Origin
Why I created The Braids Company.As a child of the 90s and 2000's, my first beauty and glamour idols had braids. From Brandy’s many styles in ‘Moesha’, to Beyoncé’s innovative experiments with colour, the Original Cool Girl had braids.
I could talk about the history of braids; about their importance to our heritage and how we define ourselves and our beauty. But I think the easier thing to do is to talk about braids contemporary to my lifetime.
So, let’s talk about braids.
The Braids Company began as my love letter to black haircare and my experience as a black girl, becoming. It began from frustration and a feeling of not being understood or even considered in the making of the product I was buying. The expectation that as black women, we must make do, and expect toil and no comfort when expressing love unto ourselves.
I wanted to experiment with style, texture and colour but I was nowhere near a black hair salon and my mother, who had dreadlocks, had no idea how to braid my hair into the latest styles. So I went off on my own adventure in the streets of London, eventually finding a hair supply store.
Right next to a butcher.
The whole process felt rushed and so far removed from every other beauty experience I'd had. There was no atmosphere, no thought given to the experience and most of all, no one black on their floor team for customers. No one could tell me what my hair needed and which products would work for me.
Many years later, this experience remains more or less the same. It's only when I had my daughters that I felt this burning desire for radical change. And I decided to be part of that change.
I want you and every woman and girl, who experiences our products, to feel understood, honoured and celebrated.
Braids are self-love, craftsmanship and glamour. Braids are a self-made culture. Every style and every trend is invented by black women in their homes or under trusted hands in the salon and the cool shades of trees. When I see the many styles we invent, I see our traditions reinvented over and over again.
The Braids Company was created to foster that new tradition. To honour the lives and times of black women and girls like me. If, like me, you're a new bride going somewhere exotic and far away from trusted hands and the nearest black hair salon, I want you to think of us.
If you are a new mother up all hours tending to a newborn, having no time for a twist-out, I want you think of us and be assured of that moment of self appreciation.
If you are a new mother up all hours tending to a newborn, having no time for a twist-out, I want you think of us and be assured of that moment of self appreciation.
More than utility, The Braids Company is a moment of luxury and my gift to the many women who shaped me.
