For Silverist founder, Evelyn Wang, the early gray hair gene and her beauty industry background intertwined into a path to entrepreneurship. Her silver strands began in her teens. Her journey, from being a die-hard hair dyer to advocating for normalizing silver hair any age, had its ups and down, but ultimately ended with gorgeous, lush silver locks and a brand she hopes will be a platform to inspire others.

Here Evelyn shares what she’s learned, the mantra that’s carried her to build her brand and how you can join the tribe she’s creating.

I started having grays super early in my life. I probably first noticed them in my teens, but it could’ve been earlier. I wasn’t gray the way that I am now, but I had more grays than other people my age. I would just pluck them out. I dyed my hair all through my 20s and 30s. In my 20s, I think my hair was around 10 to 15% gray and I would mostly color it to keep up with the latest style trend or to add highlights. By my 30s, I really noticed I had to keep up with my grays. I switched from getting my hair colored in a salon to dyeing it at home with home box dye because I just couldn’t keep up with the expense of going to the salon so often. My estimate is that I had between 30 to 50% gray hair, and I was convinced that I had huge streaks of white strands around my temples because that’s where it seemed to constantly go white. By the time I decided to give up dyeing my hair black, I was coloring it every 10 days to cover the roots, which seemed to pop up again overnight. It just didn’t seem sustainable at all to keep dyeing my hair but I wasn’t born a silver-hair advocate. I still had a lot of trepidations about going gray.

One irony is that I used to work on one of the biggest home haircolor businesses in the country!

My gray hair journey was a bit circuitous. I let this grow out for a few months and also had the blonde done one more time before I found my current stylist who was able to take my partially grown-out gray root/blonde end look and completed my gray hair transition via a gray blending process. 

I’ve always had an independent streak but this has affirmed that I’d rather be comfortable in my own skin than living up to societal expectations. It is possible to be attractive and pave your own path. I have strength in my convictions. 

I never started out wanting to have gray. In fact, I fought it for years and swore that I would never let myself be gray, but as part of this journey, I’ve seen that embracing this part of myself that I previously tried to hide has actually opened up so many things to me. I receive so many positive compliments about my natural silver and also a lot of curiosity from women who want to know how to approach embracing their natural grays. It’s been a bit of an epiphany to think that something I tried to hide for so long is actually now such a big and positive part of my identity. 

So my gray hair journey was circuitous and indirect, with a stop along the way of being blonde. I didn’t start off loving gray hair, I started off hating hair dye and the entire process. I was scared to go on this journey. I am surprised by how much I love it! It’s truly liberating. 

It involved a prolonged incubation period and saying goodbye to something that is a visible signifier of youth. I don’t believe gray hair alone gives you an aged appearance, but when you embrace natural silver, you are saying you’re willing to embrace all that comes with it. You are willingly parting with a former identity. Hair is just hair but it is also SUCH a huge part of one’s identity. 

You’ll know when you’re ready and do it on your own time. The initial part will be the hardest so try to remember what motivated you to think about embracing gray. Most women who make it all the way to the silver side do not regret it at all. Regrets usually happen when someone starts and then has a moment of doubt and dyes their hair – then they realize they are back in the cycle of having to frequently dye their hair, which is typically the moment. 

When I realized that there were no resources or products really directed at women who were going gray. I think I was looking at hair products and realized that everything was actually made for people who have blonde hair and that women with natural gray hair were starting to use these products based on the similarity of the tone. I had this epiphany around the end of 2019 but it took me a few more years to get started. 

Silverist was conceptualized from the beginning as being for natural gray hair. It was not an adaptation of formulas already out in the market that were then adjusted for gray hair. Each formula was designed from the ground up with the specific needs of gray in mind and tested on gray hair at each stage. It’s also a goal of mine to center the total experience of having natural silver hair at the heart of this brand.

You can do it! There’s no ideal amount or percent gray you have to be, no age when it’s “appropriate”. Whenever you want is the perfect time to go gray.