I saw Olivia Colman’s gray hair while scrolling social media in the middle of my own monthly root touch-up, and all I could think was: “Wow…what am I doing?” It’s honestly one of the most striking shades I’ve seen on anyone this year—soft, luminous and dimensional. Plus, it catches light the way a great gloss does, all while making a very strong case that silver doesn’t need covering.
Colman debuted the gray at the Wicker premiere at the Zurich Film Festival on September 28. She kept wearing it through stops in Los Angeles, New York and London, styled curly, sleek or swept back, with a different stylist in each city putting their own spin on the same silver. In Los Angeles, that was the creative work of celebrity hairstylist Marcus Francis, who was quick to share how the look came together.
As he told NewBeauty, it wasn’t one look repeated over three days of press but built up over the trip. “We did curly the first two days, but didn’t photograph it,” he says, adding that, by day three, he was ready for a switch up. “I wanted to build the smoother finish starting in the morning for press, by blowing it out smooth and adding loose waves for movement.”
The products explain why her gray looked shiny and polished instead of dry or chalky, which is what usually happens to silver hair under studio lights. Francis started with a lightweight leave-in cream from LolaVie before the blowout, then went back in with the brand’s oil after curling. “I used their oil after I used the curling iron to loosen up the texture and seal the strands, giving it a shine and separation,” he says, adding that separation is the main detail that matters—distinct, lightly textured pieces of silver reflect light in many directions, so the color looks dimensional instead of flat.
For the LA premiere, Francis went for Old Hollywood soft glam and switched irons around her face. “I used a 3/4-inch iron around the face and 1-inch for the rest of the head, for a looser curl just at the ends,” he says. The smaller barrel tightens the curl where the camera looks first, and the larger barrel keeps the rest of the hair from looking overdone. He finished with a light pass of R+Co BLEU Featherlight Hairspray ($46), light enough that the curls could still move.
The bottom line: I might not be ready to go completely gray, but when I am, this is my mood board reference.
