I no longer fear a sliver of silver – but is it time to go Full Grey?

Having not seen her natural colour since the age of 15, Lisa Armstrong has let her roots show in lockdown. With 24 hours until her appointment, she has a decision to make...

In 24 hours, I’ll be in the colourist’s chair. Kudos to me for scoring an appointment in the first week of reopening. Less kudos for my complete indecision because, after months of waiting to get to the salon to purge my grey strands, I’m tempted to go Full Grey.

Pre-pandemic, it used to be pretty straightforward. A pint of the usual chemicals please. For years I’ve hovered between light brown and dark blonde. At first, I’d get my roots done every three months. Gradually, it became every seven weeks. Then five – and that wasn’t really enough. I have darker-haired friends who have three weekly top-ups.

Is that where I’m heading? “You’re 60 per cent grey,” my colourist, Sally Northwood, told me a couple of years ago. I didn’t believe her – I haven’t seen my natural colour in its entirety since I was 15 and I’m now in my 50s. But to be on the safe side, I stepped up the appointments. God forbid I should reveal a sliver of silver. For professional reasons, I wanted to look youthful and on top of my grooming game. And for all the positive reinforcement images we’ve seen of silvery tresses over the past half decade or so, grey is still a weighted choice for women. It’s all very well for Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Arianna Grande, Rihanna and Jourdan Dunn to flirt with silver. They’re children. For them, it’s just another novelty colour.

When you’re older, and you don’t have the yin of naturally plump skin to complement the yang of steely hued hair, grey takes on very different connotations. In a new study published in the Journal of Women and Ageing, the women canvassed said they felt those who go grey are viewed as less competent and are judged for “letting themselves go”.

Admittedly this was a small group – 80 women – but we all instinctively know they’re on to something. Or rather many things, some of them contradictory. The idea that going grey is a sign of giving up and allowing yourself to sink into a degenerative quasi feral state doesn’t really stand up.

Most of the women I know who’ve gone grey lavish time and money on their locks. Incompetence? Or too useless to schedule trips to the salon? Anyone who really believes that is very naive about how much work immaculate silver hair requires.

But that’s the thing about grey – it circumvents our logic as well as our best attempts to be modern and open-minded, and goes straight to the bit of our brains that’s wired to be fearful of ageing. I was just as susceptible to The Fear.

During the first lockdown, I went through the daily saga of dabbing – then smothering – Color Wow on to my roots. My morning ritual began to resemble a reverse shot of the opening scenes of Dangerous Liaisons where the aristos are getting their wigs blasted with grey powder. But over time, I realised I actually liked the colour of my greys. The fact that it took so long to discover this shows, I suppose, how deep my own anxieties about ageing run. My husband, who has on the whole been exemplary about my various fashion fads over the years, is not keen on this grey thing – despite the fact he’s greyer than George Clooney. But then there’s no female equivalent of a silver fox, is there?

“What’s the difference between having blonde streaks painstakingly painted into my hair and these naturally silver ones that are sprouting, free of charge, from my scalp?” I asked him on Sunday. One is associated with being sun-kissed, the other with being dobbed in by age, he responded. True. But these days no one actually believes the blonde hair on an 80-year-old woman, or the raven toupee on a male pensioner is the work of Mother Nature, surely. Paradoxically, I think the reason I’m drawn to grey is because I write about fashion, and fashion is surprisingly relaxed about it.

This isn’t because the industry is a beacon of age tolerance – it’s not. However, the women working in or on the periphery of fashion who celebrate their grey hair – such as Ruth Chapman, the co-founder of matchesfashion.com; Linda Fargo, the vice-president of Bergdorf Goodman; models Maye Musk, Kristen Mcmenamy and Jan de Villeneuve; Grece Ghanem, a microbiologist turned street style star (yes really); British Vogue’s Sarah Harris – tend to be a stylish, confident bunch.

Another reason I like grey is that I find the modern execution of it very chic. A generation ago, when any woman over 50 had a short perm, grey probably was the killer blow – perhaps that’s why the late Nora Ephron, the goddess of everything, never went grey. But with sleek cuts and 21st-century products that’s just not the case. “You can’t be apologetic for your grey,” says Joel Gonçalves at John Freida, “you have to own it, it needs to be bold. You need to create a hairstyle around the grey, it’s a whole new look.” Point taken. He’s cutting mine tomorrow.

And there is something dignified about it. Caroline of Monaco’s salt-and-pepper hair looks fabulously elegant. All the more credit to her, given that Monaco is teeming with people who look as though they’re embalmed in filler. Then there’s Gwyneth’s Grombre (she couldn’t just go grey, could she?) – grey at the roots segueing into blonde at the ends.

Over the past year, Instagram has become constellated with women deciding to work with their grey rather than fighting an exhausting battle with rapidly diminishing returns – the more frequently you end up having to dye your hair, the harder it becomes to keep it from turning to straw.

Isn’t it better to choose shine and

Pre-pandemic, it was straightforward. A pint of the usual chemicals please

Women who don’t dye said they felt judged for ‘letting themselves go’

health, they argue, over an outdated beauty standard? Yes, yes and yes. Although I can’t help wondering whether they start these public silver salvos so there can be no turning back.

For me, though, this isn’t about being “authentic”. I’m under no illusion about the upkeep and products required to keep silver looking silver, as opposed to nicotine, and I’ve got nothing against artificiality, per se, if it’s done well. It’s more about being curious to explore what happens if I make the chemically incremental but psychologically huge shift from peroxide streaks to white ones. I’ve always loved halos of white blonde hair. Maybe this could be a slightly different iteration of one.

Decision time then. Logistically, this could be the ideal moment to see it through. As a colleague remarked yesterday, assuming there are no more lockdowns, when else will I get the chance to get through the most painful part of letting grey grow through again in semi privacy?

Last week, I mentioned my silver plan to (the silver-headed) hairdresser George Northwood – famous for cutting Alexa Chung’s and Meghan’s locks – mainly in the hope, I think, of being talked out of it. He was full of enthusiasm.

On the other hand, several close friends are horrified that I’m even considering it, because there’s no getting round the fact it can age you, and we live in an ageist society.

And maybe, though they haven’t said this, because women my age who go grey are, in no small way, challenging the societal norms – not just about beauty but about age – to which they (and so far I) still adhere. So, what the heck to do? I’ve got 24 hours to wade through this grey area. Wish me luck.