Pink hair, don’t care

When I was little, I really, really wanted multi-coloured hair (I have a vague memory of a cartoon character with pastel coloured hair, but cannot remember for the life of me who it was). For obvious reasons, my mum said no.

Then I got to sixth form, and really wanted to experiment with hair colours; there was a very, very cool girl in my English literature class, who had pastel strands in her hair, which I was obsessed with. Except she had blonde hair and mine was very definitely brown, so I decided it wouldn’t work.

In the years since, vivid hair colours have become all the rage, with new advances all the time (hello, hair chalks). However, I wasn’t sure how popular pink/purple/pastel hair would be for work. I always talked about it (as current and previous work colleagues can confirm), but never actually had the courage to go for it.

So, when I found myself with some unexpected time off this summer, I decided – this would be the summer of pink hair.

Luckily, I know two lovely hairdressers at Rockabelles in Northampton, who made my pink haired dreams come true.

Because my hair has been black for so long (almost two and a half years), it took two sessions to turn it pink. Before the first session, I’d tried to strip it myself, and…well. It hadn’t turned out quite as I’d expected; I had, in fact, become the embodiment of McFly’s Five colours in her hair.

During my first (four hour) visit, my hair was lightened to a pretty light brown colour (before we started, Emma told me that due to the lightening process, I probably wouldn’t be a huge fan of the in-between colour. We were both pleasantly surprised when it lifted to the colour it did. This is something to be aware of when your hair needs lightening before colour goes on).

Four weeks later (to give my hair time to recover), I went back for Kerrianne to work her magic over another four-hour appointment.

Two of my Northamptonshire-based friends came to sit with me while my hair ‘did’, and it was lovely to see them and have a good natter as my hair went from light brown, to bleached blonde, to pink.

I have incredibly thick hair (and I think it’s almost as long as it’s ever been), so it needed two lovely hairdressers to get it dry midway through. Emma and Kerrianne were much more patient with my hair than I am.

And that, my friends, is how I ended up with pink hair for the summer.

It started out a deep, raspberry sort of pink, before fading to rose gold and then a pastel pink, and each time, I thought ‘Oh, this is my favourite’.

My outfit last year included this rather spectacular hat, to keep the sun out of my eyes.

I loved it.

If you’re thinking of having a drastic colour change, here are some things I discovered:

1. Be patient: if you’re going from black to a vivid colour, that is not going to happen in one sitting.
2. Appointments can be long – take something to entertain yourself (I read a Daisy Dalrymple mystery and Yours Retro).
3. Your hair is going to go through a lot in a short period of time; condition the heck out of it.
4. Vivid colours fade quickly. Be prepared for the upkeep or, if you’re like me and only plan on having vivid hair for a short time, be prepared for it to fade.