For years grey has been thought of as a rather a negative colour, an adjective that has signified, amongst other things, decay, boredom, the ageing process, and John Major. Even grey squirrels suffer against the brightness of their rarer, red relatives.
Yet 2010 should go down as the year that grey came in from the cold. Style icons began have started dyeing their grey, beginning with Kate Moss, who dyed silvery streaks into her hair – albeit for only 24 hours – and trickling down to bright young tabloid staples Kelly Osbourne and Pixie Geldof. At a Calvin Klein show in April, natural grey Kristen McMenamy provoked a mild intake of breath, and set the fashion blogs twinkling when she appeared on the catwalk, and the cover of Dazed. The grey surge reached its logical conclusion when 13-year-old fashion blogger Tavi Gevinson posted a picture of herself, sporting a blue-grey rinse.
For men, grey has broken away from being merely the colour of schoolboys’ shorts, businessman’s suits or granddad’s socks to the kind of elegant yet defined pieces you can find at thecorner.com. The best grey pieces can show off tonal nuances and highlight texture. Part of the colour’s appeal is its ambiguity – when one wanders into an unclear moral quandary, after all, it is described as a grey area – as well as its air of distinguished, puritan-chic. In grey attire one can stand out as well as blend in, the perfect colour, in fact, in which to confront the blurred living of the 21st century.
