COLOUR ME BEAUTIFUL
Few things are as uplifting as a great dye job. Annabel Meggeson catches up with the ‘king of colour’ Josh Wood for the inside track on transforming your hair
Expert advice on how to get the perfect hair colour
‘Iwas really dedicated…’ Slip. ‘…to the craft of colouring,’ Slap. Josh Wood, one of the UK’S most acclaimed colourists, is reminiscing about his training and applying hair dye in the way only top colourists can – with apparently no effort whatsoever. The results will be effortless, too. I know this, as I’ve been lucky enough to be coloured by Wood before, and anyway, it’s his signature, as seen on the heads of ‘natural’ blondes and ‘glossy’ brunettes around the globe.
He’s also responsible for creating some of the most creative hair looks on the catwalk. A memorable moment was a few years ago, when Wood turned an army of catwalk models at Prada into gangs of redheads, ice-blondes and velvety browns. ‘It was about turning those girls into women,’ he says. Few things are as transformational as a great dye job. According to a 2017 Mintel report, 80% of women over 25 who colour their hair will have attested to this. Ditto the women who fly halfway across the world to pay Wood his four-figure fee.
The reason we place so much importance on having great colour hair, is simple: it’s so very youthifying. ‘There’s no age barrier when it comes to colour. Give me a woman of any age and I can make her look the best version of herself,’ says Wood. You do have to be prepared for your hair to evolve, though, as ‘the woman who is holding onto her hair colour from 20 years back is not going to look as good as the woman who has found the right tones for her right now. The more you accept your look and work with it, the more confident and beautiful it looks.’
For lots of women, this means working with your colourist to gracefully cover any incoming greys and steer away from block tints (the same colour all-over), which don’t look natural, as hair is inherently multitonal. And it generally means going lighter. ‘Skin and hair lose pigment over time, so you need to respect that, but in a controlled, beautiful way,’ says Wood. I know lots of brunettes like myself who have railed against highlights or balayage, as we feel we’re betraying our kind, only to become addicted to the addition of lighter pieces from our late 30s onwards, as it’s just much more flattering. The other silver lining is that more tones through the hair, including lighter ones, makes regrowth less obvious. ‘If you’re having to touch up your roots every two weeks, it’s probably not the best colour for you,’ says Wood.
And what about grey? Wood’s firmly in the grey’s okay camp, assuming that’s your choice, ‘but if you do want to conceal greys, you should be able to do so completely.’ His new range (The Josh Wood Colour System, which launched in Boots last month), is aimed at this, and features not just box colours, but blending wands and colour ‘shots’ for in between touch-ups and gloss. The online tool (joshwoodcolour.com), that helps you navigate and utilise the range effectively, will also point you towards salon colour if you want more fiddly things done – lighter ends and a rinse-out gold tint to finish, in my case.
I return to the mirror and, as I’m dried off, my new ‘effortless’ colour emerges. It’s like pressing a reset button – I’m good to go again. Anything I do to my looks now is a bonus, set against the backdrop of my lovely zero-greys, chocolate-caramel hair. I leave the salon with a bounce in my step. It may be ‘more of a utility than a design,’ as Wood puts it, not to mention rather costly and never-ending, but great hair colour is always, always worth it.