Time to change up what you wear?
Many of us went gray over the Covid years. During the first big lockdown, we couldn’t get haircuts, highlights, or roots touched up. (And yes, the color and touch-ups applied to men, too). Our wardrobes may have degenerated to stained sweatpants for lounging around the house.
Like many others, my hair is grayer than before, although the silver threads among the gold give me an overall ash-blonde appearance as a graying blonde.
Most of my friends are wither full-on gray or white, with white hair like a cap cloud hanging over the mountain peak.
Gray/white/silver hair has a different texture. It is coarser and may grow faster. I have some totally gray wings along the side of my face, and that hair goes its own way.
In conversation with a silver friend, she remarked that her wedding jewelry and most of her jewelry were yellow-gold, when white gold or silver would be better at this stage. We may need new pops of color— in eyeglasses, scarves, or wardrobe pieces.
Am I even writing about fashion? For two years, dressing up involved wearing something recently laundered. I haven’t cared. I’m retired.
But I’m gray.
I am paying attention since my hairstylist talked me out of returning to highlights. “You have natural highlights, now that your own color has grown back. It’s at least fifty percent silver.”
When I bought new eyeglass frames, I bought some that were two-tone with fuschia, a bold color that I needed. Iris Apfel could become a role model, the now-centenarian who is a walking art piece of bold color and chunky jewelry.
I may have “had my colors done” years ago at a party when I thought it was all nonsense. But I have changed colors. My hair is silver, and my skin is more spotted, with an undertone of red, as I flush more easily. I’m certainly not going to stop drinking red wine.
White-haired friends can wear bold colors.
And style. I went to a folk concert a couple of weeks ago, and everyone there really was an old man with their old lady, wearing Birkenstocks and pulling wispy hair back into a ponytail. Many of the women were wearing long straight hair with fringe bangs –like Joni Mitchell or young Joan Baez — but the hair colors were variations on gray. Our hairstylists can help camouflage the thinning hair spots. Wearing the hairstyles of our twenties just makes us look older, in my humble opinion.
Maybe I’ll get my colors done. And find out I need to unretire all those scarves. Or even go shopping.
Cheryl West
Hair. I don’t care what color it is as long as I keep most of it. I got to see Hair on Sunset Blvd. in L.A. years ago. The older generation, my parents included, were obsessed with hair. My mother commented negatively about my hair for her entire life. At age 60 or so I finally told her, there are more important things i life than hair.