Mary Killen’s Fashion Tips

Fringe benefits of colourful hair

White locks can look stylish – but why not dare to go violet or burnt sienna?

Well-crafted and well-tethered wigs, as I described in the July issue, can dramatically enhance a woman’s appearance. It makes the head/body proportions better.

But wig-wearing is a palaver, unless you are a professional beauty. So how do you increase the volume of your own natural hair?

I have the answer. For years, my own hair never grew longer than to the upper rim of my bra cup. Then I received the following tip from David, a 30-year-old heterosexual male, of all people. ‘Never use hair-conditioner. Conditioners suppress growth.’ Regarding him anew, I noted that his own incipient balding had gone into reverse.

From the day I stopped using conditioner, my hair started racing thickly out of my head and even today will happily grow to my waist if I let it.

Some hair-product companies say there is no concrete evidence that conditioner clogs and softens the follicles so that growth is suppressed. They would say that, wouldn’t they?

All I know is that my passing-on of David’s tip has changed the self-esteem of two 60-something women, whose heads previously looked uncomfortably like skulls, so sparse was their hair.

They have now both had ‘normal’ hair volumes for ten years or more. David’s tip has also reversed the hair loss of at least three young men. But don’t take my word for it. Try stopping using it for yourself and see what happens.

The second tip for volumising is to blow-dry just the roots of your hair, holding your head upside down while you do so. Just the roots. Some fear that backcombing, which adds instant volume, will damage the hair.

Thankfully, the star hairdresser John Vial, who appears in the mesmerising Channel 5 show 10 Years Younger in 10 Days, has taught me how to backcomb safely. ‘It is when combing it out that the

White is the new black: Christine Lagarde

damage is normally done. So you simply start at the very ends of your hair and work slowly upwards to gently untangle the backcombing.’

Next – hair colour. The historian Paul Johnson was struck, when he first went to Italy in the 1950s, by the fact that – while back in England women had blonde, brown, black, red or indeterminate-coloured hair (mouse was one shade in the indeterminate range) – every single woman in Italy had jet-black hair. On a return visit in the 1960s, he noted that a substantial proportion were now suddenly blonde-headed.

It didn’t use to be possible to change your hair from dark to blonde without using peroxide and looking cheap.

You couldn’t go from grey to black or brown without using boot polish. Then, in the 1960s, a new generation of colourants came onto the market.

Clairol’s Nice’n Easy was reasonably priced and you could mix it up and dye your own hair at home. Trouble was, after a bit your home-dyed blonde hair tended to go khaki-coloured – especially if you had swum in a pool with chemicals.

And then you had no option but to grow it out and attend a professional salon. By the 1970s, the chemicals were better and top salons such as Daniel Galvin in Mayfair began offering vegetable colours, which were gentler on the hair.

To give a thoroughly natural look, you apply it only onto sections, all protected from one another in tinfoil wraps until the dye takes and you can be washed out.

Highlights really can look natural – so much better than the ‘block’ colour that results from home dyeing. Think of the hair of Lego man and Lego woman if you want to picture the look of block colour.

There are many chic women whom grey/white hair actually suits – one is Christine Lagarde – but even she will have something done to it, like a rinse, to make it look softer. My old friend Anne has always been ingenious with tubes of violet and burnt sienna and watercolours from the art shop, turning them into a rinse to cover those sections of her hair that have gone white.

‘It washes out – so it isn’t a problem if you get the colour wrong,’ she says.

But is it bad manners to hang on to your own naturally grey hair when all your contemporaries are still sporting full heads of highlighted colour?

Well, yes, in a way.

It’s annoying to everyone else who is trying not to remind themselves and others how old they truly are. And it’s not just the colour – it’s the texture of grey hair. When hair loses its colour, the texture also changes to wiry.

Grey, wiry hair is not a good look and that is why everyone over a certain age now colours their hair. Even the men on television are doing it. Name one whose hair isn’t coloured – apart from James Mates, David Dimbleby and Paxman.

If you want to know how you would look with your old colour restored, buy a cheap wig – they are only £9.99.

The cheap ones look terrible – but they will show you whether that colour still suits you. And if it doesn’t, you can head to the hairdresser for highlights.