I know we all love dyeing our hair in different colors, but let’s get real for a sec.
Loyal Blufashion readers may remember, way back in April, when I dyed my very dark hair for the very first time. As someone who has always been quite fond of my natural hair, I had long been hesitant to mess with a good thing. But at a certain point, I couldn’t emotionally handle seeing any more purple dye jobs without having one myself, so I went for a violet ombre that I absolutely loved. I then had a brief pink period in June, which I didn’t like nearly as much as the purple. And then I let it be for awhile, and less than four months later, because my hair grows like a damn weed, we had this situation:
You can see that I am a bit cranky in this image, and being cranky while listening to the Hamilton soundtrack (which I am here) is damn near impossible. But such is cranky that results from four months of frustrating hair days. While I have never felt like blonde suited me much, the color wasn’t even the problem. The dye job that I got was so well done that the remaining bleached portions faded nicely into my natural brown, not the straight-across bleached ends you so often see. The problem was the texture.
With hair that is naturally super thick and almost never gets greasy, I perhaps should have known that bleaching to such a light color would make my hair particularly hay-like. But I wanted a purple ombre, and dammit, everyone else does it! Most stats say that over 70 percent of women have colored their hair, and I don’t see most women walking around making a face in the photo above. I have felt many a friend’s dyed hairs and found it to be plenty silky. Mine? Not so much. I used the right shampoos and conditioners. I didn’t wash it as much as I used to. I tried serums and argan oil. I almost never used heat tools on it—and yet, I could not get the texture anywhere close to its supple glory of yore. It didn’t curl or move like it used to, I felt like I couldn’t do anything with it, and after awhile I was fed up.
As much as I love the idea of continuing to play with different colors and trends (I mean, I probably wouldn’t have tried the galaxy trend anyway, but smokestack?? I WANT), I’m going to have to bow out of the hair dye game for now, which meant chopping off my hay ombre. Thankfully the lovely people at Paul Labrecque Salon took care of me, styling me into a straw-free lob. My stylist was Liri Pelinku at PL’s Chelsea Piers location, a sweetheart and dry-cutting master who gave me the long-in-the-front graduated-in-the-back lob of my dreams.
This is my lob right after the cut, proving that this is the ultimate wash-and-go hairstyle.
And here she (my haircut) is post-styling, obviously looking fresh and, most importantly, feeling definitively like a human—rather than equine—hair. Not to mention that the blonde bits remaining look beautifully intentional, giving the cut a little extra dimension.
Goodbye scraggly mess and goodbye trying to think of synonyms for hay—you will not be missed.
