When Tate McRae stepped onto the Met Gala red carpet this year, her hair stopped the conversation. Warm, luminous, impossibly seamless, her "Golden Melt Blonde" by colourist Matt Rez is already the most-wanted look of the season.
But here's the thing about a colour like this: getting it is one thing. Maintaining it so your hair doesn't snap off? That's where the real work and the real expertise comes in.
Matt Rez is a Paul Mitchell Global Color Artist and epres Global Celebrity Colorist, someone who thinks about the long-term health of the hair just as much as the colour result on the day. And the way he built this look tells you everything about how to maintain it.
What the Golden Melt actually does to your hair
Photo Credit: @kalikennedy on instagram
To create Tate's look, Matt layered multiple lightening and toning steps, a base bump to neutralise and lift, highlights for brightness through the lengths, a root melt for seamless blending, and a gloss to seal and unify the tone. It's a technically precise result, and it requires the hair to go through a significant amount of chemical processing to get there.
Every time hair is lightened, the process breaks down its natural bonds, the internal protein structures that keep strands strong, smooth, and able to hold colour. The more lightening involved, the more bonds are disrupted. Left unaddressed, that leads to a very familiar set of problems: fading tone, increased breakage, dryness, and colour that starts looking flat or brassy far sooner than it should.
This is why bond repair isn't optional for colour like this. It's the foundation the whole look is built on.
Why Matt uses ePres in the formula itself
When creating Tate's highlights, Matt mixed epres Biodiffusion Professional Bond Repair directly into the lightener, repairing bonds as the hair lifts, not after. It's a technique that reflects a broader philosophy: the best time to protect the hair is during the process, not as damage control afterwards. The same principle applies at home.
Your at-home maintenance routine that you should be doing after your salon visit
Maintaining a Golden Melt or any lightened, toned colour, comes down to one consistent habit: regular bond repair. Here's how to build it into your routine.
Bond repair before you shampoo:
Apply epres bond repair to dry hair before washing, 1–2 times per week. This pre-shampoo step allows the treatment to penetrate the hair's structure fully, rebuilding broken bonds from within, before the wash process begins. Results are noticeable from the first use: softer, shinier, more resilient hair.
Use a colour-safe shampoo and conditioner:
After bond repair, follow with a gentle, sulphate-free shampoo and a hydrating conditioner. For colour care products that complement this routine, visit the Paul Mitchell site, their colour care range works great alongside bond repair treatments.
Deep condition weekly:
Lightened hair needs moisture as well as structural repair. A weekly mask on top of your epres routine addresses both, keeping strands hydrated, soft, and less prone to the dryness that makes colour look dull.
Protect before heat styling:
A gloss finish like the one in Tate's service creates that light-reflective shine but heat styling without protection will undo it fast. Always use a heat protectant before tools, and keep temperatures appropriate for colour-treated hair.
Be consistent between appointments:
Bond repair works cumulatively. The more consistently you use it, the better your colour holds its tone, the less breakage you see, and the longer your results last between salon visits. Think of it less like a treatment and more like a habit.
Thinking about going lighter this summer?
If Tate's Golden Melt has you considering a colour change of your own, the most important thing you can do — before, during, and after — is protect the health of your hair. Talk to your colourist about incorporating bond repair into your service, and start your at-home routine as soon as possible after your appointment.
