black hair
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Celeb Hairstylist Ursula Stephen Is Creating Magic in Brooklyn, NY, With a Brand That Won’t Bust Your Budget
“Some people have hair that listens,” celebrity hairstylist Ursula Stephen tells me as I settle into the chair at her eponymous shop in the heart of the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y. “If the hair resists, you up the intensity,” she says. That’s a formula Ursula knows well. She’s been upping the game for…
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(Do) Touch My Hair? 2 White Brits Specialize in Celebrating the Artistic Potential of Black Hair
A funny thing happened on our way to the royal wedding this weekend: We got waylaid by something else exciting on the other side of the pond. Namely, some of the most striking black-hair portraiture we’ve ever seen, courtesy of British photographer Luke Nugent and award-winning hairstylist Lisa Farrall. But there’s a twist: Nugent and…
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Comic Relief: Wash Day Captures the Radical Self-Love in a Hair-Care Ritual
When is your “wash day”? Saturday mornings? Sunday afternoons after church? However a black woman wears her hair, the wash-day ritual is one she undoubtedly knows well, with techniques sometimes preserved since childhood, or honed to perfection after starting her natural-hair journey. A group of young female creatives are paying “tribute to the beauty and…
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Supreme Court May Have to Decide if Banning Dreadlocks Is Racist
An Alabama woman who lost her job after her employer said that dreadlocks “tend to get messy” has petitioned the Supreme Court to decide if the company’s policy is discriminatory. In 2010, Chastity Jones applied for a job at Catastrophe Management Solutions, an insurance-claims-processing company in Mobile, according to AL.com. After Jones was hired, she…
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Judge of Characters: Can White People Do Black Hair?
Perhaps the proper question is, can “transracial” mascot Rachel Dolezal do black hair? Well, she does, and has been doing so for a while; she acknowledged in her book, In Full Color, that she would do hair in college as a side hustle. That hustle has grown into a full-on kitchen-beautician business, and Dolezal is…
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Monday Motivation: Get Out of Bed and Have a Good Hair Day!
As beauty and fashion editors, we’ve seen some impressive heads of hair, but few are more astounding than Instagram star, and Guinness World Record holder for the highest high-top fade, Benny Harlem and his daughter, Jaxyn (Mom Kourtney’s got a pretty impressive mane, too). At 9 years old, Jaxyn, the youngest member of the Harlem…
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Meet the Dooplex: A New Destination for Your ’Do
Looking for an entirely for-us, by-us, one-stop shop for hair and beauty products? Welcome to the Dooplex, a new online marketplace hoping to elevate the black beauty industry to the next level. Launched on Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2018, the Dooplex is the brainchild of CEO Kevin Lyles, who left a corporate career in…
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Missing Your Edges? Razor Chic Salon in Atlanta Has a Solution
The New York Times recently reported on Razor Chic, an Atlanta hair salon owned by stylist Jasmine Collins that specializes in hairstyles to camouflage hair loss. This is good news for wig- and weave-dependent African-American women who suffer from thinning hair or baldness. Commonly, hair loss can occur as a result of hormonal changes due…
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Putting Their Heads Together: How Facebook’s Natural Hair Group Became Over 250,000 Strong (and Growing)
There are groups, and there are “supergroups.” At over 253,000 members—and growing daily—the Natural Hair Facebook group definitely qualifies as the latter. Started in 2013, Natural Hair began as a local Facebook group started by then-Birmingham, Ala., resident Jessica Latten. Having relied on online resources and communities to begin her own natural-hair journey, Latten created…