Rethinking Colorful Hair

Katherine Bernard

It's time to talk a blue streak about baby-blue streaks-and similarly unexpected hues of dusty-orange, pale-violet, buttercup-yellow, or rose-gold hair color. Whatever the precise shade, the once rebellious beauty statement is stepping away from its aggressively punk roots-think DIY bathtub Manic Panic dye jobs and acid-bright Kool-Aid rinses-and into softer, more elegant territory these days.

Take, for instance, the sight of model Natalia Vodianova closing Givenchy's recent fall fashion show with a headful of blush-pink Victorian pin curls-and a sheer floor-length finale skirt with embroidery to match.

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Off the runway, too, the trend holds a powerful new grown-up appeal. "Many of my clients actually rocked colored hair back in the nineties, but now they want something that doesn't make them look too young and St. Mark's-y," says New York City-based colorist Aura Friedman of the sudden shift toward a quieter palette of pastel shades and washed-out watercolor pigments. From her chair at the Sally Hershberger Downtown salon, she often mixes a bold shade of dye with conditioner before applying it to the hair, softening its tone to minimize the appearance of a dense streak of pigment. When it comes to actually painting it on, Friedman mimics the same nuanced variations in tone that one might find in even the most natural shade of chestnut brown. "I always try to keep it lighter around the hairline and at the ends as if it were naturally sun-kissed," she explains of her painterly technique. "It gives it a more organic feeling."

So organic that when Friedman dyed my hair silvery violet this past winter, it took time for friends to even register the change. "Is your hair purple?" a pal who had already spent a full four hours with me-in daylight-finally asked. Waiting for Friedman to apply her hand-mixed hue, I had originally worried that out on the street, I'd look like I was on my way to Comic-Con or a rave. Instead, it was a pretty, almost imperceptible change that remained so even as it slowly washed out to pale blonde over the course of the next three weeks.

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Of course, unlike a quirky-cool nail polish or techno-bright lipstick, most dyes last longer than a day-meaning that even the softest wash of, say, sea foam requires a commitment to a more editorial look. Think of your color as a new semipermanent statement accessory. "If I go out in jeans and a T-shirt, I rely on my hair to do the rest," says Harriet Verney, who recently visited London's cult Bleach salon and came away with muted orange, blue, and silver hair. Cable band frontwoman Tracy Antonopoulos, whose hair Friedman dyed a pale shade of carrot for a music-video shoot, also finds herself dressing around her hair. "I usually wear head-to-toe color, but I've switched to more black," she says of treating print and color in her clothing "as an accent" these days.

Friedman asserts that keeping hair clean, shiny, and well-conditioned will help thwart any comparisons to Johnny Rotten. Of course, you'll also never be likened to Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, but, as Opening Ceremony's Kate Foley puts it, success with hair color is all in how you carry it. "It looks nicer on a woman who is well put together and knows her style," says the fashion buyer, who has been known to wear a washed-out ribbon of pale lavender color in her own waist-length blonde hair with everything from a white laser-cut T-shirt to a head-to-toe floral-print suit. Winning streak, indeed.

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