Haven’t you ever been so interested in hair dying that you wanted to read a bit about it online? Do you think it’s the most boring thing ever, particularly when you have to wait for your girlfriend just because of this? Believe it or not, the history of hair dying is more interesting than you would think!
Let’s travel back in time a few thousand years to meet the origin of modern hair dyes, the so-called henna dye. Ancient Egyptians had an amazing fashion sense not only in terms of clothes and jewelry but also hair dying. Women of our time would likely praise those that figured out how efficient and how gentle henna dye is to one’s hair. But if we are talking about the history of hair dying, we have to mention the ancient Romans and Greeks as well that used plant extracts to color their hair. Initially, they preferred black color that was very harmful, so they found another way. They used fermented leech for hair coloring. They processed the leeches in a lead bowl for two months and smeared the extract on their hair. Yup. Are you happy now that we only use premium quality products in our barbershop? No disgusting fermented leech, only first-class hair dyes.
But to get back to our historical journey, let’s have a big leap forward because a few hundred years later yellow was the preferred color. Well, not for regular women, though, rather for prostitutes in the Roman Empire. To get the best result, they used burnt plants and seeds. And if the result wasn’t perfect, they used wigs just like in the Middle Ages when gingers were accused of witchcraft.
It was a coincidence that English chemist William Henry Perkin invented the first artificial dye. He was researching the cure for malaria in 1863 when he accidentally created a not-yet-known mallow-colored dye. Shortly after, Perkin’s colleague August Hoffman used this chemical to extract a color-changing molecule that is the basic ingredient to nowadays hair dyes. Eugene Schueller made the first chemical hair dye in 1907 that he called Aureole. He later established the company L’Oreal.