Greige

 "No one recognizes me now that I've let my hair go gray," said my friend Tricia when we were chatting at a gathering last week. 

Tricia's hair is beautiful: almost completely white, and cut in a short style that compliments its waves. It had been a rich dark brown before the pandemic--and Tricia kept it that way with frequent visits to the salon, she told me. But when the pandemic closed down salons and made her want to practice social distancing, she stopped having it colored. Now she has a whole new look, and it's great. 

Tricia isn't the only woman who went gray during the pandemic. Google "women going gray after the pandemic," and you'll find plenty of essays and articles.

Even before the pandemic, there seemed to be a movement among women "of a certain age" to stop coloring their hair. Lots of articles in magazines gave advice, or describe going gray as "life-changing." In her essay, Susan Choi suddenly came to see dying hair as "a cultural sickness...akin to wearing corsets." 

As a feminist, I resonate with that thought. Why should women have to color their hair anyway? Blond hair naturally darkens, mature hair naturally turns gray. Women should not feel like they have to put chemicals on their hair to make them look younger than they are. 

I'd like to say that I am the kind of person who is beyond that kind of vanity. But I must admit that I am not quite beyond that kind of vanity. 

I've highlighted my hair since my early thirties when its original blonde color started to fade. I didn't like the way my hair looked as the blond faded. Sadly, it did not not turn a rich brunette color, but instead became dull and dark. I didn't want to look dull and dark, or like I'd "let myself go" after my boys were born, even though my hair was just being its natural self.

So, I dutifully visited the salon to brighten up my hair on a regular basis. I found a stylist that made my hair look young and shiny and bright, adding highlights, and later, lowlights. 

Because I opted for highlights and lowlights, the hair-coloring appointments were serious: it took about 2+ hours for my talented stylist, Robin, to mix up the strong-smelling dyes, paint them on sections of my hair, wrap each section carefully in foil, and then wash out the dyes after they'd soaked in long enough. 

Thanks, Wikihow for the photo of highlight foils!

Other than the strong-smelling dyes, I have to admit that I actually kind of enjoyed the process: just sitting in a chair for a couple of hours, letting someone fiddle with my hair turns out to be fairly relaxing. 

Still, as I got older, I began to wonder how much longer I should color my hair. 

On the one hand, there's this (apocryphal?) story of my grandmother, who went gray early (maybe in her 30s?) in the days before respectable women dyed their hair. Supposedly, she said "don't go gray until you feel gray." I certainly haven't felt "gray," if by "gray," you mean "old." I still feel vaguely middle-aged. Maybe 41. (I am 59.)

Besides, I wasn't sure my gray hair color would be very flattering. Ex-blonde hair is drab, and I wasn't sure if I was gray enough. It turns out that gray hair is gray because it contains white hairs--those that have lost their pigment because of (usually) age--mixed with your former color. 

This probably isn't much of an issue for those of you with dark hair. In fact, I always looked with envy at the streaks of sparkle in the hair of my dark-haired friends and dark-haired magazine models who embraced their gray as it came in. 

Dark-haired Pinterest lady with sparkling gray streak in her hair. 

That contrast is always so amazing. But I feared my graying strands in my ex-blonde hair would just be drab on drab. I'd gone without highlights for 4 months when we lived in DC in spring 2018, and the result was not striking. My hair just looked slightly dusty.

On the other hand, the pandemic.

In the end, the pandemic made the decision for me. Although Iowa hair salons opened back up in late spring of 2020 after only being closed for a couple of months, I didn't feel comfortable going in to sit there for 2+ hours to get my hair colored. 

I guess I was a little bit curious, too. I decided to see what happened if I didn't color it. Maybe I would be gray enough this time. Maybe it would be life-changing.

It turned out that my hair doesn't really look that much different now from when I used to highlight it There is finally enough gray (i.e. white strands) among the drab ex-blonde strands that overall, my hair still looks light-colored. It almost looks highlighted as a few little ribbons of white streak through the rest of the beige-blond.

Gray or blond? It's greige.

I call the color "greige," a combination of gray and beige. 

No one has seemed confused about who I am since I stopped coloring my hair. No one has even commented on my freedom-embracing gray. 

Is it "life-changing"? Not sure, but perhaps in the last year or so, I've felt more comfortable with the fact that I am no longer young, maybe not even really middle-aged. I've started to think about some of the advantages to being older: so much experience to draw on, patience with the ups and downs of life,  layers of knowledge I've built--and, ok, sometimes can't always seem to access. 

Other advantages: No mortgage. Adult children.

Those white hairs remind me of who I am, what I've been through, where I'm going. So yes, Grandma, I do "feel gray." But that's not bad, really. It's time to embrace it.

Make Do and Mend

I've been stepping up my mending game recently. 

The linings for my beloved summer purse tore, so I replaced them--with bright blue oxford cloth!

How did I do it? I turned the purse inside out, cut away the old linings, and stitched in the new ones. They are sturdier and more cheerful than the old black linings. 

That's not all I mended. My parents went to Japan in 1970 and brought back beautiful cotton kimonos for my sister and me. Mom had to hem up our kimonos about 5 inches for it to fit us (ages 7 and 8 at the time) and they still reached the ground. When I was in college, I rediscovered my old kimono, took out the hem and started using it as a calf-length dressing gown. I've used it ever since! 

When it started to wear out across the shoulders, I took it apart and discovered a bit of extra fabric folded up into the facings. So I used that bit of fabric to patch a couple holes in the shoulders (using my sewing machine's "mending" stitches). I also used a blanket stitch to reinforce the worn front facings.

Kimono on bed with applique quilt made by my grandmother.

When I was a girl, my mom occasionally darned socks. I think she must have shown me how? But I hadn't done it in years: no one does that anymore! But I had a beautiful pair of socks with hummingbirds on them--and a hole in the sole. So I brushed up on my sock-darning skills (thank you, YouTube), and now I can keep wearing them.

I used gray darning cotton, but that's OK--no one will see it!

There's something about mending items I love that makes me feel happy. Part of it is my thrifty, "I-hate-shopping" mentality. Part of it is that flow state that I enter when I work on a sewing project. Part of it is the sense of pride and satisfaction I have when I've fixed something. I'm a mend-and-make-do person.

Make Do and Mend, the title of this post, is a reference to a campaign in WW2-era Britain. The war effort meant supplies, shipping space, and labor for clothing were tight. In June 1941, clothing rationing began--it continued through 1949! Now I understand all the mending, knitting, and "making do" that happens in early Barbara Pym novels! 

I recently found the British government's Make Do and Mend pamphlet online. It was published in 1943, with instructions and encouragement for people who now needed to "get the last possible ounce of wear" out of their clothes. Want to know how to take care of Macintoshes? Keep moths out of your clothes? Mend your corset (just like Harriet Bede in Pym's Some Tame Gazelle!)? check it out.

The more I hear about fast fashion, the more I indulge my urge to mend and make do! I want to resist buying something new when I can just repair the old. 

It seems that Mending and Making Do has enjoyed a bit of a renaissance, as more people have learned about the way fast fashion harms people and the earth. I've seen some really cool new books about mending--my favorite is this one: isn't the title great?

Although I'm kind of old-school with mending--I usually don't want the mended spot to stand out--I used the author's approach to make mending decorative when I embroidered a little tone-on-tone white lazy daisy flower over a stain on this white sweater. 

At a recent clothing swap event in town--where I heard my former student Emily Stochl give an inspiring talk about resisting fast fashion--I met an event organizer who is hoping to put on a mending workshop. "I would like to lead something like that," I said, and gave her my contact info. 

I hope she contacts me to lead a workshop because I am looking forward to sharing the joys of making do and mending the "imperfect things we love."