Jane Fonda Wanted Gray Hair to ‘Surprise Everyone’ at the Oscars

The Oscars 2020 brought many amazing fashion and beauty moments—but one of the best came at the very end of the night as Jane Fonda walked onto the stage to present the award for best picture, which went to Parasite, in a dress she recycled from 2014 and striking short gray hair.

Fonda always looks phenomenal, but this may have been one of her best looks yet—and her hair color was a very conscious choice. Her colorist Jack Martin shared some of the thinking behind the decision in a lovely Instagram post.

“I had the honor and the pleasure to transform the legendary actress @janefonda hair specially for the 2020 Oscar. Spending 7 hours with this amazing Hollywood star and witnessing her energy, beauty, strength and femininity was so inspiring,” he wrote. “For straight 7 hours while I was working on her hair she was writing chapters in her due soon book, and memorizing her lines in the famous tv show Frankie and grace [sic] that she is shooting the 7th season now, answering emails and reading her newspapers plus communicating with me and her team with the sweetest, humblest soul, she made me feel ashamed to complain of being tired.”

Considering that Fonda is a woman who’s been making both political and sartorial statements for the entirety of her career, it’s powerful to see her embracing the beauty of gray hair—especially during a time when so many women are pushing back against the idea that going gray means “giving up.” According to Martin, her decision to color her hair was purely for fun, plain and simple.

“Her goal color was a silver icy blonde to surprise everyone at the 2020 Oscars,” Martin continued, before sharing the formula he used in case you’d like your own colorist to give this a go. “Jane was extremely happy for getting her dream hair that took her a while to find a colorist that can do it perfectly in a very painless process.”

Naturally, Fonda’s new look had a lot of fans on social media too.