A couple of days ago we got a note from our friends at Well + Good NYC, one of my favorite sites (which you should bookmark, if you have not already). They said they were doing a piece on hair dye, and wanted our take.
I was delighted to weigh in. From the article, which you should read in full:
Henna-based and vegetable hair dyes are a growing market. “But the problem is that they suck—which might not be their fault,” says Siobhan O’Connor, co-author of No More Dirty Looks, a book and website dedicated to non-toxic beauty. “The real issue is that, for a dye to actually work, some heavy-duty chemistry is in order. We’re asking the product to be foolproof, consistent, stable, and effective. Nature hasn’t—and I suspect won’t—find a way to replicate those factors in a dye.”
(Why do I say things like “they suck” in interviews?)
Anyway, those of you who have read the book (and it seems like a lot of you have!) probably already know about the time I tried low-tox highlights and ended up looking like a skunk. So what do I do now?
I wrote that I intended to continue highlighting my hair on occasion—that it would be the last bastion of my formerly dirty life. But then life got in the way, and at a certain point I realized it had been nine months since I’d touched it—and I was loving the look. I’m fond of the faded-out, lighter-at-the-bottom, rooty thing anyway. But then life got in the way again, and at some point before Christmas, I felt like I needed a little…something. So off I went to the salon for a pick-me-up in the form of “no more than 10! promise?” highlights.
The most important thing about any beauty risk is knowing the facts, which W + G did a great job explaining. So my advice, for those who still want to color is this: “Space it out and know that you’re taking a calculated risk. There are no 100 percent safe dyes that I would recommend using. So be real about that if you’re going to do it anyway.”
What about you? Knowing what you do about hair dye, do you still color your hair?
