I haven’t had a breakup, I’m not in a midlife crisis, and I don’t have a new job. So why, after 30 years of being blonde, did I decide to go brown?
You may be surprised to hear that this was due to the retirement of my trusted French hairdresser. It had taken me years to find her after countless traumatic visits to various French salons – with disastrous results.
So when she sat me down to tell me the news, I burst into tears. I immediately booked appointments until her very last day at work. Since then, I’ve channeled my inner French girl and gone for a low-maintenance cut (I do it myself) and colour. I now use a brown box dye, as close to my original colour as possible, which I get every few months in Spain for the princely sum of €2.99.
Samantha Brick’s wedding in 2008. Instead of the neat champagne blonde chignon we were talking about, I had a messy brown hairpiece on top of my head, she writes
Samantha loves France but says there’s nothing great about the country’s hairdressers
Samantha (right) with an 80s-style corkscrew perm, although in this case a French hairdresser may not be to blame
While there is so much to love about living in France – and I feel a little guilty saying this, given that the country has been my home for 16 years and I am now a French citizen – I’m afraid, to be honest, there is nothing to love about the country’s hairdressers. If you’re holidaying in France this summer, my advice is to enjoy ‘le pain’ and ‘le vin’, but please, whatever you do, don’t set foot in a hair salon.
First of all, most salons have a chaotic appointment system, you will never be in the chair at the appointed time. Let me share a few examples of my hair horrors…
During my time in France, I have visited dozens of salons – and I have left in various terrifying states. I have left with thin silver strands in my hair, an orange tint, and once – after paying €100 – I have left with the same roots I came in with.
The day before my French wedding in 2008 should have been stress-free. Instead, I sat in a hairdresser’s chair and stared in horror at the rehearsal results of my bridal hairstyle. Instead of the neat champagne-blonde chignon we had talked about, I had a messy brown hairpiece on the top of my head. The blonde highlights I had requested were orange. Worst of all, my parting was stained with uneven color from the blonde peroxide my stylist had enthusiastically applied while she was also on the phone to her friend.
I wanted to cry. Instead, I downed the glass of bubbly my sisters had so thoughtfully given me, then told them to cancel their bridesmaid appointments to avoid further tears.
On the big day, I was too chicken to tell my stylist exactly what was wrong with her approach (I was still trying to understand the language, by the way), so I just kept going.
You would think that the country where Brigitte Bardot was born would know how to do highlights well. Yet, in the beginning I was travelling back to the UK every eight weeks for my highlights. Six times a year doesn’t sound so bad, right? I had a fantastic stylist in Solihull who I didn’t have to talk to about colour or cut, he knew best and I trusted him.
A fabulously chic (also blonde) friend has been returning regularly to her salon in Knightsbridge. She, like me, has done her best in rural France. We are both alpha females who (now) speak fluent French and yet somehow we still walk out of every salon looking like someone has put a comical wig on our heads.
Even with the cost of living crisis, another friend refused to give up her appointments at her Essex salon, using air miles to get there. Other friends booked their Ryanair seats as soon as they went on sale.
I just didn’t go to Solihull again because there were no cheap flights outside the summer.
Many of my visits to the French salons have been the result of word of mouth. Each time involved a two-hour drive – nothing is local in rural France.
A ‘blonde specialist’ ran her salon from home, which meant that – after she’d cleared the Lego from the kitchen table – I got up close and personal with the boy’s spaghetti tea in the sink as the dye washed out of my hair. Salons run by home workers are also surprisingly expensive. I paid €150 (and a tip) for highlights that made me look like a Spice Boys-era footballer from Liverpool FC.
Samantha used to prefer flying back to the UK to visit her salon in Solihull rather than risk a visit to a French hairdresser
You’d think the country that invented Brigitte Bardot would know how to do highlights right, writes Samantha Brick
Another salon in a local village was run by a woman who was reassuringly blonde. I gasped when I saw her and booked an appointment on the spot. However, while her thick hair looked amazing, mine did not. My ends were starting to break due to the amount of bleach she was using. This, combined with waiting hours for my 10am appointment, meant I stopped going to her because of the stress it caused.
For five years in France, I would stop blondes on the street to inspect their highlights before asking for their hairdresser’s details—to no avail. One, a lawyer, told me she’d traveled to Switzerland to get hers done, while another woman explained that her sister had done hers.
I can only speculate, but I suspect these hairdressers are used to dyeing blonde on thick dark French hair, not finer, often mousy British hair like mine. Take the First Lady of France, Brigitte Macron, and her glorious full blonde bob. There’s no doubt that her hair can handle the heavy doses of bleach that have been applied to it over the years.
Clearly, there’s a good reason why sophisticated French women like actress Marion Cotillard and fashion guru Carine Roitfeld have shoulder-length, low-maintenance brown hair. There’s no complicated coloring or cutting involved. Because yes, cutting is often miserable here too.
Eventually I found my gem of a hairdresser, Nicole, by chance in a nearby village. But since she applied her bleach for la retraite, a French stylist will only touch my hair if I’m buried nearly six feet underground.