Back to my roots with some luxury in lockdown

AFEW days ago I hopped online to peruse my hairdresser’s social media page. A friend had mentioned that her salon recently delivered some dye with a set of instructions on how to use it at home, and I wondered if my place might be doing the same.

my roots, you see, have reached epic proportions. They’re now so long that if I chopped off the dyed bit I’d end up with a nice bob. I’ve been having highlights for the best part of 20 years now and to be honest, I’d forgotten what my natural hair colour looked like.

Turns out it’s a shade called Desperately needs Highlights.

So off I went in search of a miracle, and landed on my salon’s social media page. ooh, I thought, spotting one lustrous looking blonde head of hair, twisted elegantly at the ends and taken from the back. That’s what I want. oh, to have hair like that.

I looked closer. Was it? Could it be? I thought back. It was. It was a picture of my hair, freshly coiffed and taken by my stylist in January, the last time I went to the salon.

running my hands through the current bird’s nest, I could have wept.

I know how frivolous this sounds. I know people are dying, and others are risking their lives in order to care for them. We are in the middle of a horrible global pandemic. Some perspective is required.

But at the same time, perspective is a funny thing when you are trapped indoors with your own reflection.

Particularly when that reflection starts to seem less and less familiar.

Women – and to a lesser extent men, too – wrap their identity up in their appearance. In what we wear and how we wear it, the jewellery round our wrists, the blusher on our cheeks.

I’ve often thought that make-up in particular is like armour, a way of taking on the world, faces painted.

That dressing up is a form of expression, a way of saying something about ourselves to the people we meet.

Except that now there is no world to take on, or dress up for. Unless you count the weekly trip to Asda, which has all the glamour of a wet weekend in Wester Hailes.

In economics they talk about ‘the lipstick effect’. It’s a theory which posits that during times of recession, consumers will still buy luxury goods, but instead of an evening gown or a nice new bag, they’ll buy a lipstick or a mascara. nods to luxury and decadence with much smaller price tags.

It’s about more than price, though. When the chips are down, when we’re feeling depressed or miserable or frightened – emotions which all of us have gone through over the past few months – a slash of lipstick really can brighten up the day.

Getting dressed, rather than slobbing about in jogging bottoms of an indiscernible shade of greige, can do wonders for your mental health.

Even running a brush through your hair, bird’s nest, roots and all, can make you feel that little bit better.

When I think of some of the older women in my life whom I admire, I think of my mother, fashionable and colourful, choosing her earrings for the day, even if that day will be spent indoors, alone, on lockdown.

ITHInK, too, of my fiance’s grandmother who, in her 90s, no matter what time of day you visited, was always immaculately dressed and made up. of a neighbour who, at 94, invariably has her nails beautifully painted, even if she can walk only as far as the front door.

Wise women, I say. ones who know that looking smart is about feeling well, and that dressing up isn’t just about facing the world, but about facing yourself.

And so I did indeed buy a mascara online a few weeks ago, and this week, in honour of the fact that it should have been my hen night this weekend, a new dress, from the website of a high street store, the only piece of clothing I’ve bought since lockdown.

I may not be out on the tiles drinking cocktails with my friends, but I’m sure as Schubert going to make sure that I look good on Zoom while drinking a homemade pina colada at the kitchen table.

There’s nothing I can do about the roots right now, but until then, I’m going to dress up, and make myself up, as though these locks were every bit as lustrous as the last time I stepped out of the salon.