Poor men. It’s so hard. The moment they reach the peak of their powers, their hair tends to lose its verve. Maybe it thins, and maybe they consider a vacation in Istanbul, where the hair-transplant business is booming, and men roam the halls of the Four Seasons Bosphorus in bloody gauze. Bon voyage, hairless men.
Maybe their hair turns gray and they simply aren’t ready for such a visible sign of vulnerability. When it happened to a Goldman Sachs partner several years ago, he did what far too many men do under the circumstances. He bought a box of hair dye and covered the gray with a shade that could have been light-medium brown but turned a screeching, 45th-presidential orange. Despite being a master of the universe, he was often met with snickering. An office skit mocked him mercilessly.
And still, the orange-haired banker was oblivious, unaware he was the object of so much ridicule. Fortunately, a prominent hairstylist of his acquaintance staged an intervention, cutting off the carrot top and insisting he accept the gray. Today he’s one of the handsomest men in New York City. Successful too.
Not every story has such a happy ending. That might be because sales of men’s boxed hair color nearly doubled from 2019 to 2020. Would someone tell them what women have known for years? Get to a salon! “Not to make this about gender, but most men are embarrassed to go into a salon and ask for color,” says Matt Rez, one of the top colorists in Los Angeles. I’m sorry to say that he can’t share the names of his well-known male clients, “because they’re not supposed to have white hair.”
Many of these men believe the advertising and try their hand at coloring their hair at home. “They’re just like, Oh, well, any old color will do,” says Jason Low, an L.A. hairstylist. Clearly, he believes quite the opposite.
Jonathan Brandstein, a Hollywood talent agent, started dabbling in hair color when, he says, “I started to look older than my father.” For a while, his product of choice was Just For Men. “It’s actually really easy. There’s this little comb, and it screws onto the tube of the stuff, and you just comb it into your hair.” And even though he found the results “really not bad,” he’s somewhat unconvincing. “I’m not trying to knock them, but it would be blue for a period of time, and then it would get almost like a brassy-red color. And that was weird.” Sounds it.
So much can go so terribly wrong, so terribly peachy, so terribly Trump. Hair colored with boxed dye tends to turn red over time, especially after a few weeks, when the hair has been exposed to the sun. “The [shades] all have a lot of warm pigmentation, because they’re made to be foolproof,” says Rez. Which just goes to show that nothing is foolproof.
Take heed, Elon Musk! That solid dark color is a dead giveaway of a formula that was born in a box and not in nature. There are nuances to real color, Low tells me. “There are different variations to catch light differently.”
So much can go so terribly wrong, so terribly peachy, so terribly Trump.
Even those who embrace every advancement in science can seem to have a blind spot when it comes to their hair color. I’m talking about Bryan Johnson, the 46-year-old venture capitalist who reportedly spends $2 million a year on longevity treatments. His muscles bulge, his skin is taut and shiny. But his hair? It’s gone from a harsh Mercurochrome orange to a solid shoe-polish black over the past two years.
“I’m pretty sure this guy is not on a budget,” says Low, whose scissors have touched the golden locks of Brad Pitt, who’s aging magnificently, by the way. “So why in the world would you not have really impeccable hair color? You could have any colorist in the world do your color and make it look great,” he adds, sounding pained.
Brandstein realized he was in trouble when he examined his color under the unforgiving lights of his office elevator. “The mirrors in the elevator with the light are terrible. It’s the worst possible scenario. And that was the impetus to go to Yvonne.” Yvonne is Yvonne Brown of Mèche Salon in L.A., who has her own group of illustrious clients, including Eva Mendes and Brandstein’s wife, Laura Kate Jones. Like many partners, Jones introduced her husband to a whole new world, this one occupied by professional hair colorists.
Once every six weeks, you might find Brandstein at the Beverly Hills salon “in a line with all the other ladies,” he says. Sure, it was awkward at first, as he sat with his head covered in foils, sometimes next to friends’ ex-wives. “But now I have zero ego about it.”
A superior colorist, such as Brown or Rez, won’t just cover the grays and send a man on his way. They do a delicate dance called “gray blending,” says Rez. For a visual reference, take a look at Brad Pitt or Rob Lowe. “Great examples,” says Chris McMillan, Jennifer Aniston’s hairstylist. It’s “not pitch black, and you’re not going to be bleached and turned some lemony yellow color,” says Low. The aim of gray blending is to “look like you did 10 years ago,” McMillan tells me.
Rez uses a demi-permanent rinse to achieve a credible result. “It doesn’t necessarily get you 100 percent gray coverage, but it reads more natural,” he says. One popular product is Shades EQ, by Redken, a professional formula that blends the hair without covering it, lifting it, or masking it unnaturally.
If that sounds too laborious, perhaps you might consider becoming a silver fox. “Keep yourself in shape, get a great haircut, and have a little swagger,” says Garren, a hairstylist. There are worse things than taking a cue from George Clooney, Harrison Ford, Don Johnson, and the king of hair bands, Jon Bon Jovi—all silver, all thoroughly foxy. Everyone should be so lucky.
Linda Wells is the Editor at Air Mail Look