I haven’t seen my true brown hair in decades, and I’m starting to feel like it’s time to embrace my natural gray. Is this a bad idea? How does one look less ratty while growing out their natural hair color? — Susan, Guilford, Conn.
To go gray or not to go gray is one of those perennial image questions that comes for us all at some point. One answer leads to a certain version of yourself; the other, a different one.
The decision about which way you go depends as much on psychology and emotion as it does on any practical considerations (though many of those are involved). It’s such a complicated choice that there are multiple Facebook groups, including The Gray Book and Silver Revolution, devoted to women who are thinking about no longer dyeing their hair. Each has more than 30,000 members.
The reasons for dyeing are pretty straightforward and were best articulated, as many things were, by Nora Ephron in her essay “On Maintenance.” Hair dye, she wrote, “has changed everything, but it almost never gets the credit. It’s the most powerful weapon older women have against the youth culture.”
Not only that, she wrote, “I can make a case that it’s partly responsible for the number of women entering (and managing to stay in) the job market in middle and late middle age.”
Gray hair, at least for women, shows aging in a way that is often seen as negative — a signal to the world, and sometimes to yourself, that you are in the end stage of life (and fertility) and thus, perhaps, less energetic or even employable, depending on whatever deep-held prejudices are at play. (For men, of course, it is the opposite. For them, the obvious vanity involved in dyeing one’s hair is seen as unmanly.)
Yet dyeing is expensive and time-consuming, and at a certain point your hair and your face no longer make sense together. It can be counterintuitively aging to clearly be denying your actual age by dyeing your hair. And I know many women for whom embracing their gray hair is enormously liberating, a way of declaring their refusal to be stereotyped or to kowtow to old-fashioned social pressures — to hide who they are.
Sarah Harris, the former Vogue editor who started going gray in her 20s, has written about the joys of being “nonconformist.” The actresses Andie MacDowell and Lisa Bonet and the models Kristen McMenamy and Paulina Porizkova have built continued careers out on their silver hair. Besides, gray and silver and white are very elegant colors. There’s a reason Dior chose gray as a signature.
Alas, there’s no real way around the long, painful and public transformation process. According to Josh Wood, the hairstylist responsible for McMenamy’s gray, “Realistically, the quickest I’ve ever seen someone transition is nine months, but for most people it takes around 18 months.” (And that’s even if you decide to go shorter to help things along.)
To help things along, Linda Wells, the founding editor of Allure and current editor of Look on Air Mail, recommends a root touch-up kit during the transition. “Color Wow makes a really good one,” she said. “It looks natural, stays in place and can even endure a rain shower or quick swim.”
Another option from Linda: a new technique from L’Oréal called French blending that mixes the dyed color with your gray hair. You have to have it done in a salon, she said, but “the process is almost like adding highlights and lowlights with foils to integrate your dyed hair with the grays.”
Finally, once you have achieved full silver, remember to take care of your hair, since going gray often involves changes in not just color but also consistency. Hydrating shampoos and deep conditioners are essential, though there is debate over purple shampoo, which, for some, neutralizes yellow. And a well-chosen streak of white can add depth.
There are, after all, more than 50 shades of gray.
Your Style Questions, Answered
Every week on Open Thread, Vanessa will answer a reader’s fashion-related question, which you can send to her anytime via email or X. Questions are edited and condensed.
Vanessa Friedman has been the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The Times since 2014.
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