Going Gray: Seven steps to looking fabulous

This is Part 3 of Poppy's Excellent Hair Dye Adventure. You might want to catch up by reading Part 1: Poppy is a Salon Color Ho, and Part 2: Drugstore Color.

OK, it's time to talk about the ultimate solution to the problem of having gray hair.

Which is to have gray hair.

And of course, that's always an option. In fact, Anne Kreamer wrote an entire book about it.

And eventually, when there is a high enough degree of COGNITIVE DISSONANCE* between my face and my hair, I'll do this myself. Maybe.

But here's the deal. You'll look older with gray hair. It's guaranteed. After all, many characteristics combine to create the appearance of youth: smooth, glowing skin, upright carriage, a slim waistline, firm muscles, and thick, healthy, shining hair that's not gray.

Wearing gray hair successfully

Gray hair sends the world a very loud message: "I am neither young, nor hip." So if you want to keep your hair gray, yet appear youthful and hip, you need to drown out that message.

When you look at these pictures of women rocking their gray hair, you'll notice that many of the models are prematurely gray. Yes, they have striking gray hair. They also have lots of it. It's beautifully styled. They're slim and beautifully groomed, and their skin looks great.

If you want your gray hair to evoke some of the same spirit, you should do your best to emulate them. Remember, looking great at our age involves compromise. Staying in the game takes some give and take and a certain amount of effort. Here are the essentials:

1. Don't wear your hair the way you did in high school. Yes, long-straight-parted-in-the-middle was the cool 'do in 1972, but if you wear your hair like that now, you'll look like a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism.

2. Get a really fun cut. Go wild with your style. I'm not saying you need to go short. Just have some shape cut into your style. And why not? The rest of us are spending hours in the salon or our bathroom with gloves and little dye brushes touching up our roots, then pampering our dyed tresses like Golem with his Precious. You won't have to do any of that, so spend the money you've saved on a chic cut and the time you've saved with a blowdryer and flat iron. YOU OWE IT TO US.

3. Keep your makeup, clothes, glasses, bags, and shoes current. Remember, your hair is telling everyone you're over the hill. Let everything else you wear contradict your hair.

4. Be impeccably groomed. Think Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. Without the personality, of course. But preen like the gorgeous silver fox you are.

5. Rethink the color of your clothes, makeup, and jewelry. Gray hair is like a halo of cool light near your face. If you've been wearing warm tones, try switching to the cooler side of the spectrum: mint green rather than chartreuse; cherry red rather than geranium red; pinks, blues, lavender, black, and white. (Helen Mirren consistently gets this right.)

6. Make sure your teeth pass muster. Gray or white hair can make your teeth look dingy.

Snowy white hair spotlights the darkening that occurs as we age, simply by virtue of all that contrast. The whiter your hair is, the whiter you should try to get your teeth. This doesn't have to be a big deal--Crest Whitestrips do a great job--but it's something to keep in mind.

7. Stay in shape. Ay, there's the rub. My sister--my older sister--has never colored her hair in her life. She's also a life-long athlete who has always had an amazing figure.

When I was hugely pregnant at the age of 40 with my second child--probably weighing in at 190 pounds--she sent me a photograph from a cruise ship. She was wearing a bikini. And she looked good, gray hair and all. (Gee thanks, sis! Way to demoralize me. You've just won the gold medal for sibling rivalry.)

This is when I came up with this part of my theory. If you can rock a bikini, your hair can be as gray as you want. Remember that picture of Helen Mirren in a bikini that was all over the internet last summer?

But if you already look a little less than svelte ... if your youthful waistline is only a memory ... then you might want to rethink the wisdom of keeping your hair gray. Because gray hair plus dumpy body equals Aunt Bea.

(Now you know another reason why I dye my hair. It lets me dip into the cookie jar a bit more frequently!)

* From now on, when I use a word or phrase that really makes me sound smart, I'll use all caps. Otherwise you might miss it.

The great hair color debate: another place to compromise

This is Part 1 of Poppy's Excellent Hair Dye Adventure. You might want to finish the series by reading Part 2: Drugstore Color and Part 3: How to be a Silver Fox.

A college classmate of mine emailed me recently asking me--the recently minted expert in all things stylish and beautiful--where I stood on the subject of dyeing one's hair. It turns out I have a lot of thoughts on the subject. Too many to include in an email. Too many to include in a single blog post. So welcome to Poppy's Excellent Hair Dye Adventure, Part One.

Susie Sunshine, Goon Squad Sarah, and Poppy Buxom's dyed hair at last year's BlogHer conference

I should start by outing myself as insanely high-maintenance and extravagant. Because I can't stand gray hair. Snow white heads of hair a la Crystal Gale are all very well and good ... but my gene pool seems to run to years and years of dull and dreary salt-and-pepper.

Also, I'm hair-styling-challenged. When I was growing up, hair was long, straight, and parted in the middle. No one used rollers or blow-dryers. We washed our hair and let it dry. Which means I didn't even dip a toe into hair-styling waters until I was well into my 20s.

Now, to my mind, hair-styling is like downhill skiing or stock car racing--it's probably a good idea to get started when you're young. And since I didn't even try to blow my hair dry until I was in my 20s, I'm at a permanent disadvantage. Those long layers that look so great when somebody else styles them end up confounding my attempts. Which means a lot of the time, my hair looks messy and disheveled.

And what's worse than messy, disheveled hair? Messy disheveled hair that's gray. So my theory on hair color is this: I have to color my hair, because if I don't, I'll look like one of those wacky old peasant women who hung around watching people getting guillotined during the French Revolution, knitting and cackling in unholy glee.

L-R: Sydney Carlton in A Tale of Two Cities, a French soldier, and Poppy with her knitting

Or maybe, because I'm a singer, like a member of the chorus in an amateur production of Les Mis.

So I get my hair colored at Pascal Pour Elle, a la-di-dah salon in Glencoe, Illinois. (If you go there for color, ask for Priscilla. She's a genius.) I used to get a semi-permanent base color, to which were added highlight, lowlights, and a glaze for shine.

OK, this picture is maybe not so great of my gorgeous friend Liz
or even of me, but it does show off my high- and lowlights

I still do the same thing, but with permanent color for my base. The permanent color covers the gray better, but it does make for a more dramatic demarcation when the gray hair grows in. Around here, we call this "skunk head."

When I get skunk head, I start to freak out. I do everything I can to avoid standing next to anyone taller than 5' 10" because OMG they might notice my roots!!! Then, when I remember that I might have to bend over at some point, I head to the drugstore and pick up a box of Clairol's Nice and Easy Root Touch Up, which I've raved about before. I use this to touch up the roots along my part and my hairline. It works well, although I do end up like a guy with a comb-over--one stiff breeze and my subterfuge will be exposed.

Obviously, I have a hair-color fixation. Having me list alternatives to going to the salon every month smacks of hypocrisy. As much as I resent the time and money I spend there, I'm satisfied with things at present.

But let's assume that unlike me, you're not mental on the subject of hair color. Maybe you don't want to spend that much money. Maybe you don't want to go through all that angst. Maybe you want to stand next to as many tall people as possible. What are your options?

Tune in tomorrow for Poppy's Excellent Hair Dye Adventure, Part 2: Drugstore Color.

The Five Cs of keeping your look fresh: Compromise

Hi there! If you've come over here from Jennsylvania, greetings! Just so you know, I've just spent a month blogging about things you can do to look younger. Feel free to look around and check them out. And I'm not being pushy. Really, I'm not. I just thought you should know that I don't always blog about my weird taste in shoes. (And if you have a blog you'd like me to check out, please leave a comment. I promise to click back and check you out.) Thanks--and make yourselves at home!

One of the pleasures of having traveled down the fashion road a good long time is being able to rejoice (whole-heartedly and to the accompaniment of cash registers ringing) when a favorite style is revived.

Confession: clogs are one of my favorites.

I wore them when they were first in style (early adopters were wearing them as early as the late 1960s, but for most of us, clogs didn't go mainstream until the 1970s.) The eighties were a clog-free decade, and the nineties my cravings for clunky shoes were pretty much satisfied by a single pair of Doc Martens. But in the 2000s, as soon as I tried on my first Mephisto Satty clog,I fell, and fell hard. They had all the comfort of the traditional clog, but with a cork bottom encased in some kind of miracle man-made material for a soft, cat-like tread. I think I went through three or four of this style in black, and two more pairs in a darling chocolate brown suede. For knocking around the house, tidying up, doing laundry, cooking, and doing dishes, nothing beat my uniform of jeans, t-shirt, and clogs.

I was in good company. Chefs, surgeons, nurses, and anyone who stands for hours and hours wear clogs. Women with wide feet swear by them. But they've always had a practical reason to wear clogs. No one was wearing them because they were in style.

Clogs as seen on the Chanel runway for the Spring, 2010 collection. Photo courtesy of style.com

Well, they're back in style. Chanel showed clogs for this spring, complete with big interlocking Cs on them. So if you want to spend $790 for a pair, feel free.

Fashionista early re-adopters Ashley Olsen, Shenae Grimes, and Mary-Kate Olsen wearing clogs. Photo courtesy of CollegeFashion

Naturally, the news that clogs were actually considered stylish made my heart leap with joy. But then I discovered that there is a very loud anti-clog backlash, particularly amongst young fashion bloggers. Only the very, very avant-garde express any interest whatsoever in wearing clogs.

This is because women in their twenties equate clogs with middle school. Or with moms. For these younger women, clogs have really negative connotations. And that's a lot of baggage for an already heavy shoe to have to carry.

But for me ... the connotations are positive. I wore clogs when I was in my teens, so to me, clogs are cute. In an ugly-is-beautiful way. And young. And they're comfortable. And they make my feet look tiny.

And anyway, big clunky shoes have been in style for a few years now. After all, you can take only so many years of wearing thin-soled pointy-toed stilettos before everyone needs a break. You've noticed all the platforms, wedges, and clogs in the stores, right? That break is occurring now.

How to wear clogs

How does a woman of a certain age wear clogs without looking insanely frumpy or insanely trendy?

You have to compromise.

Compromise is the secret to style success

And this goes for almost everyone. A very young, very thin art student in New York City can wear pretty much anything. To the likes of us, a vintage slip, wellies, and a Mr. Rogers cardigan looks like laundry day at Goodwill, but if she has second thoughts, our slim New York art student can say it's performance art. But she represents about .0001 percent of the population.

The rest of us, who are a bit older and (dare I say it?) a bit more chubby, have to try a bit harder to make things work.

How I plan to wear clogs out in public

First of all, I'm ignoring the designer versions. They're incredibly expensive and are even clunkier than the Mephisto clogs pictured above. The good news is that the non-designer clogs are more refined and elegant-looking than the ones by Chanel, Prada, and Miu-Miu. Even the $300 clogs at Anthropologie are insanely clunky-looking in comparison to some far less expensive ones I've seen.

Once in a normal price range (and I really think you could stay well below $150 even for a pair of superbly well made clogs) I looked for something with a heel and a low-cut vamp to lengthen the leg. High-cut shoe vamps are very trendy right now, but you'd need legs like Catwoman to get away with a high cut vamp added to the general clunkiness of a clog.

Then I looked for studs, laser cutting, or some other some kind of detailing to refine the look even more.

Here are my semi-finalists:

Biviel laser cut taupe Nubuck clogs from Zappos

Steven Barc suede from Zappos $139

Steven by Steve Madden Brisi clog at Shoes.com for $139

And the pair I actually paid good money for?

TopShop's $80 Ollie clog

Please don't mock me!

Now, how am I going to make them look modern, and not like something I've kept in my closet for 30 years?

If I were slim, I'd wear them with with cropped pants, or with my pants rolled up. But I'm sure they'll be fine with straight-legged pants.

I might rock a 70s revival and wear them with flared white jeans.

Or, for a combination military/70s boho look, with a knee-length olive green pencil skirt, a long-sleeved jersey, one of my new long fluffy scarves, and a luggage colored cross-body bag.

I might even try them with tights.

Where would I wear these? Lunch with a girlfriend, a museum outing, BlogHer's annual conference in New York.

So Internet, have I gone mental? If you ever wore clogs, would you wear them again?