Spectacle: Grey Matter

Blow out enough birthday candles, weather a few fashion cycles (sometimes cyclones), and what’s old invariably becomes new.

And what’s new is looking OLD.

I’m not talking about foxy old chicks eschewing dyes and letting their silver streaks shine.

The latest crop of grey-haired grannies probably boast a median age of 26.  And they’re not preemies either.

It’s already strut its way down the runways at Rodarte, Cheap Monday, and Proenza Schouler, with models’ hair stripped to match a smoky palette.  And, on a quest to find that perfect middle ground between bleached blonde and Rogue white, men and women alike have been heading to their hairdressers, asking for L’Oreal’s latest offering: #003 –  Richard Gere  Gray.

I guess I get the intent.   ”Blue is SO 2001″ and all that. But instead of helping to pull off some kind of hip, punkish coif, all these colour-stripped locks do is make this crowd look like a sad little bunch of Progeria poster kids.

Pixie Geldof is so ahead of her time, she's managed to catch up to her grandma's time

Take UK party girl Pixie Geldof.  She was spotted at the Britain Fashion Awards last month looking less sleek snow leopard and more faux cougar.  While Geldof blamed it on overzealous dye job followed by a rinse mishap, she admitted she kind of loved the end result.  (Not enough, however, to keep her colour; she’s since moved on to a more conservative green).

Ms. Moss looking a little worse for wear

Then there’s everyone’s favourite catwalk cokehead. When Kate Moss arrived at London Fashion Week in January for the launch of a new handbag collection, her powdery hair colour brought on an all new record-high of completely asinine Tweets.  “Grey is the new black!”   Yeah– or someone was too hungover/strung out to climb in a shower and clearly overdid it with the dry shampoo.

Making her outside match her freakishly mature inside

Even 13-year-old style blogger Tavi Gevinson has gotten in on the act.  She showed up at New York Fashion Week earlier this year sporting a tidy grey bob that made her look more like someone’s adorable but addle-brained Babcia than the tiny tour de force that she really is.

Anyway, the real irony here is that while grey gives off a laissez-faire kind of vibe- it implies “I don’t care about colouring my hair” – the truth of the matter is that going grey for fun takes every bit as much effort to create and maintain as it does to cover up actual white hairs.  Unless your hair is already naturally crazy light, achieving the look really means bleaching out all the pigment, then using an ash  toner to eliminate any brassy leftover colour.

So for heaven’s sake, if you’re going to insist on going Gran, let a knowledgeable stylist do the deed.  Or risk ending up with a non-descript “greige” colour that has all the sex appeal of a heaping bowl of oatmeal.

Or worse: behold Kelis’ wackadoo Rapunzel-meets-the-Statue-of-Liberty creation from the first ever Data Awards.

Lest we forget.