The secret's out: it's great to be grey

Ditch the dye and free the silver fox within – going grey with the right colour and cut can be glamorous, discovers Emma Cowing

WHEN ANNA Ford turned up at the Chelsea Flower Show last week it wasn't her outfit that turned heads, but her hair colour. At 64, the former newsreader has ditched the brunette tresses of her youth to turn a gorgeous, glossy grey. "Going grey is liberation," she told Saga magazine. "It saves a lot of money and all those hours sitting under the drier with bits of silver paper on my head."

While that may be true, however, it can still feel like a risky option for many older (and some younger) women worried that going grey will age their appearance and cause problems in their careers or relationships or even make it look like they've just "given up".

"Going grey is still quite a controversial choice among the clients we see because people do associate grey hair with old age," says Luke Wilson, international artistic director of Rainbow Room International.

He argues, however, that the right grey style can take years off a woman. "Suddenly they've got rid of all the old colour and they've got this really trendy haircut. It makes them look younger and it can be very liberating for the woman herself."

But with dowdy images of grey and white-haired old ladies (the Queen, it must be said, springs to mind) cemented in the public psyche doing nothing to dispel prejudices, even Ford admitted that she didn't stop dyeing her hair until she had left the BBC.

"I had people who were emphatic in their disapproval, insisting it would age me," says actress Jamie Lee Curtis, who, at 49, is one of the few, if not the only, female Hollywood star under 60 boasting grey hair. "Now they're all eating crow and saying how right I was to do it."

Lee Curtis, who went grey seven years ago, said recently that, to her surprise, it hadn't had a negative effect on her career. "Right now I'm making a movie where I play a woman who works in the beauty industry. I offered to wear a wig, but the director chose to go with my natural hair."

Indeed Meryl Streep went grey last year to play Miranda Priestley, the icy, über-stylish Vogue editor in the blockbuster movie The Devil Wears Prada, showing women everywhere that grey could be both sexy and powerful. And with other famous women such as Dame Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Vanessa Redgrave, Honor Blackman and the model Carmen Dell'Orefice embracing their natural grey locks, the days of the dreaded blue rinse may just be over.

"You can be extremely glamorous with grey hair, providing you wear a haircut that suits you and is striking," says Wilson.

"It's got to be a classic haircut, a bob or a wedge, something that's quite short and striking and that makes the most of your features. The minute you start to play safe it just becomes mumsy. You have to be a bit bolder – think Judi Dench or Helen Mirren."

Lee Curtis found going for short and striking paid off. "It helps if you can be courageous and cut your hair off like I did," she says. "It's much harder to transition with longer hair, since then you're stuck with two inches of grey roots." The American author Anne Kreamer who wrote a book, Going Grey, in which she documented a year of ditching the dye, found herself in exactly this position when she stopped dyeing her hair brown at the age of 49. "I hate this growing-in phase," she writes. "I should have just bitten the bullet and cut my hair short at the start."

But she also discovers that ditching the dye bottle forces her to reassess other elements of her appearance. "I realise that having freshly-dyed hair has always seduced me into believing I had camouflage for a multitude of sins: the extra 10lb around my waist, the out-of-date leisure wear."

From a stylist's point of view, Wilson suggests that for women considering going grey, far from 'giving up', it can be remarkably high maintenance. "Sometimes it can make the world of difference to go for some really pale ice highlights or even just some really dark lowlights. They can accentuate the cut and make it much stronger. But you have to make sure a client is aware how committed they have to be to maintain a colour – whether it's grey or not."

He also says there are certain pitfalls women considering making the switch should avoid. "The salt-and-pepper thing doesn't suit everybody's skin tone," he says. "The slightly older lady who's got a pinkish complexion has to be very careful about going too pale." So how best to find the right colour? "If you're looking for a complete change go and try a wig on," advises Wilson. "It will allow you to see exactly what you're going to look like with a new colour and perhaps a new hairstyle as well, without the commitmentt."

If you decide to make that commitment however, the statement you make goes further than a change of colour – it's about acknowledging that you have a past, as well as a future. Indeed, as the author Hunter S Thompson once observed: "The person who doesn't scatter the morning dew will not comb grey hairs."

And if you need any more convincing, Kreamer had this to say about her new, illustrious grey locks at the end of her year long journey. "It shines more now than it ever did. I love the idea that every year for the rest of my life, my hair will change colour naturally. And I found out I've got great natural highlights."