Love me, love my hair, au naturel!
You know how it flows … or rather how it doesn’t! Black women all over the world have all been victims of tress stress – years spent suffering with relaxer damage, scalp problems, hair loss, let alone the amount of cash we keep putting into our hair! Enough is enough!
We need to start embracing our natural state of hair being – braids, locs, coils or twists! And finally the fashionistas are catching on …
As if by rite of passage, the Black model archive is filled with trials of hapharzard handling of one’s hair. Left in the hands of hairstylists deaf to the temperment of Black tresses, Black fashion pioneers have recounted tales of their coils and strands being stretched to their breaking, frayed ends; scalps carelessly permed, harshly scorched, battered with color, and left to be restored by weaves, wigs, and the shearing of frazzled locks.
These haunting experiences are now often shrouded in frustrated one-off tweets, or woeful interview admissions from present-day Black fashion favorites Jourdan Dunn and Chanel Iman, messages that acknowledge a problem, but rarely hold few responsible. This while Black model stalwarts Naomi Campbell and Tyra Banks have fought the effects of alopecia publicly, Banks raising significant awareness to the damaging toll modeling has caused to her hair by going completely natural in 2010, even urging Larry King to feel her restored scalp in an on-camera 2009 interview.
It is uplifting then to see the newest pack of black models storming the catwalks in full embrace of their natural hairstyles, from cropped Afros, flat tops, to buzzed scalps–and in turn being embraced by the industry that has typically approached black hair with skepticism and harsh critique.
As Canadian model, Herieth Paul‘s, almost ubiquitous presence on the top Fall 2012 catwalks of Burberry Prorsum, Diane Von Furstenberg, Yigal Azourel, Costello Tagliapietra shown, the model’s coiffed ‘fro isn’t for a second deterring her imminent ascent. Then there is of course Ajak Deng‘s signature buzz that has marked her career, creating a striking, anomalous silhouette along the runways of Suno,Roksanda Ilincic, and Issa this season, as well as with her turns on couture’s Spring 2012 stages just last month. Newcomer Akuol de Mabior, the beautiful offspring of Sudan’s former Vice President, walked for Jasper Conran and Louise Gray under a crown of curls that bore a striking resemblance to the very style lauded actress, Viola Davis, made famous at Sunday’s Academy Awards. While Flaviana Mataka, Nana Keita, and Elyce Cole reimagined the Afro in its various forms for Vivienne Westwood Red, Ashish, and William Okpo, respectively.
And how could one ignore the direct nod London sister-design duo, Tata Naka, made towards Motown’s glory days? Vibrantly patterned designs seamlessly played off the leaping afros of the show’s diverse cast of models, who wore their natural styles with elegance and total assuredness, and made quite a ripple in London Fashion Week this season.
Of course these girls and designers represent a small majority of the fashion industry, but this reoccurring presence of natural Black hairon the runways certainly mirrors and could be correlated to the natural Black hair craze that is currently taking place off the runway.
Though one may beg to argue that this conclusion is far too precise in its measurement, as certain models like Alek Wek and Noemi Lenoir have made their natural tresses a signature component to their success for years. One can’t help to argue that such a general upsurge in visibility surrounding natural Black hairstyles, if they be worn by fashion darlings Julia Sarr-Jamois or Solange Knowles, or are documented thoroughly by the press (the NYTimes, most famously), is helping usher in a new era of hair treatment for Black women broadly, and Black models specifically.
