The term ‘grey’ has interesting connotations:• Going grey – the ‘brave step’ a woman takes in her mid-thirties when she is fed up with colouring her roots every three weeks, just to halt the thin white line that appears at the parting after only a few days of growth.
• Feeling grey – when summer is finally over, your back in London and you feel as though you have grey-tinted glasses on, making everything appear dull, and colourless – you need a sweet, steamy mulled wine to cheer you up.
However, lets reverse those negative connotations and enjoy a ‘new take’ on grey!
The colour grey has been a fashion staple since forever. It is unexpectedly flattering, entirely urban, and strikes that happy balance between black’s severity and white’s impracticality. For all of its implied seriousness, it's chic too.
Grey is a neutral colour (or achromatic colour), meaning literally that it is a colour “without colour” because it can be composed of black and white. As grey is neutral it is incredibly versatile - it suits every wardrobe, but some shades will suit you better than others. Grey can be a bit of a chameleon so we suggest looking at it under different lights to see how it blends with other colours, as the book “50 Shades of Grey” suggests, there is quite a spectrum of choice. True grey is a mix of black and white, but most greys have a hint of colour in them. A hint of blue makes it ‘cool’ and a hint of pink makes it ‘warm’, with lighter and darker-charcoal greys thrown into the mix too.
Suggested grey pairings:
- Very pale grey looks wonderful on ebony skin tones, or skin tones which go red in the sun;
- Pale grey with blue/green overtones looks great with fair skin, blond hair and blue/green eyes;
- Mid-grey is fantastic for Celtic skin tones with red, auburn or striking black hair;
- Grey with blue overtones looks good with auburn or redheads with blue/green eyes;
- Grey with green overtones looks great on skin that tans well;
- Deep grey with aubergine overtones looks great with the pale ivory skin and black hair.
