Wardrobe 911 ®

If you’re growing out your gray, here are some tips from the trenches.

It’s been 9 weeks since I last colored my hair and the platinum outgrowth is about 1-1/2″ long. As I’ve remarked to my husband, I’m definitely sporting a nice skunk streak. But it seems to have stopped growing altogether.  I guess that’s what happens — when I don’t want it to grow fast, it does and when I do want it to grow fast, it doesn’t.

About a month ago I went to see my hairstylist, Mary Amen.  I figured the first step to embrace the “growing out phase” was to chop it off.  “Go ahead, Mary.  Cut it off.  Do whatever you want with it.”  Have you ever said this to a hairstylist?  Typically their eyes gleam as you hear a big whoop come from their mouths — they love to cut hair short!  What does mine do?  She looks at me perplexed and asks, “Is everything okay at home Teresa?”  After her initial shock and my reassurance that life couldn’t be better, she clipped and styled.  Still auburn.

“It’s going to take about a year for your platinum to fully grow out,” Mary reassured.  Okay.  I can handle it.  Everything was fairly easy to cover for the first month with the ColorMark wand but it has slowly lost its efficacy.  At the 6-week mark, I moved on to magical hair-covering accessory number two: stylish scarves.  Very w-i-d-e, stylish scarves.

The best are the small pocket square styles (love the Hermes ones!) because they’re easiest to tie and keep on.  I also like the long and narrow scarves because you can double wrap them for more coverage.  Just pin them down so they don’t fall off.  I haven’t tried the latest diamond-shaped scarf by Alexander McQueen but it looks like the perfect option. Another good trick is wearing a super-wide headwrap — tres chic!

I figure at the rate I’m going (1/2″ every 3 weeks) I’ll be at 2″ by end of month and the scarves won’t be able to cover the white anymore.  Since I can only go 2 values lighter than my auburn, I can’t go platinum blond (don’t think I begged!) So, I’m out looking for other viable options.  For my research I’m visiting a very reputable hair clinic here in San Francisco that does wig fittings.  Now that will be a fun post because you’re going to discover a rather silly side of me.

Until then, I don’t leave the house without covering up…and I now fear the wind.