Jen Thomas

Without sounding like a pretentious twit, one of my ‘trademarks’ in terms of style is my hair. I change the colour of it an awful lot, ever since I had some brassy blonde and red high/lowlights added when I was 16, then decided to dye it full-on pillar box red. I’ve had a heady love affair with the (dye) bottle ever since.

It’s a frequent joke with friends that they’ll enter a name of a dye colour into a search engine, and up pops a picture of me due to constantly posting photos of new colours (sorry not sorry.)  I’m naturally blonde, progressing from white blonde in childhood to an ashy blonde now, with very thick hair that curls at the front and has a wave at the back – if only it were curly all over! I’ve had a blunt fringe since, well, forever really, apart from an ill-advised year of growing it out as 16 at which point I realised it looked terrible and promptly cut it straight back in again. The style has mostly stayed the same, in an angled bob until I started to grow it out two years ago,  it’s now well down past my shoulders, but I’m forever battling the itch to cut it short again. For now, I’m having fun trying up-dos, with victory rolls and beehives being a particular favourite.

I had an undercut shaved in on both sides two or three years ago due to the volume of my hair, I had a lot of fun with clip in extensions with it all swept over to one side, but I’m thinking now may be the time to grow it out in order to have even more flexibility with styles. In terms of colour, it’d probably be easier to list the colours I haven’t had! Brunette has never featured, neither has all over green or yellow. My personal favourite was always the all over turquoise or cerise pink, but I get bored after a few months and always want to change it.

I swear by Directions colours for bright articifial shades, I’ve had the best luck with Cerise, Plum, Atlantic Blue and Turquoise. Until a year or two ago I always dyed my own hair, but now I have the wonderful Lucille’s Locks who comes to dye and style it (she’s responsible for the beautiful waves, massive purple beehive and the betty bangs short fringes). If you’re in the Derby/Notts area I can’t recommend her enough!  https://www.lucilleslocks.com

She’s just been this evening and has coloured my hair blue and cerise again, with some Old Hollywood 40’s style waves.

One of my essentials for maintaining the health of my hair is coconut oil. You can buy it in jars from health food shops, the most recent one I used is by Lucy Bee and I bought it from Amazon, a big jar lasts forever. Melt it in your hands or in a mug, and apply liberally all over for at least an hour before applying bleach (don’t wash it off first, apply the bleach over it). It prevents itchies and really minimised the damage for me. I now use it as an overnight treatment too, often wrapping my hair in clingfilm (sexy!) and washing it out in the morning. It’s the only reason I have any hair left after changing it so often! I have no idea how long I’ll try and keep growing it for, the undercut growing out will be the next major change anyway; I think the black is here to stay for a while but I always change the colours at the ends. Do you like to dye your hair? What colours would you love to have? Let me know!