Sexy & Gray: 13 Women Who Prove That One Does Not Negate the Other

Sophie Fontanel — Parisian Instagram star, fashion journalist, and author of The Art of Sleeping Alone — has a thing or two to say about going gray. “Accept yourself and you will see a big change,” she tells Vogue in an Oct. 24 interview focused largely on her decision to stop coloring her hair.

Fontanel, who is 54 and has more than 87,000 Instagram followers, takes Vogue readers through her own journey of acceptance that came after what she calls “living a lie” by never letting her roots show. After achieving literary fame in her 50s, she explains, she began noticing beautiful gray-haired women seemingly everywhere she went. She stopped one such woman in Los Angeles. “I was asking, ‘is it easy to be like you are?’ She said, ‘Yes. You know, before I was much more invisible and now I’m really someone strange. Everyone notices me,'” Fontanel recounts. “Life is full of signs. Two months later I was in Rome. There was a second one. Then I was in St-Tropez at a café and there was another woman with long white hair, very chic, in Valentino. She was very sexy. I [said], ‘OK, you’re the third woman I’ve noticed, so tell me, does it take courage to get your hair?’ And she said, ‘No. It takes curiosity.'”

The writer was emboldened by these other women, and, after some thought and convincing, decided to let her own locks go natural — but gradually, by growing her roots out slowly, and documenting the transformation on Instagram. Today, she says, she’s “happier than ever.”

Click through the slide show above to take in the splendor of Fontanel and a dozen other empowered, curious, and sexy silver-haired women.

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