Why going grey is no longer quite so black and white

Date Published: {J}

By complete accident it seems that I might finally be coming into fashion for the very first time in my life – because it appears that nature has provided a head of greying hair at a time when supermodels are paying small fortunes for that exact same look.

Obviously it’s not exactly the same look because they spend considerably more than the twelve euro it costs me to have a trim that is the barber’s equivalent of mowing an ever balding lawn – but at least we’re on common colours.

Just when blonde and brunette became yesterday’s look is of course completely lost on me, but the news that grey is the new black will come as good news to tens of thousands of Irishmen who never previously saw themselves at the cutting edge of hair fashion.

Of course there was that trend of shaved heads for a while – and many Irish males managed that look with little or no razor work at all – but this is a whole new phenomenon.

Kate Moss favours the grey look and other ‘household names’ such as Pixie Geldof, Pink and Lady Gaga have all dyed their manes a shade of grey.

Some call it silver but there’s no mistaking what it really is; it’s the moment when the bright you things want to look just like their nanas.

And it’s only a wet week ago that women in particular went into convulsions at the sight of a solitary grey hair.

If you pulled out the single strand, the legend has it that ten more would grow in its place and before you knew it you’d look like Grandma Moses.

But now the trendy young things are no longer running away from those grey days – they’re embracing them, running up to greet them, moving onto grey years ahead of nature’s schedule.

The irony of course is that not one of these new silver foxes is actually grey at all – they’re all dyeing their hair to look like old people while old people are still opting for shades of blonde or mahogany that wouldn’t look natural on a polished sideboard, let alone the top of your head.

The fashionistas say that the trend of grey hair first became popular in Asia as a break from basic black – and with all due respect, blonde Asians would, quite frankly, look utterly ridiculous.

Apparently the trick is to not go all grey. They suggest streaks of grey through a darker hair colour which is a style adopted by stars like Kate Moss and Nicole Kidman.

A man could get silver highlights in his hair – some of us are lucky enough to have them for free. The other option is to stop dying your hair and celebrate your natural grey – this can be liberating…just ask Marty Whelan.

Bizarrely, stylists say grey hair can actually make you look younger, cool and rebellious – which means that ad for the dad, going for a job interview and dyeing out his grey roots to ensure he looks younger, is now aimed in the totally wrong direction.

It also means that your average granddad is no longer an arthritic bag of brittle bones; they’re now the new cool generation which will take some time to adjust to.

Apparently this is all some sort of backlash to the eternal quest for anti-ageing techniques that have seen women inject botulism straight into their forehead to get rid of their lines to a point where they can no longer frown.

They’re injecting collagen into their lips until they look like particularly hungry trout; they’ve been nipped and tucked within an inch of their lives, removing the bags under their eyes to the point that they appear to have descended from some ancient masters of the Orient – but now their blonde tresses are turning to grey.

All of this should be greeted with a degree or bemusement by those of us who never put a drop of dye within an ass’s roar of our heads because the last thing we ever thought we’d be was trendy.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.