Laura Young - 2/3 - Hair Color Code

White hair – the most stylish way to shock!

December 22, 2011 By Laura Young 32 Comments

If you are a regular visitor to HairColorCode, the chances are that you have dyed your hair once or twice (or a hundred times) in the past, but how many of us have ever consider white as a shade?

You may be surprised to hear that white-hued locks are no longer just for the twinset and pearls crowd, youthful celebrities and models are now jumping on the bandwagon and enjoying the dramatic look of white hair and the blank canvas it offers for adding other bright colors. Although white hair used to be associated with premature aging, that is most definitely no longer true, and you only need to look at the catwalks for proof that this color is firmly in vogue.

Stars who are rocking white hair

Celebrities such as Agyness Deyn, Gwen Stefani and Mary-Kate Olsen have all rocked white hair in their time, as has Christina Aguilera. But we mustn’t forget that these celebs have plenty of stylists to keep their locks looking smooth, shiny and healthy – and for white hair to look good, it needs much more maintenance than ‘regular’ hair colors.

There’s no denying that white hair is a dramatic look but it is more difficult to achieve than other colors as it involves bleaching and toning the hair a number of times to get the desired shade. You will then need to use a purple-toned shampoo which will help to reduce any yellowness or brassiness in the hair, and along with your toner will help to keep the hair pure white. Rinsing with cold water and white vinegar will also help, and you will need to use plenty of conditioner to keep the hair in tip-top condition.

Who can pull off white hair?

Although white hair is very fashionable, it doesn’t suit everyone – those who are very tanned, olive-skinned or dark-skinned should usually steer clear of white hair as it can wash out your complexion. While it is obviously a fake color, you want it to look as though it’s completely right for you and so it should compliment your skin tone.

White hair usually looks best on a fair complexion, but rules are made to be broken and if you enjoy experimenting with other fun colors such as pink and blue you may well be able to carry off a shock of white.

If you want to try this new hair color trend but are a little too afraid to go the whole way, try dyeing a few bits of your hair underneath the fringe or underneath the hair itself, this will allow you to figure out if the color suits you or not.

Whether you choose to go bright white or whether you’d rather stick with golden blonde, rock your hair color with confidence and you’ll definitely turn heads!

The best white hair color products

Want to release your inner White Queen? This is a shade that is probably best left to the professionals, although there are toners you can buy to use once you have bleached your hair with a home dye kit, our favorites are Manic Panic Hair Dye Virgin Snow and Paintbox Whiter Shade of Pale.

Blue Hair – From obscurity to the mainstream

December 20, 2011 By Laura Young 46 Comments

Blue may not be a color that you’ve ever thought of in terms of coloring your hair, but blue-tinged locks are taking the celebrity world by storm and they’ve been spotted on a host of singing starlets, from Katy Perry to Nicki Minaj.

Can you really pull off blue hair

But can you get away with blue hair without looking like you’ve had a blue rinse? Of course you can! Even if you’re not particularly edgy in your personal style, you can still jump on the blue bandwagon with a few light blue streaks through the ends of your hair, a la Lauren Conrad.

When it comes to hair color, blue and pink have always been associated with mature ladies who rely on a regular rinse to keep their gray hair looking a certain way, but nowadays everyone is having more fun with their hair color choices and blue is suddenly a cool and fashion-forward shade. Pink, purple, blue, green, yellow… we’re seeing all of these colors on the catwalks and the red carpets, meaning that our hair color options are more exciting than ever before!

How to get the stunning blue look

If you are thinking about diving in at the blue end of the hair color spectrum, you should consider the maintenance required to keep your hair looking bright, colorful and shiny.

Celebrities have armies of stylists on hand at all times to top up their hair color and to keep it looking in perfect condition, so whilst their hair may look effortlessly beautiful for weeks on end, you’ll have to work extra hard to keep yours looking the same way, especially if you’ve dyed it a wacky color.

Blue hair such as the bright tones we’ve seen on Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Nicki Minaj is a really full-on look and will probably only work for you if you have the confidence to pull it off. You could get the effect with a wig if you want to try it out for an event or a party, but it is a little more difficult to achieve these shades on a permanent basis.

If you’re not naturally blonde, your hair will need to be bleached for the blue color to show up on your locks. Blue will appear very faint on brown or black hair as a tinge that you’ll only see in the light, so if you want it to be bright, you’ll need to bleach the hair before you apply the blue dye. You’ll then need to condition your hair really well so that it stays in tip-top condition, as bleaching the hair does damage it quite extensively.

Rhianna with blue highlights in dark hair

Can blue highlights work?

If you’d prefer blue streaks instead of the full-on look of the celebrity starlets, you could put a few highlights through your hair in blonde and then dye the highlights. This is a simple way of achieving a hint of blue without the extensive bleaching and dyeing, plus it’s a subtle look that won’t damage your hair too much.

You could also dip-dye the ends of your hair, bleach the bottom three inches of your hair and then dye them with a blue dye. Leave the dye on for a shorter amount of time for baby blue ends, like Sky Ferriera, or for the full amount of time for bright blue ends.

The key to rocking blue locks, as with any bright color, is confidence – if you’ve got it, flaunt it!

The best blue hair color products

Feeling blue? Probably best to take it to the salon, but if you do want to experiment with a subtler look here are some of your at home options:

• Schwarzkopf Live Intensive-Color-Creme – Color XXL 90 Cosmic Blue
• Fudge Paintbox Creative Conditioning Color – Blue Hawaii
• Manic Panic Hair Dye – Bad Boy Blue

Lady Gaga – A True Style Icon

November 9, 2011 By Laura Young 1 Comment

Lady Gaga, real name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (yes really!), is an American singer-songwriter who has risen to fame in the last three years as one of the most stylish and controversial stars out there.

She’s sold over 64 million records worldwide, including several number ones, and she’s worked with artists such as Beyoncé and Akon. With a phenomenal sense of personal style and her tireless charity work, notably with the LGBT community and for HIV and AIDs charities, it’s no wonder that Lady Gaga has won a place in our hearts.

May I Introduce You To Lady Gaga…

Lady Gaga has always had a keen interest in music and was enrolled at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts from 2003 until she was signed with Streamline Records, an imprint of Interscope Records, where she worked as a songwriter. During this time, she caught the attention of Akon, a fellow recording artist, who signed her to his own label, Kon Live Distribution.

She released The Fame in 2008 and two more albums have followed, The Fame Monster in 2009 and Born This Way in 2011. She’s received numerous awards and accolades for her contributions to the music industry, including twelve Grammy award nominations, five Grammy awards, and two Guinness world records (most singles in the charts for the longest period of time and most searched for woman on the internet). Gaga was named the Top Artist of the Year in 2010 by Billboard.

The Style Icon Is Unleashed On The World!

Lady Gaga with blonde hair in just dance video

When Lady Gaga arrived on the scene in 2008 her look was relatively restrained (at least compared to the Gaga we know and love nowadays) with long blonde hair and simple yet edgy styling, but since the release of her first single ‘Just Dance’ Gaga has experimented with a whole host of hair colors and styles along with a range of different music genres.

Female celebrities often fit themselves into one of three categories, cute blonde, sophisticated brunette, or fiery red-head – Lady Gaga ignores that trend entirely and instead we see her rocking all sorts of unusual colors, from lilac to bright yellow to turquoise. She’s actually had more hair colors than we at Hair Color Code can remember, so let’s have a look back through some of her most memorable hair moments.

Although Lady Gaga first came to our attention as a blonde, she is actually a natural brown-haired beauty, would you believe she dyed her hair lighter to stop constant comparisons with Amy Winehouse!

In 2008, Gaga had long blonde hair with a blunt fringe and this was when we first saw her distinctive hair bows.

Lady Gaga with a hint of pink in blonde hair

In the summer of 2009 Lady Gaga decided to tantalise the crowds with a peek of lilac and pink underneath her blonde hair.

The blonde remained in place whilst she was promoting The Fame Monster although it was teased into a number of avant-garde hairstyles, including a bizarre creation that looked like an Elizabethan collar and a candyfloss masterpiece covered with a black lace veil.

Between 2009 and the launch of her third album in 2011, Lady Gaga has sported a raibow’s worth of hair colors, including dip-dyed egg yolk yellow ends, platinum gray hair with bright turquoise dip-dyed ends, a blue rinse, dip-dyed green, gray, lilac and white hair, baby pink hair, darker turquoise hair…and then back to the color we all know and love on her, platinum blonde.

Every look was original and edgy, and you can almost guarantee that you won’t see Gaga’s hair color on anyone else. Her hair color often changes to match whatever couture creation she is rocking at the time – for example, the green hair co-ordinated perfectly with an odd outfit that was little more than a see-through bodysuit with nipple covers and panties.

There’s no doubt about it, Lady Gaga is a true fashionista with a dazzling array of wigs, extensions and different colored hair pieces that any pop star would be proud of. Adapting her hair color to match her mood and her wardrobe, Lady Gaga has a true sense of style and fierceness that inspires millions of people all over the world.

Ok, so this is where we usually point you in the direction of particular shades to help you color match our featured celebrity, but frankly if you are inspired by ‘so cutting edge its amazing she hasn’t drawn blood’ Lady Gaga, then our advice is to find a fashion forward salon and let the professionals handle it!

Anne Hathaway – Classy & Cool

October 21, 2011 By Laura Young 2 Comments

Since her move into popular films, Anne Hathaway has been firmly on our radar here at Hair Color Code as an elegant actress with bags of charming personality and a stunning sense of style. Let’s look back at the meteoric rise, and out of this world hair, of the lovely Miss Hathaway.

The career so far

Born Anne Jacqueline Hathaway in 1982, she started her career on the stage before appearing in a few small television roles, including the 1999 television series ’Get Real’. Anne honed her trade in a number of family-orientated films (and who doesn’t love ‘The Princess Diaries’) before hitting the big time with a series of box-office smashes including ‘Bride Wars’ with Kate Hudson and ‘Alice in Wonderland’ with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter.

A native New Yorker, Anne was born in Brooklyn to a lawyer and an actress, her mother Kathleen Ann, who was the inspiration behind Anne’s career choice. She has two brothers and was raised Catholic with ‘really strong values’. However, she turned her back on religion at the age of 15 after her elder brother Michael came out as gay, deciding that she couldn’t be part of a religion that condemned her brother’s sexual orientation.

Anne attended a creative school in New York where she participated in numerous plays and school shows – in fact, her high school performance as Winnifred in ‘Once Upon a Mattress’ earned her a nomination for Best Performance by a High School Actress by Paper Mill Playhouse. During her high school years, she was in many plays at the aforementioned Playhouse including ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Gigi’. After high school, she became the first teenager to be admitted into the Barrow Group Theater Company’s program where she trained as a stage actress. Three days after a performance in the choir at Carnegie Hall, she was cast in the TV show ‘Get Real’ where her acting career really took off.

The Hair Color resumé

When Anne first appeared on our television screens she sported deep chestnut brown locks, parted to the side and down to her shoulder. It was a very simple look and probably reflected her young age as it was unfussy and very easy to maintain. For her on-screen debut in ‘The Princess Diaries’ her hair was longer with a mahogany tone which was styled to be big, frizzy and wild at the start of the film and sleek and elegant at the end of the film. In her second film, ‘The Other Side of Heaven’, she sported a similar style, parted to one side, but her hair was a lighter brown tone although still with reddish undertones.

Anne’s hair color has remained pretty constant since her big screen debut, occasionally getting a little lighter and redder, occasionally getting slightly darker (now there‘s a girl who understands the ‘no more than 3 shades from your natural color’ rule). With her luminescent skin tone Anne can carry off both light and dark shades, but here at Hair Color Code we love her darker hair as it makes her look like a particularly gorgeous porcelain doll. Although Anne doesn’t tend to go for dramatic color changes she has changed the style up a little bit, for example in 2008 she had a modern bob which she wore both shiny and straight and loose and textured. The bob was a look we’ve never seen on Anne before and it really suited her, making her look more current and edgy.

In 2010, we saw Anne with perhaps her prettiest hair style and color to date, a centre parting with loose, flowing waves and a few scatterings of golden coppery highlights. But in the biggest film of the year, Alice in Wonderland, we saw Anne as an icy blonde playing the Ice Queen. And surprisingly, such a drastic change suited her far more than anyone would have thought!

How to get hair color like Anne Hathaway…

Anne Hathaway is definitely one of the classiest celebrities that we’ve come across at HCC and her signature hair color and style really enhance her elegant demeanour. A fantastic actress and a glamorous Hollywood style icon to boot, Anne Hathaway is sure to keep us lusting after her luscious locks for quite some time yet.

Anne Hathaway with dark hair color in princess diaries

As pretty as a princess

For your own fairytale ending try Schwarzkopf Live Color XXL 89: Bitter Sweet Chocolate

Working the highlights at the Golden Globe Awards

To create your red carpet moment try L’Oreal Excellence Crème HiColor Red HiLights in Copper

The Queen of Hollywood

If you are brave enough to follow the White Rabbit try Feria by Preference P01 Metallic Silver Blonde

Katy Perry – Little Miss Hair Color

September 23, 2011 By Laura Young 4 Comments

It seems like the 21st century has developed a new breed of diva to take the world by storm; bold, confident, fun and sexy young women who know what they want and don’t let anybody get in their way.

With this new breed comes new attitude, and more importantly new style, and who else symbolizes this flock of starlets better than Katy Perry.

Katy Perry, real name Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson, is an American singer-songwriter who was born in Santa Barbara, California in 1984 and raised by Christian pastor parents. She’s pursued a career in music since a very young age and has now released two studio albums with a huge number of record sales. Perry has a huge personality and a fantastic sense of style to match, with a real distinctive look.

From gospel singer to international star

Katy’s first album was a self-titled gospel album in 2001 under her birth name, Katy Hudson which without mincing my words, failed. She then spent some time recording tracks for her mainstream debut album, ‘One of the Boys’ under her new stage name, Katy Perry. She released a digital EP entitled ‘Ur So Gay’ in 2007, which didn’t really attract much attention.

Her debut mainstream single ‘I Kissed A Girl’ was released in 2008 amid much controversy from gay and lesbian equal rights groups, but she then went onto to go platinum with her debut album, ‘One of the Boys’, whilst ‘I Kissed A Girl’ and her subsequent single ‘Hot N Cold’ went multi-platinum.

Her second studio album, Teenage Dream, produced five Hot 100 number ones, making it only the second album in history to do so after Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’. Her single ‘E.T’ also broke the world record for being the first single in history to spend 52 consecutive weeks in the top ten of the Billboard charts.

There’s no doubt about it – this record-breaking singer is one of our favorite pop-stars here at Hair Color Code, both for her rockin’ sense of style and her catchy tunes. Let’s take a look back at Perry’s hair color history.

Katy Perry’s Hair Color History

When she first came onto our radar back in 2008 with her raunchy debut single, she had shoulder length dark brown hair – although we’ve reason to believe she’s a natural red-head. Husband Russell Brand sent a rather naughty tweet about his wife, saying ‘You’re a hacker, a bad wife, and your natural hair color is ginger. There’s not enough dye in the world to rinse away the lie’.

As she began to release more singles, a firm sense of style was established – fun, playful, 50’s style pin-up girl. To match that sense of style, she dyed her hair jet black and kept it that way for a good few years, changing up the style occasionally from long, tumbling movie-star waves to a shorter, Marilyn Monroe-style do. She’s also sported a chin-length bob with a full fringe as well as a long, wavy style with a short Cleopatra-style fringe.

Katy Perry isn’t one to shy away from color however – for her videos and various music award appearances Katy has literally sported hair that is every color of the rainbow. With the help of a few wigs, we’ve seen Katy with green hair, indigo hair, violet hair, red hair, orange hair, blue hair – all in flouncy, bouncy styles.

More recently, Perry moved away from her usual signature black hair style and we spotted her promoting her fragrance Purr in Toronto with a surprisingly pretty red-haired style. It seems Perry was in a transition from black to blonde and had to stay red for a few weeks before she bleached her hair entirely, tweeting to her fans, ‘I’ll get to my secret color(s) soon! #patience’.

She then finished the bleaching process and went to what we can assume is close to her natural hair color, a strawberry blonde shade. But she didn’t keep that for long and now she’s rocking a cherry-pink hue that was perfect for summer.

We all know and love Katy Perry for being unafraid to take risks with her style and hair color, so keep your eyes peeled to see which shade she rocks next!