She has been playing Carrie Bradshaw for almost thirty years, and that leaves a mark. If the fictional columnist claimed in season four of "Sex and the City" to own more than a hundred pairs of Manolo Blahniks and turned every night out into her own runway, Sarah Jessica Parker doesn't lag behind. Her personal wardrobe holds all the clothes from the series - a special clause in her contract let her keep every piece from the very first episode. That's why every appearance she makes becomes a headline, and the latest was the New York City Ballet gala at Lincoln Center, where she arrived with her husband, actor Matthew Broderick.

For an evening dedicated to ballet and fashion, she wore a Simone Rocha dress: semi-sheer, with embroidered pink buds and draped ties shaped like bows. But the surprise wasn't the dress. It was the maxi braid, tied with a baby-pink bow, with a volume and length rarely seen on a red carpet.

The trick is simple and nobody hides it: extensions that take her shoulder-length hair down to the small of her back. The roots are lifted, adding a centimetre or so of height to her silhouette, and the focus falls exactly where most stars don't want it to fall - on the grey. It sits close to her face, well cared for, and instead of ageing her, it brightens her features. The braid is a royal-house classic, but with grey hair it takes on a whole different meaning.

Parker is no stranger to braids. In 2006, aged 41 at the time, she wore a bun with a braid combed back, again with lifted roots - a style that is still one of the most elegant choices for wedding guests, and even brides. In 2024 she was spotted on the streets of New York with a smooth, neat braid, no backcombing, one hair tie at the top and one at the end. At the 2017 Golden Globes she wore a braid like a halo around her head, with a black crystal clip along the parting. And in the first season of "And Just Like That" she had a maxi braid decorated with three-dimensional flowers.

The beauty industry lives off dyeing grey hair and the promise of erasing it. That's why one actress wearing it like jewellery, at a gala, in front of every photographer, is worth more than an entire advertising campaign. How many women who buy the same hair dye every month would dare to do the same?