In an earlier conversation, Charlotte contributed,
“As for Suddenly Snow White: make sure you hydrate, hydrate, hydrate – hair, face, lips! My grandmother had beautiful, shockingly white hair which she always wore short. She had lovely soft skin and always wore a berry-colored lipstick. I think she was more beautiful with white hair than ebony!
Perhaps the look is a little dated, but she also always wore a bright scarf tied around her neck.”
Charlotte, I am JEALOUS of your grandmama’s shockingly white hair (and believe me, the bright scarf thing may be dated, but it’s classic). The way women go gray in my family tends to be gun-metal gray, lank and just ugly. The hair loses its body, the color just looks Blas-ville and permanently greasy. To quote the famous Dreamgirls’ song, AND I AM TELLING YOU… I’M NOT GOING …that route with my hair, God as my witness and Revlon as my redeemer. How wonderful to go gray in such a way that flatters, that makes one say, “Oh, look what a new head of distinguished older person hair I have!” or even just, “I’m a silver foxy babe, man!”
I ran into a friend the other day who has let her hair go gray and although she’s very young (she’s also a gym rat and is in enviably trim shape) she just looks fabulous!!! I complimented her white-gray hair and she told me that it’s natural, “with a little help.” Now isn’t that an interesting idea… she highlights her gray hair, I think, to make it shinier and to keep the white-gray strands bright looking. I should have gotten the name of her colorist. Maybe there’s hope for my inevitably gun-metal blah, greasy strands of the future.
Roberta was wearing WONDERFUL tortoise-rim rectangular specs that made her look modern and sharp and added a great pop to her face. Her hair was cut in a mid-length curly style and she just looked adorable. I think she was maybe wearing mascara but I didn’t get the impression that she was wearing make-up at all. She has great skin.
The best description of her look was that her hair had energy to it. Her glasses and classic, simple work clothes (she works in a shoe store), contributed to that feeling of energy. She was a woman who had gone grey and looked very cool. I wish I had had a camera to snap her photo. That girl is doing Snow White Right.
If there is grace in the world, I will hopefully follow my mother’s (and grandmother’s) hair good-luck. They both went gray with a dramatic gray sweep over the left eye, and nothing but a streak over the left eye, for years and years. My mother only started coloring a few years ago, when the rest of her hair finally started going white. Then she went red.
I’m trying DESPERATELY to get her to low-light, though. Her red is getting lighter and lighter as her hair gets white underneath, so she’s lost the multi tones she once had from having black, grey, and white hair being colored. Now its getting so monotoned. Can we somehow figure out a way to convince the coloring women to LOWLIGHT their BRIGHT HAIR?
I’ve heard that women with very, very dark hair tend to have hair that goes the silvery gray or white, while women with lighter brown, red, and blonde hair tend to go more “gun metal” gray, as PB put it. Is there any truth to that?
hafidha sophia– my grandmother was blond, and she has some of the brightest (unassisted) white hair I’ve ever seen, and my grandfather (who was a redhead), has lightened beautifully, too. Not sure what determines one’s gray.
literally, on her death bed, my mother said “keep coloring your hair and keep putting the highlights in”. She had beautiful gray hair, but it made her look much older than my father and she wished she had colored it longer but it was hard for her to go back. Had she worn more makeup or had an edgier haircut, she might have been more satisfied.
That said, coloring regularly is expensive and time consuming. I love the idea of highlighting gray hair, and someday that sounds like the way to go. I started going seriously gray at around 30, and plan to color my hair for a while.