Green shoots, green roots...

I'm walking accross the Place Bastille, my hair blowing across my face in the sharp March wind. There's a girl getting out of a taxi by the bus ranks. She's dressed in that Bastille chic style - leggings; obviously expensive check lumberjack coat; many layers of natural fabrics; satchel straps and scarves decorating her shoulders. Her long hair looks like black sheep's wool: ringletty and lanolined. Uncombed and unwashed. It looks fantastic.

Mine doesn't. Several lolipop layers of misguided colour. A little grey at the roots. A generally  fade (faded) appearance. I have to do something about it.

I have my hair dyed once a year. Every Spring when the days start to lighten and I notice the remains of the last bad dye job and the little strands of bleached-out grey. Every year it gets worse. Every year I say I won't do it again. Every year I am suckered. This year is no exception.

The salon I've chosen is called 'Nature'. It is run by a French hairdresser named, somehow ludicrously, George Bacon (No, Bah-coh, not Bay-conne, insists a Francophone friend).

I look at the brochure. The salon offers a solution for women who wish to avoid chemical agressions, keep a safe hair, and who don't want to be trapped by apparent roots.  I don't want to be trapped by my roots. In the face of such threats, who wouldn't go in?

The woman who booked my appointment on phone directs me to the waiting area.

(Ah! Sho-an-nah! La-bas, Sho-an-nah!)

Where my hairdresser looks carefully through my hair and brandishes a lock under my nose.

Look at it! It's vert - green!

I have to agree.

Ok - I say. I have rehearsed this very carefully - I'd like a teinture permenante, chatain cendre. Pas trop fonce, et pas de rouge. (permenant dye, ash chestnut. Not too dark and not at all red).

Ah Oui - she agrees - for your colouring - pas de roux - pas de jaune. Un chatain - pas trop fonce, pas trop clair. Ok?

OK.

I love bossy French women. Here are two of them. I am relaxed. It makes me feel so secure that someone knows she is right.

The treatment is quick. I am dyed and haloed with cotton wool. I am put underneath a machine which steams my head gently. I read magazines. I see hair I like. I point to a photo.

My hair will look like that, won't it?

Bien sur, Madame!

I don't look at what's happening to my hair. J'ai confiance.

Sho-an-nah! Venez ici, Sho-an-NAH!

The salon manager takes over for the 'brushing'. How do I want it?

I show her an ad from one of the magazines.

No, that is a sechage naturel - It is maybe three days since it was washed. I am doing a brossing.

So you can't do that?

No. I will do you a brossing. Do you want it straight? No? Then I will give you - and she wiggles from her head down the length of her body to demonstrate - a little bit of... movement!

She pulls my hair back and forth, achieving impressive volume, and odd flicky bits at the bottom, like Barbie.

She's finished. She smiles broadly as she shows me my hair in the mirror.

It's red.

Which is not what I asked for.

To be fair, it's dark too. Dark like cafe noir. Too dark. The red only shows under electric lights in a halo-like blur.

I have a moment of complete panic. Then kind of panic possible only in this sort of situation; when something extremely trivial looks for an instant as though it might seriously ruin your life. How should I react. Should I say something? Should I complain? Should I explode with anger? The hairdresser seems genuinely pleased with my new colour. I don'tthink she thinks it's as red as I do.

I don't want to spoil her mood so I try to share it. I search for something to lighten the situation. Maybe it's meant to be too dark at first. Maybe the intense colour will lighten after a couple of washes. Maybe my hair just takes in red. Maybe there is a limited amount you can do with my kind of hair and artificial dye.

Then I look at all the other Frenchwomen in the salon with dyed hair. And I remember women I have seen in the street - women who are surely too old for their colour to be natural - and I realise that most of them have hair that is, for my Anglo-Saxon tastes, a little too red and a little too dark. That woman at the cafe outside; that one going by on the bike; the picture in the magazine of Nathalie Rykiel (though it's probably a style thing with her).

Maybe it's what a French hairdresser thinks is not too dark, and not at all red.

I have paid a lot of money to have my hair dyed red. It is no-one's fault. I am full of shame.

...

A week later I put another dye through my hair. It's called blonde cendre. It tones down the red and lightens the darkness.

I look at the end of one of my locks. It has a khaki-ish tinge.

My hair is green. And what's more, I like it that way.

g

Comments

[nancy]

oh my god...i have been there! beig green. why don't you just get streaks (but to be pin like thin) with high lights and low lights? or just use brown henna? although i had my hair cut last week in the marais....fabulous job!

[Stefanie]

I have been there with the red. I was promised acajou and I ended up with the horrible, awful purple red hair of my past middle age downstairs neighbor that I hate. Thankfully it was a semi permanent color and gradually washed out over two months. But you are right, French women love the red!

[badaude]

Nancy - let me know where you had your hair cut. I'm always searching for the holy grail of the perfect hairdresser.
Stefanie - I like the look of your rabbit ragu. Though maybe it reminds me a little too closely of the colour of my hair...

[nancy]

well...since i don't drive i never remember streets BUT i think it was just down from "mod,s hair" and on what?? rue des archives ???..and the salon is called "mod wave". the cut was 39 euros...ask for Christophe....

[le tigre in france]

I have noticed a lot of older ladies here with red hair...I haven't yet gone to have my hair coloured and from all the stories I've heard I think I'm going to stay natural, sounds a tad too risky! I've twice had hairdressers dye my hair dark brown when I had been trying to maintain a light red colour, drove me totally insane. The last time I jsut gave up and went back to my natural colour.

[maitresse]

I recently went into a salon with red hair and was told "mais non, mademoiselle, regardez! comme ça vous viellit! on va enlever ça tout de suite!" they did a chocolate brown rinse and I came out with something resembling my natural color. But when the sun hits-- it still looks red!

My solution is to only get my hair colored in NY when I go home.

[Christie]

I am so glad to have found your blog corner of the world. You are funny and charming. Thank you for what you post!

[badaude]

Aw, thanks, Christie!
And thanks for all the hair advice. Between the Marais and NYC I should be sorted for next time. But is it true that the Americans have invented a brown hair dye that doesn't show red under strong light? I feel this is something only previously achieved in Europe by Segolene Royal whose - surely dyed? - hair never clashes with her party insigina.

[La Belette Rouge]

I envy you that you only have to do colour one time a year. I have to go in for colour every three weeks. And, I have Parisian red hair that I Iove. I would hate to go in for red colour while in Paris to have the colourist tell me it is too red and that I need to tone it down.

[badaude]

It's not so much that I can get away with colour just once a year - if only that were true. It's more that each visit to the colourist leaves me so traumatised that I need 12 months to recover. By the time June comes around, I have a visible 'colour tidemark'...