Alex Brownsell and twins Sam and Lou Teasdale are, at the tender ages of 22 and 25, way ahead of their time. So far ahead of their time, in fact, that they have leapt the generations to join their grannies and gone grey -- by choice.

Yes, the colour wheel has finally twirled full circle. Growing numbers of women are no longer eschewing the very thought of grey, but embracing a gunmetal mane with pride -- and attitude. As Brownsell and the Teasdales prove, this is not only about silver foxettes going au naturel. This is a youth movement: from east London's cool set to models on the Paris catwalks, women are throwing the tonsorial rulebook out of the window and going with the grey. Even Victoria Beckham and Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs are getting in on the act by letting their own silver strands peep through.

"We had all been blonde for a long time," says Brownsell, who tends the tresses of east London’s fast crowd, as well as the X Factor contestants and a few select A-list clients. (She could name-drop Keira Knightley, Alice Dellal and Little Boots.) "We became obsessed with it being as white as possible, a mania we called 'blonde-orexia'." Eventually, the fixation led to grey dye. "I really liked it, so, rather than bleaching it out, I kept it," she says. "I quite like looking like a granny. I dress a bit like one, too." Brownsell and her fellow hip hairdresser, Lou Teasdale, who run the beauty blog www.beautyisareligion.com, say that after summer's frenzy for full-on pink, yellow, orange or blue hair, an understated grey is directional, classy and perfect right now.

Pixie Geldof, another fan of the supernan look, agrees. "I'd been blonde for three years and fancied a change," she says. "I wasn't thinking about the colour, I just put on a bunch of toner one day, and there it was. It was rad. I didn't want to do another colour like pink, grey just seemed obvious."