There’s something mesmerising in red hair. The way it gets on fire when the sun shines, the rarity of this hair colour. Statistically, red hair is a rarity and in the US there’s even a National Redhead Day falling today, the 5th of November…
Red hair is a beautiful rarity, did you know Scotland could be the state of redheaded? It’s time to bring National Redheaded Day to the UK, this is the idea of Cliphair in partnership with ‘How To Be a Redhead’ duo.
The story behind National Redhead Day
National Redhead Day is a US national day and falls on 5th November. This celebration was launched in 2012 in the States, created for redheads by redheads to celebrate the rarest of hair colours. In fact, the founders couldn’t have been anything but redheads: the redheaded sisters Adrienne and Stephanie Vendetti, co-founders of HowtobeaRedhead.com.
The Vendetti sisters created their website HowtobeaRedhead.com in 2011 to give space and celebrate redheads in the fashion and beauty sector. Alongside their website’s success, the sisters published ‘How to be a Redhead’ and curate a monthly H2BAR Beauty Box. The Vendetti’s dedication to their red hair advocate campaign isn’t a simple matter of pride but has its’ explanation in personal care and daily struggles. The sisters couldn’t find the right products for their hair type and sensitive phototype as Stephanie recalls: ‘As young girls, we both had trouble finding ‘Redhead Friendly’ products because most items caused our skin to irritate or break out‘.
My accidental story with red hair
How I fell in love with red hair is a pure coincidence or, to be blunt and more realistic, it was a fortunate mistake of my hairdresser. I dreamt of dying my hair for a very long time but I have been prohibited as a teen with the anathema ‘your hair will never be the same’. I was sick of my dark brunette hair, so dark to be mistaken for plain black. It was time to change when, in 2015, I got my first real paid job and got my hair dip-dyed in aubergine.
Something went wrong; something changed in the following days and after the next shampoo (after 10 days!), when my hair lost all its new colour and I found myself half ginger. Ginger is the shade of my bleached hair. I felt gutted at the idea of €60 flushed down in the toilet but I felt confident and ‘myself’ in that new colour that was somehow truly mine… the downside: guys and men went mad for that too!
2015 – the ‘accident’ 
2021 June – bleaching (Stargazer) 
2021 June – my wedding hair (Manic Panic) 
2021 July – light washing 
2021 August – washed off
Arrived in the UK, I breathed freedom. I kept experimenting with hair colour and my natural choice was ‘red’. I loved the pre-raphaelites’ aesthetic and their fiery ladies. Bur colours masks, shampoos did not give me the result I wished for. Henna turned to be a healthy choice, yet my dark base played against my dream. I needed to repeat my old hairdresser’s mistake and in the run-up to my sister’s wedding, I bleached my hair (Stargazer Bleach and Peroxide Hair Lightening Kit 9% Vol) and painted it with a crazy red (Manic Panic semi-permanent hair dye in Vampire Kiss).
No luck, my cherry red washed away leaving a funny array of pink, ginger and peach behind. The second time around, I tried L’Oreal Colorista semi-permanent gel in #BrightRed. All good until I made a swim in the sea which turned out to be the wrong thing to do, although I can say I’m a sweet ginger now!
The news: Cliphair announces UK launch of National Redhead Day
Cliphair has partnered with the Venditti’s and ‘How To Be a Redhead’ to launch National Redhead Day in the UK. But why?
Riz, Cliphair Co-founder states: ‘we felt that, as over 25% of the total redheads in the world lives in the British Isles, we should be doing more to support them and spread awareness here in the UK‘.
The UK is the right place to celebrate this red-shaded day with 13% of Scottish people having red hair, followed by Welsh and Irish people for an additional 10%. In total, in the UK, 4% of the population is redheaded: well 2.1 million people! This percentage could feel rather insignificant but when we zoom out, we see that just 2% of the global population has red hair. The United Kingdom is the country of redheads in all rights!
Cliphair has a long love story with red hair. Back in 2012, the brand launched its first redhead range of hair extensions. To this day, Cliphair remains the leading seller of red hair extensions, with 10 stunning shades of red from natural ginger to cherry. The brand will keep the conversation on throughout the week with redheaded content and the official hashtags #LoveYourRedHairDay, #RedsHaveMoreFun & #CliphairRedheads.
Red hair is the diamond of all the hair colours and really deserved this day!
Valentina Chirico aka Valens
Image credits: Ph. Warley Venancio, Pexels Ph. Cottonbro, Pexels Ph. Pietra Schwarzler, Unsplash Ph. Dalesthetics, Pexels Ph. Arian Darvishi, Unsplash Ph. Amir Esrafili, Unsplash
