Which of these women is 28 and which is 48?
The startling answer (revealed on page 53) lays bare the new anti-ageing secret your friends may well be hiding from you!
The woman I’m staring at has thick, tumbling hair. It’s long — though not outlandishly so — but it is lusciously healthy and there’s masses of it, like a mane.
I can’t quite believe that this woman is me. Less than an hour ago, I had shoulder-length hair which had the twiggy look of a bird’s nest. I like to think I’m in reasonable shape for 48, but my hair shows my age.
Now, I look a decade younger — two decades younger from the back. But even more remarkable is the effect on my mood. And it’s this unexpected surge of confidence which accompanies all the triumphant hair swishing that tells me most about a new anti-ageing trick fast catching on among the over 40s.
As I admire the new, improved me in the salon mirror, a glamorous fifty-something woman — with thick, dark blonde hair that falls below her shoulders — approaches to marvel at the understated elegance of my flowing locks.
‘Lots of my friends have hair extensions,’ she confides, ‘although some of them look like Barbie dolls!’ Not what most mature women want.
But while few of us wish to look like a senior WAG, many do want to have gorgeous, long hair in midlife. The premise that once you hit 40, you should hack it all off — as if to symbolise your fading fertility — is outdated. Longer styles are increasingly popular among women in their 40s, 50s and beyond. And for those who aren’t blessed with thick, long hair (and perhaps never have been) mid-life is a great time to start faking it.
The UK hair extension industry has been booming for a while now and is worth between £45 million and £60 million, according to market research firm IBISWorld.
But Sharon Landman, owner of the Lulu Blonde Salon in Wimbledon Village, where my dramatic transformation occurs, says the over-40s are a growing market, and this has become especially noticeable in the past three years. ‘The majority of our clients now have got grown-up children,’ she says. ‘Most are mid-40s and 50s. They don’t want people to look at them and say: “She’s got hair extensions.”
‘But they want to look fantastic and they’ve got the disposable income to fund it. No one is letting themselves go at a certain age anymore — it’s about looking as good as you possibly can.’
The aim is not to look like an extra from a reality TV show.
‘What older women want is more oomph!’ says Stacie Odwell, who developed Natural.X, the brilliant new type of hair extension system I’m roadtesting, which focuses on boosting volume as well as length.
‘People think that when their hair gets thinner, they can’t do anything with it, but they can,’ she says. ‘We fill in the gaps to give their hair more weight. Then whatever style they want, they have more to play with.
‘The beauty of these is that they can look natural and chic — the aim is to give you the hair you had ten years ago, rather than hair down to your bottom.’
In hollywood, there are few older stars who don’t cheat but for the young, it’s an established part of their beauty arsenal.
Last year, celebrity hairstylist Priscilla Valles told the hollywood Reporter she estimated that 97 per cent of all female stars wore hair extensions. And it’s fairly easy to guess — when a celebrity’s hair grows 100 cm within a week — who’s cheating. Jennifer Lopez, 48, appeared with a curly long bob at the end of last April, then attended the Met Gala days later with long, full, fabulous hair.
And last year at the Cannes Film Festival, Jane Fonda, 80, sported a high blonde ponytail that reached almost to her waist.
With my new plentiful mane, I too can gather it into a big fat ostentatious ponytail (the thin rat’s tail of last week is no more).
This, given the fact that most