four months in, I’m still up for the process despite the two-tone tresses. It’s challenging my ideas of how I should look, developing my sense of ‘don’t care what people think of me’ and while I know this mid-point doesn’t look great, I think I’ll like the end results.
So I was keen to find out how other women got through the months (or years) of grow-out, how they changed their clothes and make-up once the new colour had emerged and how to keep the new shade zingy and bright.
The best grey-haired Youtube stars
Here’s some of the silver inspiration I have found online:
Nikol is a former model who gives advice on all kinds of beauty matters including hair and make-up. She grew her hair out the hard way. Just going ‘cold turkey’ as us silver sisters call it.
Monique looks stunning and her hair absolutely shines. She’s really sparky and engaging and has a nice sense of humour. She dealt with her transformation by re-colouring her dyed hair white, getting a haircut and taking it from there.
I really like Tanja because she is very relatable (not a model or an actress). She gives lots of tips from her own experience on hair care and especially good advice on what colours to wear. She grew her hair for a bit and then cut off the dye and her short hair looks great.
This is a group for anyone who is transitioning out of their hair dye and it has more than 20,000 members from all over the world. Every day people post pictures either of their growing out process or of the glorious end results. I’ve not reached what people say is the difficult fifth month stage yet, but if I have a wobble I’ll be turning to this site to get me back on track!
And if you want even more inspiration, check out this trailer for a documentary about silver-haired women coming out at the end of the year called Gray Is The New Blonde.
