GRAY'S ANATOMY

Meryl Streep played a striking, white-haired editor inThe Devil Wears Pradaand, suddenly, gray hair seemed sexy.

Diana Lewis Jewell'sGoing Gray, Looking Great!is a no-nonsense guide for going gray. She calls it the "modern woman's guide to unfading glory." But as hairdressers, should you be concerned if your clients want to give in to the light side? Not necessarily, says Jewell, who offers suggestions for leading your clients into a whole new color adventure that includes charcoal, pewter, ash, pearl, ice and silver.

The best news is that from care to treatment to special enhancing products and techniques, gray is going to add to and amp up your color offerings. "Gray is a color choice," says color guru Beth Minardi, co-owner of Minardi Salon in Manhattan, who lent her considerable expertise to the book, "but not one woman in a thousand can just go gray naturally and look good while she's doing it."

Minardi has no patience with clients who want to do nothing to help the graying process along, but she offers suggestions to women who are willing to accept a certain level of gray in their hair. "What I will do is weave in more of a client's natural tones, with softer color around the face," she says.

At Minardi Salon, evolving into gray occurs over a period of six to eight appointments, which allows the hair, and the client, time to get used to it. The idea, Minardi says, is to find the level of gray a client is most comfortable with, whether it's a face-framing streak or all over.