Do brondes* really have more fun?
*The mix of blonde and brunette taking Hollywood by storm
SuMMer’s fashionable hair colour is not quite blonde. But i t’s not strictly brunette either. In fact, it’s a combination of the two — hence its hybrid name ‘bronde’.
This golden mixture of light and dark tones is already proving popular with A-Listers from Gisele Bundchen and Jennifer Lopez to Michelle Obama. But would it prove as flattering for Femail’s four volunteers?
Kate BattersBy is a 51-year-old divorcee from Berkshire. she says:
THere comes a time in every woman’s life when she can’t look in the mirror without a new grey hair waving back at her. At 51, I have reached that time.
In fact, I probably reached it rather a long while ago.
I just preferred not to think about it until the grey hairs were shouting their greeting so loudly each morning that something had to be done.
But what? Long ago in my mid-20s I went blonde for five years. The thought of doing that now is horribly Bet Lynch. Besides, the maintenance would be such a gigantic pain. Perhaps a home colour treatment in some safe shade of light brown, then? After all, everyone knows lighter tones flatter skins no longer in the first flush.
But I feared ending up merely mouse-coloured, so resisted temptation . . . until I heard about bronde. And now I’m here at the Cobella salon in Kensington to give this fashionable new shade a try.
stylist Cilla depressingly pronounces my hair 25 per cent grey, before putting it through a three- stage treatment. The first is the application of a root colour, limited to the hair closest to my scalp, in a shade not far from my natural mid-brown. This is to cover the grey.
Then she applies what she calls ‘high lift’ in sections over the rest of my hair to make sure I reach that golden bronde, rather than merely flat mousy brown.
These two stages take 45 minutes to apply, and are left on for another halfhour before being washed out. Then, with my head still over the sink, comes the third treatment — a colour toner, ‘ to cool down any brassiness and get that perfect caramel shade’. Finally, a blow-dry to style.
The result? A subtle lift of colour all over and no grey! Hurrah!
I wasn’t sure the brondeness was sufficiently noticeable to justify a price tag of £180 — after all, I’ll have to have it done again in eight weeks. But as soon as my friend Jane saw it, she stifled all doubt. ‘ You look like you’ve been on holiday,’ she said. ‘Love it.’
Her husband simon, however, was foxed by the subtlety. ‘Did you decide not to have it dyed after all, then?’ he queried, before adding: ‘You’re looking well, though.’
Men. Bless.
eve ahmed, 51, lives in Oxford with her second husband, Peter, and her two daughters rosanna, 22, and Claudia, 17. she says:
ever since I was given my first Barbie doll, I’ve longed for blonde hair. But given that I am half-Pakistani and have very dark colouring, not to mention hair as thick as a horse’s mane, it’s not a hair shade I thought I’d ever come even vaguely close to, so I’ve always stuck to my natural colour. Now that I’m older, though, I do worry that being quite so dark is rather ageing.
I have regular brown tints to keep the greys at bay. But recently I’ve been wondering if I should have some highlights round my face to lift my complexion.
My regular hairdresser advised against this, saying it might not look very natural. However, when I confess my secret blonde ambition to Cobella colourist Andreas, he insists there’s no reason why dark-haired lovelies can’t lighten up, too.
After all, Jennifer Lopez is Latin American and she is a walking billboard for this new bronde shade.
The key to keeping the look natural, apparently, is to keep your own root colour and then add lighter tones to the mid-lengths and ends to give the illusion of lightness all over.
I did my roots a couple of weeks ago so there’s no need for an all-over tint. Andreas starts by applying a bleach paste on random sections to remove the dark brown dye I use to cover my grey. When this comes off after half an hour, I can’t help exclaiming ‘Wow’ rather loudly. I’ve finally got little bits of blonde hair. And I love it!
Then a toner is added to temper
the blonde — and, much to my disappointment the colour darkens down a little.
When I get home, there’s nothing but compliments. My husband Peter’s amazed. I think he was dreading muttonish bleached-out highlights but he admits the end result is very natural-looking and suits my colouring.
My eldest daughter, Rosanna, who i s also very dark- haired, i nspects every strand before declaring she’s going to go bronde, too. When I ask my other daughter, Claudia, if it makes me l ook younger, she says: ‘You always look young to me, Mum.’ I’m not entirely sure what it is she wants, but I’m not about to ask.
Either way, when I look in the mirror I can see it’s taken years off me. Book the top-up treatment — I’m going bronde for good.
CHARlotte Kemp, 42, is married to tom, 43, and has three daughters Amelia, 12, Bea, ten, and martha, five. She says:
HAvInG al ways been perfectly content with my long, chestnut brown hair I’ve never felt tempted to tamper with the colour. Until the first few grey hairs sprouted a few years ago, I’ve always felt quietly rather smug as I’ve watched ‘blonde’ friends troop off to the salon every six weeks to spend another s mall fortune on maintaining their tresses.
And even now, I’ve only ever experimented with vegetable dyes to cover the grey bits. So I’m more than a little nervous as I watch my stylist, Charlotte, apply a dark blonde semi-permanent colour to my roots. ‘this is actually the closest shade to your natural hair colour and it will cover the grey,’ she insists.
But my sense of unease grows as a waft of something akin to kitchen cleaner hits my nose. Charlotte is applying a L’Oreal product called Platine which, she explains, is a ‘bleach lifting powder’.
taking sections of my hair, she adds a blob of the stuff, smooths it through and wraps the sections in foil to achieve a mix of blonder tones that will lighten my hair but look ‘very natural’.
the process t akes a good 40 minutes. then I’m left for a further half an hour for the product to work its alchemy.
Finally, it’s off to the basin for a shampoo followed by the final colour wash using a toner to put colour back in to the strands that have been bleached.
Once I’m back in the hairdresser’s chair, I look in the mirror and breathe a sigh of relief. When wet, my hair doesn’t look any different.
But as Charlotte starts to dry it, I realise my mistake because before my eyes what was very much brunette is turning a shade which is verging on, dare I say it, mouse.
I can’t hide my disappointment – even when others in the salon tell me how lovely it looks. Granted, my eyes now look a startling hazel because the light tones in my hair pick out the gold and green flecks. But it looks a little wishy-washy compared to what I am used to.
I leave the final verdict to my fiveyear- old daughter, Martha, a natural blonde, who stares at me quizzically and then delivers her withering verdict: ‘It looks like you’ve got peanut butter in your hair, Mum. You better wash it out.’
AntoniA Hoyle, 36, lives in london with her husband Chris and children Rosie, four, and Felix, two. She says:
SIttInG in t he salon chair, I wait nervously f or my highlights to emerge. It is only when my hair is nearly dry that their newly muted reality sinks in. My beloved blonde locks look more l i ke treacle — and I’ m decidedly disconcerted.
Since I was 13 and discovered the lightening effects of Sun In on my mousy brown hair I have been convinced — cliche that it is — that blondes have more fun.
Platinum streaks seemed to improve my mood as well as my appearance and I soon succumbed to regular salon visits for full heads of highlights that set me back hundreds of pounds. After 20 years with little respite, my hair was more brassy than bombshell, brittle and susceptible to split ends.
So in november 2013 I dyed it a dramatic dark brown. But the effect was one of a washed- out misery guts. My husband, Chris, along with our children, Rosie and Felix, seemed scared — and six months later, I hit the bleach again.
I worry that going bronde will mean my husband will mourn my blonde hair and that I will blend in to the point of invisibility. After all, isn’t ‘bronde’ simply a sexier word for mousy? After my colourist at Cobella finishes plying me with brown dye and subduing the remaining blonde with toner, I am underwhelmed, I can’t help feeling I look like a lacklustre me.
And I’m not alone. My new colour doesn’t appear to merit any reaction whatsoever from Chris. ‘Surely you can see my hair is less brassy now?’ I snap at him.
‘What does brassy mean?’ says Rosie, who had also failed to spot the difference.
‘I don’t know,’ I hear Chris whisper back to her.
I feel much maligned, until the next morning, when a psychological metamorphosis takes place.
I realise my dark hair makes my face look fresher but that there is still enough blonde to lend at least a little glamour.
A fellow mum on the nursery run says the more natural look suits me and because my roots are supposed to be dark I realise I’ll be able to save a fortune by retouching my pesky grey hair at home.
My allegiance to blonde may be over for good. this isn’t mousy, it’s middle-ground — and it’s fabulous.