Best Black-Owned Hair Care Brands to Shop in 2022 – Our Ongoing Series!

March 11, 2022BruceDayne

Best Black-Owned Hair Care Brands to Shop in 2022 – Our Ongoing Series!

By Jacqueline Samaroo

Hey, hey! Welcome to CurlyNikki’s ongoing series featuring a mix of well-known and up-and-coming Black-owned hair care brands.

Each has an identity all its own but they are all connected by a common goal: creating Black hair products that will produce the best results for textured hair. A healthy scalp and hair, leading to curls with tons of definition, hydration, and bounce are what these brands are all about.

And, stay tuned – there are more than 50 companies in the series. We’ll feature a new lineup of Black-owned brands for you each Friday!

Here are the five Black-owned hair care brands we are highlighting for you today.

1. Briogeo

Nancy Twine launched Briogeo in 2013 with a passion to change how we care for textured hair. Inspired by her mom, a doctor and chemist who created many homemade beauty products, Twine built one of the most successful Black-owned hair care brands dedicated to “green beauty” and “clean beauty.” She now holds the distinction of being the youngest African-American to launch a product line at Sephora. Take the website’s quick hair quiz to customize your haircare routine using its products.

Products shoutout:

Briogeo Don’t Despair, Repair! Deep Conditioning Hair Mask

This hair mask and deep conditioner is Briogeo’s best-known and best-selling product. Its rosehip oil, B-vitamins, and algae extract leave curly hair silkier, stronger, and better hydrated.

Briogeo Superfoods Banana + Coconut Nourishing Shampoo and Conditioner Duo

Banana + Coconut is just one combination in Briogeo’s Superfoods Collection. Select from Matcha + Apple, Kale + Apple, Avocado + Kiwi, Mango + Cherry, and more!

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2. Uhai

Susan Edwards, a chemical engineer from Chicago, pulled up roots and move to Liberia, her husband’s home country. It was there she founded Uhai in 2017. The name means “life” in Swahili and the brand embraced this, choosing baobab, the region’s antioxidant powerhouse, as the leading ingredient in its inaugural line. Uhai has since spread its wings to other parts of Africa, and Edwards, who has relocated to the U.S., is now taking the brand worldwide.

Products shoutout:

Uhai Styling Cream

A water-based cream that hydrates, moisturizes, and defines coily and curly hair. It’s formulated with coconut oil, shea butter, and baobab oil, as well as vitamins B5 and E.

Uhai Scalp Serum

Contains aloe vera leaf juice, baobab oil, tea tree oil, and rosemary oil in a formula that’s designed to give relief to dry, irritated, and itchy scalps.

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3. SwirlyCurly

It was sheer frustration that led Keziah Dhamma, a natural hair model since 2010, to design and launch the Snappee Hair Tie in 2014. She’d had enough of hair ties that were too tight, too flimsy, and caused her natural hair to break. Her company, SwirlyCurly, started out as one of the Black-owned hair care brands specializing in hair accessories. It now sells more than the Snappee, offering an array of other products, including the AfroPuff Scrunchies and the Mango Moringa Moisture Max System.

Products shoutout:

SwirlyCurly The Original Snappee Hair Ties

Designed specifically to help curlfriends rock their ponies and puffs without the worry of their hair ties breaking, deforming, being too tight, or ripping out strands.

SwirlyCurly Fancy Hair Pins

These decorative bobby pins are strong, secure, and lightweight to hold thick, naturally curly hair in place, stay in place, and not weigh your hair down.

Read about another of the up-and-coming Black-owned hair care brands we featured recently: Black-Owned Businesses: CURLē Beauty Launches Love Your Roots Campaign!

4. Jane Carter Solution

Jane Carter comes from a “family of innovators” which might explain her intrinsic drive to create solutions. That drive led to her opening her first salon in 1982 and to later launching Jane Carter Solution, the brand that gave the natural hair community its beloved Nourish and Shine Restorative Hair Butter in 1996. This Black-owned hair care brand now boasts a worldwide presence with products sold by more than 200 stores in 10 countries.

Products shoutout:

Jane Carter Nourish and Shine Restorative Butter

A non-greasy, lightweight formula that contains hair four butters (mango, illipe, kokum, and shea), 3 vitamins (A, D, and E), and 2 essential oils (grapefruit and pear).

Jane Carter Solution Wrap & Roll Smooth Styling Mousse

A lightweight mousse for twisting, wrapping, or roller setting natural or relaxed hair, leaving curly hair softer and more manageable. Its ingredients include natural glycerides, rosemary oil, and nettle extract.

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5. Alaffia

The team of Olowo-n’djo Tchala and Prairie Rose Hyde founded Alaffia in 2003 as a “social enterprise on a mission to invest in a more equitable future.” It began with Aliffia’s first-of-many shea butter cooperatives and now sells a wide range of hair care and skincare products, fashionable handwoven baskets, and more. Alaffia, one of the proud “clean and green” Black-owned hair care brands, emphasizes its commitment to fair trade.

Products shoutout:

Alaffia Neem Turmeric Clarifying Conditioner

Handcrafted with neem, turmeric, and shea extracts along with tea tree, citrus, and spearmint oils to protect and restore hair and scalp from environmental damage.

Alaffia Everyday Coconut Shampoo

A hydrating and invigorating shampoo made with shea butter, ginger extract, and virgin coconut oil that’s gentle enough for daily use and formulated for normal to dry hair.

Have you seen any of your favorite Black-owned hair care brands in our series, so far?

Let us know!

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Jacqueline Samaroo, DMT.NEWS, DMT BeautySpot,

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The Look for Less: Madison Beer's Brown Zip Hoodie and White Sneakers

March 10, 2022BruceDayne

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SCORED For Only $99 — Anyday’s Everyday Fancy Bowl Set R29-Editors Swear By

March 10, 2022BruceDayne

Super Sale Alert: Get $21 off The Everyday Set from Anyday with the exclusive promo code ANYDAY29.
Meal prep season is here — we’re talking pre-commute breakfasts and IRL office lunches. Skip the deliveries, and get yourself the aesthetically pleasing and incredibly useful microwave bowls/dishes (one might even call them blates) from Anyday for under $100. Starting today through March 12, get $21 off The Everday Set with the promo code ANYDAY29. If you’ve been meaning to get your hands on these kitchen time savior bowls that R29 readers and editors alike swear by, now’s your chance — it’s truly a once-in-a-blue-moon deal. Plus, the shipping is completely free!

The Everyday Set $120 $99

The Everyday Set includes all of the Anyday essentials: the large deep dish, the large shallow dish, the medium deep dish, and the medium shallow dish. These bowls are completely dishwater-safe, oven-safe (up to 500°F), freezer-safe, and they come in three main colorways: kale, blueberry, and black sesame. You can mix and match your bowl usage, but Anyday recommends that the large deep dish is best for one-dish meals like soups and rice, the large shallow one for flaky meats, the medium deep one for chunky veggies and stews, and the medium shallow one for dips and tender-crisp vegetables.

How does it work? Well, its special silicone design keeps steam in during cooking — absolutely essential for the microwave — and releases the excess air through the knob vent. The lid creates a safe, low-level vacuum that keeps your food fresher for longer. In other words, it’s quick and easy meals that don’t taste like you just cooked them in the microwave. Plus, the frosted glass designs means you can serve it right there and then!

Calling all college students, cooking-challenged 20-somethings (me), busy parents, and everyone in-between: buy this cookware!
Alexandra polk, lifestyle writer

With a rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars with 535 reviews, people are absolutely loving Anyday’s Everyday Set. Reviewers are saying the set is a “weeknight night game-changer,” and the bowls will “easily pay for themselves many times over in all the delivery orders that I don’t place.” They call the dishes “beautiful,” “versatile,” and “the best improvement for microwave cooking on the market.” People are urging others to “buy it and tell everyone you know.”

Versatile – I have found a reason to use it almost every day, and this is from someone who only ever used the microwave to warm up food. Also appreciate how good it looks on the table. Highly recommend.
Anyday reviewer

At Refinery29, we’re here to help you navigate this overwhelming world of stuff. All of our market picks are independently selected and curated by the editorial team. All product details reflect the price and availability at the time of publication. If you buy or click on something we link to on our site, Refinery29 may earn commission.

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How I Finally Saw Myself In Turning Red, Pixar’s First Asian-Led Film

March 10, 2022BruceDayne

Growing up, I got used to not seeing myself. In films, TV shows and music videos, the heroine – the girl all the guys wanted – always pivoted around the cookie-cutter standard of Hilary Duff, Britney, Christina or Sabrina The Teenage Witch‘s Melissa Joan Hart. Their blonde, blue-eyed appearance didn’t match my own so I got used to never thinking of myself as the main character or love interest. I never gave it much thought, until recently.

Fast-forward many years and it wasn’t until I sat down to watch Pixar’s first Asian-led animated film that I actually saw myself on screen, truly, for what felt like the first time in my life. In the darkness – my stomach turning in joy – I laughed and cried, realizing what I’d been missing all this time.

In Domee Shi’s Turning Red, Chinese-Canadian Mei bursts onto the screen, a confident, larger-than-life, 13-year-old girl growing up in early noughties Toronto. Tamagotchi strapped to her backpack and clarinet clutched in her hand, she brags: “I wear what I want, say what I want. 24/7, 365.” She balances all the opposing facets of her life seamlessly: she shrieks over boy bands with her friends, is an overachiever at school and runs a temple with her family where she is the perfect dutiful daughter. That is until one day, after her strict mother, Ming (voiced by Sandra Oh), embarrasses her in front of the boy she likes and she wakes up to find that she’s transformed into a huge red panda that leaves a trail of destruction in its wake. She can return to human form if she controls her emotions but any excitement, panic or rage and – poof! – back into the panda she goes.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Yes, there were surface similarities. I was a teenager in the noughties, wore glasses and also owned a Tamagotchi (named Rex). My middle name is Mei. I didn’t have a clarinet but you better believe I played the violin to perfection and my grades were impeccable. I too was horny for floppy-haired pop musicians and drew fan-fic sketches of my crushes, just like Mei does. But the parallels ran deeper.

I also felt the tug-of-war of being split into two people. My dual British-Malaysian identity meant that I spent most of the year worrying about teenage things in London – boys, bands, showing my belly button in cropped hoodies – but passed my summers in the tropical heat of Kuching in Borneo with my aunties and uncles and grandmother, who practiced Buddhism. Sunbathing in denim shorts with a Walkman strapped to my hip blasting Backstreet Boys and O-Town, my relatives lovingly teased me as a “wild child” but back in London I was considered overly studious. An A-grade nerd, if you will.

At home, my mother pushed me and my brother academically. We were reminded that we had to work twice as hard as other kids in school to prove ourselves. When I begged to go to parties or to the park with friends in my free time, it was a resounding no. Like Mei’s uptight mother, Ming, my own mother feared that if she slackened the reins even a little bit I would propel destructively off the path to success she had so painstakingly laid for me.

I never turned into a big red panda but the same frustration would bubble up in me: that I was missing out, that people would think I was weird. All I wanted was to be a messy teenager and just like Mei, the more my mother pulled me in, the more I pulled away. I was double bound, an experience that many children of immigrants will understand – constantly battling our parents for a longer leash of freedom so we can fit in while holding on to tradition so we don’t lose sight of who we are. But as I watched the film, all these years later I felt sadness at how much I had rallied against my mum and misunderstood her intentions. She wasn’t strict so she could brag about me as her perfect daughter to all our relatives back home; she wanted to set me up for success because the world could be a hostile place and because the way I look meant that the odds were already stacked against my favor.

Turning Red, being a Pixar film, never shows outright instances of racism. But there’s one scene where a kid calls Mei out: “Go back to your psycho mum and your creepy temple, you freak!” Enraged, Mei puffs up in her panda self and I felt my throat constrict with a familiar fury. I know, after working hard not to be viewed as ‘other’, how hurtful words can embed themselves in you like a kernel of self-hatred and grow. I saw how Mei’s friends rushed to her defence and remembered how my own friends would gleefully unleash torrents of colourful, foul, brilliant expletives – probably a little too mature for 13-year-olds – at anyone who dared call me names in the street or even – as on one occasion – spit at me. My own mother practised quiet resilience in the face of prejudice, letting her hard work and success overcome animosity. Eventually I learned the same: that if you let your anger get the better of you, you’ll turn into someone you don’t recognize; that you can’t control what happens to you but you can control your reactions.

I never thought that an animated Pixar character would be the representation I’d always needed, nor how much I would need it right now, at this time in my life. Watching Mei on the brink of puberty, wearing her identity proudly, combating her inner turmoil and navigating her complicated relationship with her mother – who reminded me so much of my own beautiful, force-of-nature mother – I felt a swell of pride in my chest, one that has sometimes been dimmed by amplified anti-Asian sentiment and instances of violence during the pandemic. It’s taken me a bit longer than Mei (I’m now well into adulthood) but I’m learning to let all these clashing sides of me tessellate and overlap. More than ever, I feel proud of where I come from and what I look like.

It’s funny. When everyone on TV looks like you, you’re able to project yourself onto everyman characters in all media but when you don’t have that, you cling to the fibres of what you can see. There’s no doubt that seeing yourself represented in whatever way shapes your understanding and learning about your place in the world. It confirms you exist and are accepted. As Hollywood has made small strides in diversity, I’ve seen various onscreen iterations of ‘me’ in media and had a visceral emotional reaction every time. It’s not that I think I’m a crazy rich Asian or a superpower-wielding immortal or a giant red panda. What I see instead is that my life is abundant. I am lovable, strong and patient – powerful beyond measure.

Turning Red premieres exclusively on Disney+ on 11th March

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Why It’s Time To Kill The French Girl Style Myth

March 10, 2022BruceDayne

Véronique Hyland is the Fashion Features Director at ELLE and the author of Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion From the New Look to Millennial Pink, a collection of essays about the intersection of fashion and our everyday lives, out on March 15, 2022.

For an industry that’s built on seasonally reinventing the way we see the world, fashion has a dirty little secret: it relies an awful lot on clichés. The little black dress. Day-to-night dressing. The much-vaunted “investment piece.” And, when it comes to its human equivalents, there’s the never-changing paper doll that is fashion’s image of the “French girl,” the muse of Pinterest boards and aspirational listicles the world over.

When I set out to write Dress Code, I knew that I wanted to devote a chapter to the global fixation on “French girl style” and look at what that undying myth really says about our culture at large. As ELLE’s Fashion Features Director, I receive several pitches per week about how to emulate the aesthetic. But the appeal goes far beyond the fashion bubble: Bestselling guides from French Women Don’t Get Fat to How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are promise to re-train us to live, eat, dress, and moisturize like those across the Atlantic, while hit shows like Emily in Paris make narrative hay out of the friction between the French and American ways of life.

While digging into its history for the book, I found that the modern French girl archetype was already in evidence by the 1950s, with actress Brigitte Bardot upending what it meant to be sexy and insouciant. The ’60s brought us the lissome yé-yé girls and French New Wave heroines who still clog every mood board on the planet. Every era since has had its own Francophone heroines, with current-day pinnacles of chic like Caroline de Maigret and Jeanne Damas parlaying their je ne sais quoi into everything from coffee-table books to beauty lines.

Writing about Bardot in Esquire, Simone de Beauvoir called her “a negligent waif” who “goes about barefooted” and “turns up her nose at elegant clothes, jewels, girdles, perfumes, make-up, at all artifice” (this, despite Bardot’s well-known love of thick eyeliner and a liberally hair-sprayed bouffant.) At various points in the story, de Beauvoir compares the bombshell to a “child” and a “creature.” Her 1959 account of Bardot sounds not unlike the way we talk about her compatriots today. As I write in the book, “They’re not calculating. They’re not trying too hard. Their innocence is fetishized long into adulthood. Almost every aspect of this feels sexist—these women aren’t a chore to be around, they don’t overthink, and they don’t have the tiresome qualities that adults do. At the same time, they know more than we do — about how to dress, eat, and live.”

This fixed idea of French girl style is not only regressive but classist, too. It pulls from the dictates of BCBG (bon chic, bon genre or good style, good class) which practically requires an ancestral line that amassed enough tweed jackets and strings of pearls for you to mix with your Levi’s to get the perfect street-style photo op. It’s largely centered on wealthy areas of Paris, as opposed to the slightly-smaller-than-Texas-sized expanse that makes up the entire nation.

And it remains static when it comes to race and body type. As I write in the book, you’ll see more baguettes and berets in these guides to French style than you will people of color. Plus-size French women exist, too, but they never seem to make it onto the mood boards. France has always been a diverse country, and as its demographics continue to change, the popular imagination still clings to the white, thin, aristocratic French woman as the sole model of “It” girl appropriate for lionizing. Rather than women like Yseult, a plus-size pop star of Cameroonian descent, who, despite being a bona fide celebrity within France, rarely shows up on American listicles featuring French girl style.

Our need to attribute the ease, languor, youth, and health of the French girl to some magical properties conferred by the contents of her closet and makeup bag feels like a form of consumerism-driven denial. When you look closer at why some aspects of life in France might be superior, they all boil down to things you can’t buy at a beauty counter or denim bar. The social safety net the country is famous for has ensured that people have more stability and free time, in the form of government-sanctioned work-life balance, universal healthcare, and ample vacation time.

If we really want to be more like French women, the perfect red lipstick and LBD will only get us so far. The most enviable thing about them isn’t their perfectly air-dried waves or haphazardly styled marinière shirts. It’s their less visible, less glamorous, but politically hard-won advantages. If we really want to live more like French people, we should start by calling our reps.

Véronique Hyland’s Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion From the New Look to Millennial Pink is available for purchase here.

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