Hayley Williams and Brian O’Connor.Photo:Julia Cox
Julia Cox
It’s rare to seeParamorefrontwomanHayley Williamswithout a hint of a vibrant color in her hair. Right now it’s rather subtle — just a tiny bit of her signature orange shines bright.
The singer, 34, has been experimenting with a variety of shades since she was a pre-teen — and she’s never looked back. It was the early 2000s, her formative years, and she was using any cash she could scrape together to buy box dye.
“I would take whatever money I could from singing demos for people or answering phones at my dad’s store or serving pizzas at Zack’s — our drummer’s dad’s pizza shop,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively. “But I wasn’t paying attention, so every time I would buy a box, it was a different red; sometimes it was pinker, sometimes it was darker, but I tried to have a standard berry color.”
It wasn’t until she metBrian O’Connor, budding hair pro and color connoisseur, that she was able to hone in on what it actually took to take her hair color game to the next level. Not only did the two form a bond as hairstylist and client, but they became close friends and eventually business partners when they created their brandGood Dye Young.
That was where it all began — and now their brand is available inUlta stores.
O’Connor, who tells PEOPLE that he also started dyeing his hair as a young teen with whatever shade of red he could get his hands on from his local Rite-Aid or K-Mart, calls the brand’s expansion a bit of a “pinch-me” moment, because for him — and for Williams, too — hair isneverjust hair.
“It’s crazy to see that we weren’t making some fabricated scenario up in our head when we talked about doing this,” he says of when they first started discussing creating Good Dye Young, which launched in 2016. “That there are people who connect to it on an emotional level — like she and I connect to it and with each other — is really cool. It’s more than just hair and hair dye. People have so many emotional stories attached to our hair colors.”
Williams herself has her own emotional ties to her hair. It’s been a vehicle to display how she’s feeling without words, especially when she’s been dealing with things in her personsal life that she doesn’t want to share with the public. But with hair colors and styles, she could do, well, something.
“We go to something to latch onto to help us feel like we have some control,” Williams muses. “Hair has always been my something. It’s always been a way for me to reflect and show the world without having to say what I’m going through.”
She recalls a time in 2014 that was particularly tumultuous — and she took it out on her hair.
“I asked Brian to change my hair about eight or nine times in 2014 because I was going through some things, and that’s what we do, you know?” she tells PEOPLE. She colored it twice in one day when Paramore appeared onGood Morning Americathat year, she reveals, and she also cut it shorter than it had ever been before ahead of the band’s tour.
“I loved it,” she gushes. “It was the best excuse to cut all my hair off. It ended up being a really good thing.”
“I feel very lucky because it’s not only having a hairstylist — it’s having a friend who wants you to express yourself,” she says. “That’s kind of what we want to be for people in the world when they come and buy a box of our dye. We want you to express yourself; present yourself however you feel and have the freedom to do that.”
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up to date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Good Dye Young’s vegan, cruelty-free hair colors can now be found at Ulta, as well asDYEposit, the deep-conditioning color refresher that Williams relies on between dye jobs, she says. (She uses this alongside following O’Connor’s cardinal rule for vivids: washing with cold water.)
“It’s kind of a ritual for me, at the very least, once a week,” Williams says. “Sometimes when we’re touring, I’ll do it more than once a week just to keep my color extra bright.”
“It’s truly my favorite product that we make,” she gushes.
At Ulta, you’ll also find theRainbow Hair Color Kit— a store exclusive that comes with a hair lightener and five semi-permanent hair dyes so you don’t have to commit to one shade. It’s the perfect way to truly express yourself.
source: people.com
