An idea for the head: herringbone highlights are for those who don’t want to cover gray hair

If before the pandemic many famous (and not) had started to leave grow your gray hair freely without much hesitation, the lockdown did nothing but speed up the process.

The inability to go to the hairdresser has instilled a new and different perception of oneself, overturning common dictates and established habits such as the unbridled rush to retouch the color in front of the first white strands. Among the most famous known cases of gray addiction we find crowned and non-crowned heads. Laws Letizia Ortiz with silver locks always in sight, Caroline of Monaco from the hair salt and pepper, but also Andie MacDowellbecome faithful gray addicted post lockdown, and more Sarah Jessica Parker, Gwyneth Paltrow and many others.

A reversal of perspective, based on a more serene acceptance of gray hair, e encouraged by color techniques that instead of hiding aim to enhance the silver hair. Just like the herringbone highlightsliterally «herringbone highlights», developed by the English colourist Tom Smith. Specifically, it is about intertwining warm and cold reflections with each other, including gray hair among thesefollowing the herringbone structure from which the technique takes its name. In this way a natural result is obtained, well balanced in the intensity of the tones, without the need to hide the gray locks.

“Herringbone Highlights is nothing new,” says Smith on social media. “This term has been used for decades to describe the diagonal position of the foil,” he adds. The reinterpretation of him is inspired to the effect given by the typical laying of the herringbone parquet and to the various natural shades of the wood that this evokes, and consider the silvery locks as real highlights to be intertwined, and not to be covered with dye – explains the same colorist on Instagram.

If on blonde hair the combination of reflections is certainly easier, Smith does not however exclude the possibility of carrying out the technique even on the darker ones. The balance of the intensity of the tones will be different, more delicate, but still feasible.

Undoubtedly an ideal solution for all those who they want to let their gray hair grow and at the same time enhance it, thus freeing himself from the fixed appointment with color retouching. As Smith says: “Don’t worry about your gray hair. Each silver strand is a free highlight“.

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