We all have a cosmetic treatment wish list – small or large changes that we spend a long time thinking about and sometimes, eventually working up the nerve to do. Many of us experimented with various hair colours in our youth. As a teenager, I had the usual initiation experience of box-dyeing my own hair over a bath, only to destroy every towel my mother owned and come away with a sort of lurid, vastly artificial plummy hue that shone purple under harsh lighting. That particular shade gives me the chills even now when I very occasionally see it on the street. (Thankfully, it has fallen out of favour).
You’ll understand, then, that when the old urge for drastic hair change came over me again last year, I was intensely suspicious of it. I’ve admired copper hair with a sort of covetous indulgence all my life, but the art of artificially creating a natural-looking copper is very complex. I’d been burned by colourists trying to turn my hair red before – once quite literally, when a student hair colourist made an unfortunate miscalculation with some bleach and my scalp came out a good deal redder than my hair.
As one should, I sat with the urge for months to be sure it wasn’t a whim. When I felt sure, I finally gave in, going to Josh Wood Atelier in London – it is widely known for creating sophisticated reds. After years of being told by colourists that the transition to red would take six visits, or ending up with jarred supermarket sweet-and-sour sauce electric oranges, I walked out of Wood’s salon three and a half hours later with the shade of copper red I had always wanted. The only challenge now was keeping it.
Red pigments leech from the hair more speedily than other shades, and they look tired faster, but with people like Kim Kardashian West dabbling in red shades, they're also incredibly on-trend. Thankfully Wood, whose brand of box dyes became a celebrity go-to during lockdown, has just launched a four-strong range of semi-permanent red conditioning treatments – the Josh Wood Colour Glosses (€22 at joshwoodcolour.com) – that deposit pigment into the hair. Blonde and brunette shades have been available for some time, but the reds are new and an utter time (and money) saver for those of us whose red is less God-given than bought and paid for.
I use the Copper Gold Gloss, which can be left on the hair for up to 20 minutes on damp hair after shampooing. It injects the perfect golden-amber tone, reviving salon colour and giving me two to four more weeks before I need to see a colourist – it also ensures the colour never looks languid. You can leave it for 10 minutes for a subtler finish, and, although it won't cover greys, the lighter the hair, the more it will take, so highlights get on particularly well with it. Berry Brunette Gloss is a warm merlot hue that will kick life into old highlights or just add a bit of interest to brown hair. Rose Brunette Gloss will add a rich pinky tone to the hair, while Cherry Gloss is a scarlet hue.
