I'm in my mid sixties and starting to go grey, particularly in the fringe and roots. I have almost straight (slightly kinky) shoulder length hair.
Ideally I would like curly hair, and coloured to cover the grey. But I am scared that my hair will end up dry like a haystack and all the curls will quickly fall out.
This is what happened when I had a perm about 15 years ago. It was a mop of gorgeous ringlet curls for a week, then I washed it and all the curls disappeared, leaving me with even straighter hair than I started with, except now it was dry as straw. I went back to the hairdresser and asked her to perm it again. She sprayed it with water and "fluffed" it up a bit with her fingers, declared that there was "plenty" of curl left in it and refused to do it again as "you cannot put a perm on a perm."
(BTW it wasn't just me: people who saw me in the week it was curly were a week later asking me where my curls had disappeared to!) It was so horrible I spent most of the next 6 months wearing hats or scarves or pulling it into a tight bun. I have never been back to a hairdresser since that day.
What can I do to have grey-free, well conditioned curly hair? Is there some special products I should specify?