We love her hair!

‘Grey hair is modern and stylish,’ says Anna-marie Solowij, co-founder of cool beauty retailer Beautymart (Topshop, Oxford Circus, and online at thisisbeautymart.com)

‘By the age of 18, I had a few grey hairs and, by my late 20s, I’d developed a defined stripe of grey. I remember bumping into an old boyfriend who made a point of commenting on it, which really annoyed me, as he meant it as a criticism. Funny, because he now dyes his hair and I think he looks ridiculous. ‘Nowadays, it’s always younger girls who want to know about my hair. They think it’s coloured. I like that they think it’s a fashion thing, rather than an age thing! Grey looks modern, stylish and relevant, and not something to be fought against at all costs.

I started colouring my hair when there was a significant amount of grey. I did my own for a couple of years because it was easy and saved time, then eventually realised that the blanket all-over colour was too dense and flat, so went to see colourist Louise Galvin. She helped me to lighten up the overall shade, introduced highlights and lowlights and made the management of my grey easier. Around that time, colourist Josh Wood said to me, “Why don’t you let it go grey?” as he thought it would suit me and look stylish. But at the time, that wasn’t how I thought I should look (I worked at Vogue) and I just didn’t have the confidence.

When I left Vogue, a lot of other things in my life changed, too, and it just seemed right to let my real colour come through – plus I wanted to get away from the root touch-ups every three weeks. Josh did a bit of stripping out of my existing colour, some bleaching and some balancing and it looked great from the outset. It took a couple of years having the colour tweaked every six months to get me to the point where now I haven’t had any colour for two years.

My tip if you’re looking to embrace grey? Do it in stages, over time, rather than in one fell swoop, because then you and the people around you will get used to it. Your make-up may have to change, too. Mine has, especially with my brows. I always thought mine were dark and defined enough, but when you lose that perimeter of dark hair, then you need something else to frame and hold the features of your face, so I do much more work on them – shaping, filling, elongating – than I ever used to. My wardrobe hasn’t changed much but I find that I can wear black again, which I avoided for years.’