Technicolor tresses: Crazy, bold hair color is all the rage

At one time or another, we've all given the side-eye to people whose hair color didn't exactly come from nature.

But nowadays, hair color has taken a walk on the wild side. Wild, in fact, is just one of the words to describe hair color that's blue, purple, turquoise, pink, fuchsia, magenta. Other descriptions: Crazy. Bold.

And such hues are becoming more and more prevalent.

Want to rock all these unorthodox hair colors at once? You too can have rainbow or unicorn hair, as numerous Google and Pinterest images will show. There are even different techniques: The "colombre" hair trend, described as "the love child of ombre and the rainbow," at women's lifestyle website Bustle.com. Pastel rainbow hair. Mermaid hair. Opal Hair -- "a perfect middle ground of shimmery pearls and Crayola hues," as described at Hellogiggles.com, another women's lifestyle site. Balayage is a hand-painting highlighting technique in which, according to a Google definition, the dye is applied "to create a graduated, natural-looking effect."

Stacie Mack, a hairdresser with H2O Hair + Color in west Little Rock, is no stranger to hair color -- or hairdos -- that don't fit the mold. Over the years, her clients have included visiting rock band members.

She sees the rainbow/unicorn hair trend as a spinoff of the punk-rock culture "from back in the day, when they used to use Kool-Aid to color their hair. And it's like a sign of freedom, rebellion, standing against society, saying, 'I don't want to fit in your box. This is me and I'm proud and loud and here's my hair, deal with it.'"

She credits such singers as Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics and Dale Bozzio of the band Missing Persons and Frank Zappa fame: "She's the pioneer," Mack says of Bozzio. "She was like one of the first women to wear pink hair."

And there were the nonpunkers who were crazy hair-color pioneers, such as pop singer Cyndi Lauper, former NBA player Dennis Rodman and funkmaster George Clinton.

"This trend has been around forever," Mack says.

COLORFUL COMBINATIONS

Marty Pruitt, owner of H2O, notes that crazy hair colors were "really strong" nearly a decade ago. Bolder hair colors hit about the same time as the feather accents in hair. People started adding "one or two foils of a color" in their hair, Pruitt says. Now you see the all-over crazy colors, which H20 has been doing the past five or six years.

"And not only is it, these days, people who are nonconformists -- it's every teenage girl that wants to be noticed, I think. ... It's just that everybody wants at least one flash of color," Pruitt adds.

Face Your Day salon, a full-service boutique salon in downtown Little Rock, has been offering bold colors since the salon opened in September.

"Magenta balayage [effects], and pinks are major," says owner Aaron Perkins, adding, "People are going more for pastels -- iridescent and pastel." Lavender is popular for fans of balayage, which at this salon tend to be millennial age.

"We also do what's called peekaboos, which we do in green and blues," Perkins says. "So it allows you to have the edgy [look] without freaking everyone out. It's more conservative."

Why is unusual hair color no longer just the domain of rebels and mavericks?

Kristin Spigner of Little Rock, 45, another H20 hairstylist says, "People are attracted to it. And ... it's good to have that [moment] when people walk up to me and say 'I love your hair color.' ... I'm a hairdresser so it's a great opener for business."

HAIR FOR ALL AGES

Whereas Pruitt sees a lot of middle-schoolers doing the colors, Spigner sees "a lot of older women" opting for it, including one at her church who has gone purple.

Mack says, "The more mature generation is doing it as well because it goes over gray hair perfectly. You don't have to do anything but put it on there and let it process, and it stains gray hair. And it just washes out and you redo it."

Spigner likens the wearing of these attention-getting colors to having tattoos, which used to be the domain of bikers and sailors: "Now, it's everybody -- and it's kind of like the same thing with that color. I mean, there's not a class involved in it. It's just a personality thing. ... With these teens it's turned into a fad."

Mack and Spigner sport hair colors that are far from nature. A recent morning found Mack wearing an ombre-effect wig that ends in a flaming, vivid red. "I get more compliments [with] this hair color," she says. "People love it."

Spigner, whose current hair color is a deep magenta, did rainbow bangs for seven or eight years. "The salon I worked before here was such a toned-down [place]. It was owned by an older woman. It was just she and I, so I was trying to stay toned down for her in that salon. When I moved here there was a little more action going, a little more life, and I wanted to reflect that for the salon."

Are there colors that are too crazy? "Not very many people use yellow," Pruitt says. "I think it looks good on a blond person, [but] traditionally, people don't like to see themselves with golden or yellow hair."

Red, too, is one of the hardest colors to pull off, as is green. "They don't look good on just anybody," Mack says.

Spigner adds, "If they do want it it's probably mixed in with a rainbow of some sort."

This particular morning, Mack is using the free-hand technique to do the opal version of party colors on her longtime customer Andi Stracner. Stracner, 44, of North Little Rock, is a runner who's known for sporting bold color -- she did her hair green for St. Patrick's Day. As crazy hair takes to bleached hair only, Mack has pre-bleached Andi's hair for time's sake. Andi is wearing a short, punky cut, cropped close on the sides but longer and wavy at the top.

Mack uses a couple of colors "to get the effect and tone" that she wants for her client. Working with tubes of hair color and a brush, Mack soon has Stracener's hair bearing a chic lavender effect.

"Generally when you do this, it takes forever to process," she says. "The opal technique takes only about 20 minutes. It's not real heavy, the colors aren't ... they're supposed to look like an opal."

A LONG TIME COMING

But deep-color processing can take a while, "especially if you've got a girl with long hair and you've got to bleach it all out and start it from scratch like that," Pruitt says. Sometimes bleaching must take place twice to prepare the hair. The client may walk out of the salon as many as six hours later. The longer the hair, the longer the process.

Cost for crazy colors can vary. "It ain't gonna be cheap," Mack says. "You get what you pay for. And something like this -- you want to go to a stylist that doesn't charge five bucks." To add three to four colors to long hair using an intricate process, for instance, can cost $300-$400. At Face Your Day, balayage hair jobs are $200-$250. The wait between visits is usually eight to 10 weeks, depending on such factors as hair growth.

Brunettes, too, can have their fun with crazy color without bleaching if they have some gray. Pruitt's wife, Kristy Pruitt, a freelance hair and makeup artist, is brunette with 30 percent gray. The gray has been colored blue and purple. "It keeps my gray icy as it fades out," Kristy Pruitt says. "This is the old-lady rinse taken to a new level."

The old lady with blue hair stereotype is another that has fallen in light of this trend.

"Now it's just an accepted thing," Mack says.

Parents whose children have expressed a wish for blue, purple or rainbow hair should not fret. Semi-permanent crazy color is the perfect option for youngsters who want to sport this look, the hairdressers say.

"I've got a couple of 5-year-old kids that I do it on and it doesn't have any peroxide in it," Mack says. And it's just streaks and it makes them happy.

"And I always tell parents, 'If your kids want to do something crazy to their hair, let them. Because if you let them do that, they're less likely to act out in other ways and give in to peer pressure and do drugs ... and stuff like that."

Spigner adds, "If the worst thing they want to do is put some color in their hair, you're doing good."

Style on 05/23/2017