Forget embracing the grey - this is the summer of the blonde fox

Forget all that talk about embracing the grey, being blonde is back – the brighter the better

Are you a Mabe (midlife and blonder than ever)? There is a sudden rash of women who are over 60 and determinedly blonde, some of them for the first time. For decades, Mary Portas had a striking red bob (now blondish); the journalist Christa D’Souza was a brunette who went steely grey and is now mermaid blonde. Tilda Swinton has always been blondish but her current apricot quiff (very Bowie circa Young Americans) is as far from natural as it’s possible to go. And Felicity Kendal is probably blonder than she’s ever been.

The reason this is interesting is that we’ve just emerged from a year when we were separated from our hair colourists, a year when lots of people went grey and plenty were talking about sticking with their silver hair

There was a stampede for blonde highlights. Trust me, I was there at the front of the queue

forever. And then, the second the salon doors opened, the opposite happened. There was a stampede for blonde highlights. Trust me, I was there at the front of the queue. When I finally made it to the hairdresser and locked eyes in the mirror with the genius who does my colour (Rebecca at Hari, if you want a hot tip), I didn’t even have to ask. “Are we going brighter,” she said, grinning under the mask, “or a lot brighter?” Every one of her clients had demanded extra-oomphy blonde highlights. All that talk of going grey was, like the Duolingo plan, a lot of hot air.

The bottom line is: you score points in 2021 for experimenting with your hair colour. Everyone under 30 has had a crack at lilac or pearly silver and plenty of sensible grown-ups have gone pink for a bit. And now, extra blonde is something you might try for summer, knowing that no one will bat an eyelid when they see your new light-bulb blonde.

Blonde bombshells: Portas, Kendal and Swinton