The singer Mireille Mathieu can count on her sister to maintain her legendary brown fringe unchanged for 50 years. Other women in capillary distress due to confinement are not so lucky.
“There are no longer beautiful, or ugly, we are all grannies”. In a video, the French humorist Muriel Robin, short blond hair, is already questioning the hairdressers to find out who will be the first to “be taken care of for racinovirus”, this white hair that repels and drives all three weeks at their hairdresser those who can not stand them.
Pushed back fringes, sharper squares, unplucked eyebrows, unmade nails, pale skin due to the lack of fresh air: the coronavirus pandemic which obliges half of humanity to stay cloistered at home is devastating aesthetics, for lack of access to professionals.
Confined in his house in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a chic suburb of Paris, Mireille Mathieu is doing well thanks to her sister and manager Matite who takes care of her famous bowl cut. Usually, she goes every ten days to Carita, her hairdresser since 1970.
“During confinement, Matite regularly brushes me (…) She also learned to maintain my bangs”, confides to AFP the “Demoiselle d’Avignon”. The singer says “respect confinement to the letter by never going out”, which does not prevent her from putting on lipstick. “It is important not to let go, for yourself and also for the people who share your life,” said the one who had to cancel a series of recitals abroad.
If the confinement can be an opportunity to pamper your skin or learn to use the eyeliner, hair side, the room for maneuver is almost zero. For Franck Provost, owner of more than 2000 salons around the world and hairdresser of the Cannes Festival, it is urgent to wait.
In capillary galley
“In terms of color, there are no grandmother recipes”, which we could try at home, he insists. “If we want to have fun, we (the hairdressers) will catch up after the deconfinement. But I rather advise to wait,” he said to AFP, saying he was skeptical about the initiatives of certain colleagues who guide their customers remotely.
One of them, Thomas Girard, at the origin of the “styling” project, is not on the same wavelength. Unemployed, like all hairdressers, he gives up to six free cutting sessions per day by videoconference to help out a population “in a hurry”.
“It affects a lot of people. In France, hairdressing is the second largest turnover after building. It is monstrous, the hundreds of thousands of people styled per day in normal times and not styled at the moment”, says- he.
As for the painful question of roots, he suggests … going gray. “Fashion is there, it is no longer an age marker, it is no longer stigmatizing” and is part of the “body positive” movement, he says.
Bring a helmet
Fashion writer and guru Sophie Fontanel (more than 200,000 Instagram followers) has already done so. She even wrote a book on her experience claiming this new freedom and calling on women to stop living with gray hair as “humiliation”.
Sarah Harris of British Vogue also proudly wears her gray hair during Fashion Weeks. Will current circumstances help popularize an approach that is gaining momentum but remains divisive?
“It is possible, but I hope not. Elegant women who are used to being treated do not want to appear with white hair. We can not say that it rejuvenates”, comments Franck Provost. For Muriel Robin, “a helmet” is to be expected to rush to the hairdresser after deconfinement.
ats, dpa
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