00:00I think I've been just sitting at the status quo with my hair for a couple of years now
00:05and so I'm so scared.
00:07As long as it doesn't look, you know, like 90s style stripes.
00:11Hi, I'm Leah and I'm here today to just do something different with my hair.
00:16My current hairstyle is what happens to your hair when you just completely stop doing any
00:22kind of self-care or caring about your appearance.
00:25I had a baby six months ago and when I was pregnant I just didn't really do anything with it.
00:30Today what I'm hoping to do is do something that will allow me to potentially grow out
00:37my grays in a more kind of graceful manner.
00:39I have been dyeing my grays since I was about 25.
00:43My dad went gray very, very young and women were always like, wait, your dad's such a silver
00:48fox.
00:50Why can't I be a silver fox too?
00:52That might be down the road, but today I'd hope to do something that would just like
00:55prep me for that transformation.
01:01So what are we doing today?
01:03Originally, what I thought I might want to do is like a dye it silver, like a silver ombre
01:07that then I could just like perfectly and naturally turn into my own grays, but I think that with
01:13all of the dye and everything, that might be hard.
01:15I would say so, knowing that you have this brown color on your hair.
01:19We're going to have some trouble getting your hair to a true gray tone that will match your
01:23grays.
01:24What I'm thinking we'll do is something pretty reminiscent of a full highlight, say.
01:29As long as it doesn't look, you know, like 90s style stripes.
01:33So very natural, but to the roots so that as your grays are growing and next to them they're
01:38already back to back.
01:39Living in a lighter world that's even somewhat close to gray hair, that's going to help diffuse
01:44the gray much more than what you're living with right now.
01:48Mesh as it grows.
01:50Yeah, definitely.
01:50You can follow me.
01:57I have to finally accept that my hair is probably now more gray than it is brown.
02:01I'd love to do something with color that would allow me to not have like a super clear line
02:07of demarcation and maybe give me a little bit of space in between having to get it colored
02:13every three weeks now.
02:15So it's become really hard to keep up with just having a baby, but also like it's really
02:20expensive and box dye actually does not work, despite what people will tell you.
02:27Let's embrace the warmth.
02:28You won't be dyeing your hair with this color.
02:31So we can break through that over time, getting you lighter and ashier, much closer to what
02:37the grays reflect.
02:50Hi, Leah.
02:51I'm Peter.
02:51Nice to meet you.
02:52Nice to meet you.
02:53So let's talk about your haircut.
02:54I have been asked if I'm wearing a wig.
02:57I will say that people always say it's a very beautiful wig.
03:00Yeah.
03:00I want something easy that I can take care of.
03:03With the baby, I'm like running out of the house in the morning.
03:06So let's kind of go in there and just kind of soften up all that heaviness so that it
03:10has a little bit more movement to it and shows off more of the texture.
03:13I'm going to flat iron through it just to give it a nice smooth shape and then we can
03:17really take a look at the length and the density.
03:24I have cut and dyed my hair so many times.
03:27I've had really, really short pixies.
03:29I was a kid in the 90s so I had like manic panic.
03:33I'm excited to finally make it look nice again.
03:36I really want to do something that is a little less upkeep just to keep it at like the bare
03:42minimum of acceptable.
03:56It's going to take out a little bit more density.
03:58Yeah, that's good.
04:12All right, are you ready to see your new hair?
04:15Yes.
04:18I love it.
04:20I've always wanted this haircut my whole life.
04:28I can't wait to come back again and do the second step and the third step and then one
04:32day I'll have all gray hair.
04:38Welcome back.
04:39First step is going to be the extractor.
04:41It's not bleach at all.
04:43It's a very safe process.
04:44All it does is go through and unlock the color molecules so that they can actually be pushed
04:49out of the hair.
04:50Cool.
04:50I like the warm of course but today we're going to shoot for a cool gray finish.
04:56I'm excited.
04:56Yeah, me too.
05:04Jake invented a way to go gray gracefully.
05:08I've fallen down hours long researching like all these like Instagram accounts and blogs
05:13of going gray gracefully and didn't know how I was going to get there and thought that
05:18I was going to be doing the dark brown boring dye for the rest of my life.
05:23And now I feel like I'm not going to do that.
05:39Okay, so step one is done.
05:42We've gone through with the extractors.
05:43We're going to go in now with a lot of highlights to achieve the gray effect and in between those
05:49we'll be canceling out any red that we're still seeing.
05:51How long do you think that will take?
05:54Hours.
06:00The process of going gray, especially when you started going gray like I did in your early
06:0520s, it just is like years of sort of figuring out how you're going to keep it from getting
06:11there.
06:11And so to have this just feels like the real me is amazing and I love it.
06:42It's perfect.
06:43It's perfectly matched my roots.
06:46Yeah.
06:52As you continue to get more grays coming through at your roots, I say we just highlight densities
06:59like this throughout.
07:00And then I'll be a silver fox.
07:02In no time.
07:03In no time.
07:04The process of going gray doesn't have to be this crazy thing.
07:08You can just gradually go gray and it's its own kind of beauty and men don't get to own
07:13the salt and pepper and the silver foxes of the world.
07:17The women can have it too at any age that it happens because it happens at all ages and
07:22I'm really excited.
07:23Thanks for watching Refinery29.
07:25If you want to watch more videos, you can click here and to subscribe, click here.
Comments