
Heat styling should be kept to a minimum to preserve the integrity of the hair. Shop Now Style Your New Gray With Care and Confidence Is Key I already created the salt, and now I want to create the pepper.” It gives me a full view of the light and dark areas so that I can go in with a lowlight and match those areas. “So then you have roots that have salt and pepper, and white hair three quarters of the way down. “I bleach it to the color of the inside of a banana, which is almost like white, a little pale yellow white, and then I tone the whole hair,” he explains. It’s all about foil placement.” In other instances, he will bleach all the previously colored hair completely without touching the roots, sometimes even using a color extractor to remove some of the artificial color before going in to minimize damage. “When there is a dark chunk, I follow that section. “When there is a chunk of silver or white, I foil towards that section of the roots all the way down,” explains Martin. In terms of technique, it’s all based on the pattern of the roots and how light or dark a client’s hair is. View on Instagram It’s Going to Be an Hours-Long, If Not Months-Long Processĭepending on the thickness of the color or length of the hair, one of Martin’s gray hair transformations can take anywhere from six to 14 hours.

But it didn’t stop her from joining the burgeoning gray-hair movement-and as the excitement around her salt-and-pepper strands indicates, trusting her intuition and embracing the natural aging process of her hair has paid dividends. “It’s a big, new thing and they might be going against people around them with people saying, ‘Are you crazy? Why do you want to look old?’” As Macdowell told Vogue earlier this year, that was the case for her while navigating her acting career in Hollywood in her early 60s. “Sometimes women are nervous of this transformation,” admits Martin, whose most famous silver-haired clients include Jane Fonda and Andie Macdowell. While beauty ideals are evolving, the fact remains that the cultural obsession with youth means that many women find themselves considering the social implications of going gray, rather than just their own volition. But while quarantining at home, they grew it out and it gave them a chance to realize how beautiful their natural roots are.”

“Usually once a woman sees a little gray, they head straight to the salon. “The lockdown definitely helped encourage women,” says Jack Martin, the go-to colorist for seamless gray hair transitions, of silver strands being idolized rather than stigmatized. Between the global pandemic hindering visits to the hair salon and a seismic shift in the culture, many women are contemplating transitioning to gray hair instead of concealing it.
