Silver Might Be the New Blonde

Dying your hair is a risky game. (Trust me, my hair is currently magenta.) Not only do you have to be concerned about long-term chemical damage, it’s often impossible to guarantee that the final product will actually look like the color or shade that you’re imagining in your mind. And even if it does look perfect at first, it can be difficult to predict or control how the color will fade—or how quickly it will fade.

Which is why the concept of a celebrity hair stylist is so appealing to me. Any person talented enough to give Beyoncé the perfect blonde every time (because you KNOW she won’t settle for anything less) is basically a magical being worthy of endless worship and praise. Jane Fonda and Sharon Osbourne both recently popped up with striking new silver-grey ‘dos, and the person who helped them both was colorist Jack Martin. Martin has actually become best known for working with his clients’ natural hair colors to help them achieve a beautiful salt-and-pepper look, and he used that knowledge to help Fonda and Osbourne achieve their desired shade.

According to Martin, Fonda found him through social media.

“She wanted to have a total new look for the Oscars, and at the same time embrace her natural color,” Martin told Page Six Style. “Before she came to me, two or three other colorists had tried and couldn’t get the color right.”

That is a casual flex, and I’m here for it. After all, the final product stands up.

Jane Fonda’s entire transformation took seven hours (which I have been led to understand is a very long time for a white woman to spend at a hair salon), but certainly generated the buzz she was looking for.

Osbourne’s dye job, on the other hand, took a full eight hours.

“[Osbourne] had been coloring her hair every week for the past 18 years, and when she came in, I could tell how tired she was from that commitment,” Martin explained. “Imagine how many layers of color I had to go through in order to get her to white while still keeping her hair healthy.”

Excuse me, every week????? For eighteen years????? This has to be a celebrity thing, both because I can’t imagine that any regular person has the money or time to dye their hair once a week for nearly two decades, and because I’ve always assumed that celebrities must have some magic products that probably cost a million dollars and that help protect their hair from extensive chemical damage. But according to Martin, the only maintenance that his hairstyles require is a $26 purple shampoo and a toner. Not to be overly suspicious, but that just sounds much too reasonably priced for a celebrity hairstylist. Should I see a celebrity hair stylist?

When asked why so many women were choosing to go grey (or silver), Martin says he thinks it’s all about retaining the glamourous look—without the extensive upkeep. In the colorist’s words, “Silver is the new blond.”