Is your hair more grunge than groomed?
Now that, I thought, as I surveyed the frazzled ends of my hair, is what you call a blow-fry.
I’d been in the (Milanese) salon chair for about 45 minutes – quite a feat in itself when your hair is chin level and fine. But my well-meaning stylist had been hot in the pursuit of the undone look that is so on trend (220 degrees of heat when I peaked at the temperature on her straighteners). Drying, tonging, a bit more drying, a lot more product to give it that “just woke up like this” texture…
This is where we are in 2019. Bed-head hair has mutated into deathbed hair. It’s possible to spend £100 on a blow-dry and emerge with a look best described as hedge backwards.
It’s enough to make you give up on the salon. But you must never do that because bad hair kills all known style. It’s more a question of finding the hairdresser who can deliver the right degree of undone – George Northwood, author of the Duchess of Sussex’s messy bun, practically invented this balance (georgenorthwood.com), while
Joel Goncalves (Nicolaclarkeat Johnfrieda.com) is one of the best and can’t be touched for idyllically low-maintenance cuts.
There’s nothing wrong with a little undone-ness – it can look youthful and fresh. But there’s a fine line between undone, well-done and overdone. The ideal ratio doesn’t just apply to follicular matters. Clothes-wise, we’re witnessing the stealth return of grunge. Blanket skirts, asymmetric hems, Little House on the Prairie dresses, plaids, checks, clompy boots, ponchos, oversized jackets and coats, bias-cut satin maxi skirts, slip dresses – all of which can look charmingly uncontrived if done right, but haphazardly skanky done wrong.
If this is a swing from the Kardashian kabuki approach to grooming and their get-your-booty-out-and-keep-it-out approach to dressing, it’s one even the Kardashians have clocked. This week, Kim Kardashian’s half-sister, Kylie Jenner – the one who made her first billion before 21 – went out in public, to the shocked awe of many a beauty blog, without make-up. (Actually, I think she was wearing mascara, or some kind of lash enhancement, and possibly some tinted moisturiser, but that could just be me. Or it could be that in Kardashian country, that counts as nothing.)
I loved grunge first time round (1993 for any fashion novices: the Perry Ellis show designed by Marc Jacobs, who was promptly fired). The Nineties: a time when no-make-up make-up ruled and a couple of surprisingly stretchy bias-cut slip dresses from Ghost could you get you through a pregnancy. If that’s not nirvana, what is?
I’m just as smitten by the grunge revival on the catwalks. Kirsty Hulme, Maggie Rizer, Stella Tennant, Christy Turlington, Marie Sophie Wilson, Kirsten Owen – all those Nineties supers doing their walk-through-aforest shtick at the shows in February, nearly all in classic Nineties nude make-up and wafty, blankety things.
But 20 years on, you have to tread cautiously. Kirsty and co may have looked au naturel but you can guarantee there was a small army backstage grooming them. There’s a point where an underdo becomes an under-don’t.
Nora Ephron observed that there were seven hours of dutiful grooming separating her and the bag lady she used to regularly see. She wasn’t being fatuous. She meant if she didn’t stay on top of her salon appointments, the depilation, the workouts and the other stuff we do to keep ourselves ship shape, she’d look unacceptably unkempt in a soberingly short time. In other words, you can think au natural at any age, but you should act tactically. Here are some hacks for looking refreshingly low maintenance rather than off-puttingly no maintenance.
Head Hair
Zero point scrimping. You are not that 18-year-old who can go five years without a trim. Your hair has different requirements. Invest in an easy-tocare-for cut (minimises styling time) and good product (if your hair is fine, Virtue has some of the best, particularly its split ends cream, virtuelabs.com). Take Ful.vic (folic acid supplement) to encourage growth: (£30, victoriahealthcom). Go easy on mattifying potions such as dry shampoos and texturisers, especially if you colour your hair. Leave beachy hair to the Love Island brigade.
Elsewhere Hair
Take a mirror to a window and scrutinise your personal forestry. It’s no good making like Amal Clooney in the sartorial stakes, if your face has more fuzz than a St Bernard’s. I bleached mine for years, but eventually that can leave odd pale patches – and clusters of strangely dominant blond wisps. I’ve been trying the Smooth Skin Muse, an at-home, hand-held light pulse device. Use it weekly for three months and you may solve the problem permanently. It’s pricey (£299 on currentbody.com), but five weeks in, the results are gratifying. Might be worth a group purchase with friends. As for eyebrows, we all know – in ways we didn’t at 18 – that they’re Very Important and that with a little judicious tinting and threading, can be almost any shape we want. For the ultimate brow treatment and all the gizmos (its brow gel and brow mascara are particularly good), visit an Anastasia Beverly Hills bar where, based on a Golden Ratio of beauty (highfalutin’ name but trust them), they’ll deliver the right brow for your face, as well as tempting you with some of the most blendable eyeshadow palettes out there (beautybay.com).
Teeth
Few things are more unattractive than a mouthful of trufflecoloured stumps. While a snaggle-toothed smile is cute at 20, it can look medieval later on. Tooth whitening? Why not? If you’re worried you’ll end up with a Simon Cowell nuclear white-out, you won’t. Those are veneers. Consult a good dentist and do it properly – you can get it done there, or they’ll give you a bespoke tray for home.
Nails
Even if the palest pink polish is a glamour-girl step too far, you still need regular manicures and pedicures because – well, cuticles and hard skin. Try a Japanese mani while you’re in the chair (£35, swanky.london) – a series of nourishing pastes are buffed into the nails.
Clothes
I know women who spend a fortune trying to look as though they haven’t spent a fortune. This seemed cool and understated in their 20s but risky in their 40s and 50s. Cut, quality fabrics and rigorous underpinning must be your red lines. Do not be tight (in any sense) with underwear, particularly bras. Get yourself to Rigby & Peller or some similar haven where the staff are so knowledgeable they don’t even whip out a tape measure. THEY JUST KNOW. Try these places in the sales. The discounts can be thrilling, the service still impeccable – and, really, who cares if your bra is last season?
Skin
One of the chief tenets of looking low maintenance is dewy skin. Alas, post-20s, skin can get less velvety more Velcro-y. So let’s just ditch the junk that’s not helping, starting with those drying beauty “treatments”. Harsh astringents, peels and overdoing it with retinols and Vitamin C – none of it’s required unless, in the case of peels, you have acne or scarring. Invest instead in facial massages, good (organic) moisturisers and oil (Ila’s are the dream – from £49, ila-spa.com). Garden of Wisdom’s Hyaluronic acid (apply before moisturiser) is a must. It holds 1,000 times its own weight in water, plumping out skin nicely (£9, victoriahealth.com).
Finally…
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. You may have terrific arms and shoulders for your age. But on anyone other than a winsome waif, slip dresses and all those Laura Ingalls Wilder little girl numbers are a bit like a totally line-free face and porny lips on a 70-year-old. Wrong.