Any blonde or grey-haired beauty knows the woes of maintaining the freshness of their lighter locks. The word "brassy" is the number one word that comes to my mind when it comes to my hair. I find that orangey hue to be more offensive than a half a year's worth of roots. It had gotten to the point where I started requesting to be ash blonde despite many colorists' warning that ash does nothing for anyone's skin tone. But, that "warm" hue that we want to keep our complexion looking fresh and our hair bright almost invariably ends up looking like sink pipes within a month.
Despite much resistance on my end, I turned to violet shampoo. It seems ridiculous, I'll grant you. I thought that there is no way I'm putting this dark purple goo on my brand new, ahem, perfectly ashy white hair. And, even if the purple shampoo doesn't stain everything in sight including my hair, how on Earth is this going to help the dull orange from gracing my head with its presence? It seems like this concept was conceived by some charlatan and I'd be buying the proverbial snake oil. But, I was wrong. So wrong.
When you highlight your hair, that brassy, weird color that starts to develop on your highlights is the progeny of a few different elements. The highlight starts to fade and mixes with the color beneath it. Throw in some oxidizing from environmental pollution and a few old pipes spewing copper-laced water onto your hair and you've got some dull, calico cat action happening where you used to be Goldilocks. Purple is the opposite color of the white yellow that we want in our Grays and Blondes and purple shampoo pulls it out.
