Hair With Flair: How Northampton is expressing itself while salons are closed

Orange is the new Black.. or Red or Purple!

There’s a new hair trend sweeping through the current lockdown as hairdressing salons are on a pause.

Bored of baking banana bread, it seems that some people are using lockdown as an opportunity to experiment with crazy hair colours and styles instead.

Home hair colouring kits in red, magenta, purple or even blue are becoming the DIY home colourist’s go-to for a dramatic new look.

And it seems that once they start they can’t stop. Some Northamptonshire residents admit once they have taken the plunge to dye their hair a wild colour, they get bitten by the bug.

Here some Northamptonshire residents share their photos of their lockdown crazy DIY hair creations.

33 year-old Holly Fulton from Corby says that an Instagram hair tutorial sparked her wave of crazy hair colours.

The mum-of-four says she was inspired to cut her own shoulder length blond hair at the start of lockdown after watching a DIY hair tutorial on Instagram.

She says: “The tutorial showed you how to tie your hair in pigtails and then cut the ends off - which was supposed to give you an even hair cut.

It didn’t go to plan at all and my hair ended up sticking out all over the place. The front was longer than the back and the sides. I ended up shaving off one side of my hair. Then I dyed the other half blue!”

When her hair grew back again she dyed it black, then pink before settling on black.. then red.

A friend of hers also showed her how to make dreadlocks and she tried making some DIY 'dread buns' out of her hair!

She says: “Rainbow hair colours seems to be my “new normal.” It seems a long time ago since my hair was blond! When boredom strikes, I just get the scissors or hair dye out!

32-year-old Fine Artist Sarah Martin from Northampton dyed her blond locks to another colour currently bang on trend – orange.

She says: “As I couldn’t go to the sauna in The Mounts during lockdown, I wanted to add some heat to my life in other ways. Dying my hair orange seemed the perfect way to add warmth and attitude to my life during this sombre time.”

Northampton resident Nikki Dodd first dyed her hair last year from blond to red. Pleased with the result she experimented with purple, then orange before going back to red again. She says: “This time lockdown gave me the opportunity to get creative with my hair in the comfort of my own home.”

31-year-old PR manager Flick Humphrey from North Northamptonshire bought some bleach and a Garnier hair dye in dark brown to recreate the hairstyle her hairdresser had created for her in July 2019.

The mum of two laughed,“The result was a lot bolder than I had first envisioned,” as she showed off her dramatic new look – dark brown hair with a very blond front piece.

She then turned her attention to her husband.

“My husband has naturally dark hair and I wanted to turn him into a ‘Silver Fox.’

“I bleached his hair but it went orange”, she continued. “I then tried to ton to a grey but it just didn’t work. He ended up looking more Donald Trump than Silver Fox, so I dyed it back to brown.!

Lastly she turned her attention to her two pet poodles.

“I have a lot of admiration for dog groomers now,” she adds, “after I tried to groom my two pet poodles.”

“I ended up half scalping them. One has one fluffy foot and one scalped one!“

Story by Sarah Becker