SILVER AND BOLD

What happened when Bazaar's editor-in-chief and committed brunette Lydia Slater embraced the grey?

- LYDIA SLATER

I remember the first time I realised that my hair was beginning to go grey. I was in my twenties, and on holiday with my sister. We were lying in the sun, digesting lunch, when she told me I had a few grey hairs and offered to pull them out. After she had been plucking, agonisingly, for about 10 minutes, my scalp was aflame and I had to beg her to stop.

Going grey early shouldn't have been a shock -my father's jet-black curls were entirely grizzled in his thirties and snow-white by 45. But my identity was wrapped up in being a brunette. So, after first changing my hairstyle-a fringe simply highlighted the salt-and-pepper effect at the front I headed to the salon for a tint. For the next 25 years, I continued to do so, at gradually decreasing intervals, relying on off-the-shelf dyes and touch-up spray to keep regrowth at bay. Over the years, I must have spent more than a sitting in the colourist's chair. Even lockdown failed to break my allegiance to brown hair-I bought a set of colour brushes, and my hairdresser taught me how to use them on a video call.