PHILADELPHIA — During the pandemic, Marilyn Frasier heeded the once-mandatory — then age-affirming — call to embrace her gray. So, she stopped coloring her naturally black hair a dark brown and put full trust in her salty white roots.
“I let it grow out,” said Frasier, 72, who lives in Center City. “It looked OK. Everyone told me it looked great. Then I saw a picture of myself at a holiday party, and I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t think I like that.’”
Women, like Frasier, thought their hair would look splendid like actress Helen Mirren, whose smooth silver tendrils add sparkle to her blond mane, or the late author Toni Morrison, whose powdery gray locks were as classy and sophisticated as they were shocking and intellectual.
Instead, they found their new growth to be dry, brittle, unruly, wily, and difficult to manage as life returned back to normal.
Now, many of those women are going back to color.
“During the pandemic, we saw a lot of women grow out their hair and go gray,” said Alexey Kats, owner of Architeqt Color Bar, part of a chain of Philadelphia salons that specialize in color issues of a post-pandemic nature. “Since then, 50 percent have gone back to coloring their hair. It ages them. And you have to have a certain hair texture to maintain it or it looks unkempt.”
“I had 60 percent of my original black hair and 40 percent of this grayish white,” Frasier said about her hair. “It’s not how I pictured myself.”
The decision to start coloring one’s hair again isn’t to be taken lightly. Some went back to the pigmented as soon as it became safe to leave the house and sit for hours in salons. Others stuck it out longer and waited until this year to give up on their gray.
Getting one’s hair colored is not a cheap endeavor, either. Color, cut, style are all à la carte. Factor in tips for the stylist, the colorist, and the person who washes your hair and parking and you’ve got a major every six week expense. When women of a certain age began embracing pandemic gray, they were telling the world they were proud of their age. A year, two, or three years into the pandemic, deciding to color one’s hair again feels hypocritical — to hide their decisions under the umbrella that beauty secrets are, well, secrets.
“I color my hair not because I want to look younger but because I want to look good,” Frasier said. “Before there was pressure to color your hair. Now, the pressure is not to color your hair because of what it may say about you.”
In the years since the pandemic has waned, salons like Architeqt are putting clients’ hair coloring needs front and center, offering virtual consultations and online booking. Kats’ team also ships kits with detailed instructions to clients’ homes. Prices range from $60 for kits that include gloss, to $75 for root touch-ups, and $85 for roots and gloss.
The at-home color options were the saving grace for women like 67-year-old Leslie Levick of Northern Liberties, who tried to go gray for a while until it stopped working for her.
“My hair just felt better when it had color on it,” Levick said. “It’s smoother. I had to decide, ‘Do I want to look my age? Or do I want to look my age with brown hair?’”
Looking her age with brown hair won out.
Frasier would rather have one of Architeqt’s stylists apply her color because the application is more even.
Lisa Jennings, of South Philadelphia, started dying her hair when she was in her 30s to camouflage the gray strands sprouting from her scalp like wild, native grass.
“During the pandemic my roots got longer and longer,” said Jennings, who keeps her regular appointment at Architeqt. “And I thought about it. It would save me so much time and money. But then I thought the color of my hair is part of who I am to some degree and at 42, I didn’t want people to think I was older than I was.”
Jennings went back to coloring her hair. The choice was hers. And feeling like she has a choice is the point.
