Sonic Silver Hair Is the Ultimate Cool-Girl Hair Trend

Another day, another hair trend breaking lose from the 1990s–2000s archive. This time it's the turn of “sonic silver hair,” which top hair colorist and Matrix colorist ambassador Zoë Irwin has spotlit as the cool-girl shade to know—especially since the cooler color pairs perfectly with the temperature of the current season.

What is sonic silver hair?

Essentially, it's a soft silver hair color that feels retro and futuristic in equal measure. “It’s a kind of beige-y, soft silver,” Irwin explains. “We’ve seen a lot of grays previously,” but things are moving toward sheerer, glistening, glossier renditions, “as opposed to the heavy, ashy gray that became so mainstream [in the early noughties] that it just wasn’t cool any more,” she says. “This is silver for a fresh audience, it’s a much more subtle, delicate tone.”

“The trend is ultra sheer, has a high shine, and is super iridescent,” Irwin says. “When you start to take hair this kind of beige-silver color, it becomes very futuristic, and anything that feels futuristic always has a soft modernity to it.”

What inspired sonic silver hair?

The trend is rooted in the turn of this century. “Many of you will have seen the rise of something called Gen X Soft Club, which has been a huge TikTok trend,” Irwin says. “Just to give you a little bit of background, it’s a reemerging trend from the late ’90s, early 2000s. We started to go toward a cooler palette—more beige tones, pale blue tones, lots of greens—and everything became really simplified. Gen X Soft Club is Y2K's cooler, obscure younger sister. It’s less gaudy; it's simplistic.”

One TikTok user, @fckboyfuneral, summarized it. “The Gen X Soft Club aesthetic was prominent in the late ’90s, early 2000s—that's not the maximalist, pink, blinged-out kind of look [that was also popular at the time]. It was all about minimalist fashion, sterile design, and urban night life. It took that retro futurism and toned it all the way down to very muted colors—lots of blues, grays, greens—blurry city lights, if you've ever seen the ‘2 Become 1’ video by the Spice Girls, it was exactly that.”

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As for sonic silver hair? Irwin explains her choice of words. “The reason I called it Sonic Silver is because the iPod launched in 2001 and really changed the amount of music we listened to,” she says. “We weren’t really referencing the past, the music of the time was really quite original. It felt like a sonic generation; it’s very much referencing the time.”

It's not lost on us that digital devices, like the iPod, were synonymous with futuristic silver shades too.

Who does sonic silver hair work particularly well on?

Rather than a safe bet, the trend offers a shade that's a little more alternative. And even though it's delicate and soft, the shade still feels gritty and has a daringness to it that warmer tones simply don't. So this shade is for the rebels.