You know a grooming trend is history-books official when the New York Times does a trend piece on it, right? From old-timey fades and mountain-man beards to man buns, the Style section from the paper of record tracks grooming trends that just won’t go away—like a parent who reluctantly acknowledges their kid’s goth phase. You know, tolerant, even facilitating, but with a fair amount of side eye. Today the NYT acknowledged a trend that’s been brewing since the ye olde days of, say, 2013—faux-gray hair. Rihanna had it years ago, Zayn Malik has it now, and every fourth image on Tumblr is helping to keep the trend alive for millennial guys and girls alike.
In his piece Max Berlinger points to Amazon, where searches for gray hair-dye have tripled in the last year, and spoke with various influential colorists and Internet personalities who confirm: yes, this is a trend. Not mentioned in Berlinger’s piece is Google’s 2015 Beauty Trends Report, which revealed “silver hair” saw a 234% spike in Search volume last year and racked up an equally impressive number of YouTube views as well—6.9 million on 5 silver-hair how-tos alone.
All this growth and focus is likely sign that silver hair is starting to reach its saturation point. It's really up to the celebrities though. If Lucky Blue dyes his hair gray tomorrow, it could give the trend another six months of steam. Real gray hair though? That’ll be cool forever. And so much easier to maintain.