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If Drew Barrymore arrived at the Toronto International Film Festival this year to promote any other movie than one about the take-no-guff, grrl-power world of roller derby, she probably would have worn a different hairstyle. But with Whip It! to sell, Barrymore brought a 'do to match, sporting flyaway blond tresses dyed skunk black at the tips.

“It's punky, it's fun,” Sarah Jay, a Toronto-based stylist, says of Barrymore's makeover. “The whole aesthetic of the film, and especially her character, is hipster, bohemian.”

The flashy look is hardly limited to Barrymore. Ombré, a French term for the shading and fading of colours and tones, has been cropping up on the locks of fashionistas looking to make a statement around the world. Stylist Katie Shillingford, for instance, was seen with blond hair that gave way to blue and then black at Paris Fashion Week, while Anastasija Kondratjeva, one of a handful of models to adopt the look, showed off blond hair that melted into purple on the runway at a recent Proenza Schouler show.

While some prefer to have one colour bleed gently into another – the model Dree Hemingway (Papa's granddaughter) opted to blend pink into her blond hair – others such as Barrymore have gone for a sharp line between hues.

“The higher the contrast, the more striking it is,” says Jay.

Ombré has been on the radar for a while now, albeit below the neck. Oscar de la Renta and Hervé Léger offered their take on the trend at last year's New York Fashion Week and Prada's ombré handbags are hot sellers.

While the effect can appear soft on dresses and cardigans, however, ombré looks almost aggressively dishevelled when it comes to hair. “There's something that looks unkempt about it,” says Jay.

And that's exactly the point. In fabrics, ombré is the classier cousin of tie-dye. In hair, it's almost punk. Like a mohawk, it's unapologetically attention-grabbing. And like hair that hasn't seen shampoo in weeks, it's prideful of the fact that those with the look don't care all that much about keeping up appearances.

“[The look is] pushing a statement that says, ‘I'm a little bit more carefree,'” says Phil Loiselle, program director of the hair department at the Blanche Macdonald Centre, an aesthetics college in Vancouver.

“It's something you see with a lot of rock bands and people who are more out there,” he says. “I don't think it's for everybody.”

But in true rock 'n' roll fashion, the trend could easily adopt the title of a classic album as its motto: Let it bleed.