Madison Voelkel/BFA.com
Fancy hair fanatics flocked to New York Metropolis’s Altman Constructing on Friday night for the second version of the town’s most beloved hair salon, Black Hair Reimagined. Produced by Echelon Noir, an organization co-founded by hair legend Jawara Wauchope and inventive director-curator Jarrod Lacks, this yr’s present has written a brand new narrative for black hair.
As certainly one of six hairstylists featured, all utilizing hair from True Hair Firm, Wauchope says her particular assortment was all about female spirituality and embodying the human type of what God is. In different phrases, “Black girls,” he tells ESSENCE earlier than the present. “I did a variety of analysis on sure deities, completely different religions on how black girls look, so we created a tribute to black deities.”
Her work throughout vogue month is all about merchandise, however Black Hair Reimagined transforms hair into vogue and artwork. “We use hair merchandise, however we additionally use paint and resin and every little thing else on the hair,” he says, describing his kinds as braided, distressed and feather-like. “I attempted to make the hair look and feel completely different this yr as a substitute of simply hair.”
Whereas final yr’s very first present completely featured hair legends, like Yusef Williams and Cyndia Harvey, this iteration welcomed three extra unbelievable stylists. Certainly one of them was Fesa Nu, a proclaimed hair poet who styled braid sculptures and celebrities like Chloe Bailey and Alicia Keys, with a group referred to as “Topped in Ancestral Idea.”
Fashions have been wearing balloon-sleeved Marc Jacobs clothes, however they nonetheless weren’t large enough to eclipse Nu’s hair vogue. A mannequin stabilized what seemed like a 6-tier upside-down cake on high of her head, which used braid-like icing between every tier. One other wore a braided vase-shaped sculpture with orange eyeshadow, whereas a 3rd paired her brass-toned pretzel twist hair with inexperienced eye make-up by make-up artist Raisa Flowers.
Vernon François, who introduced a narrative about celebrating hair even within the face of exploitation on final yr’s present, returned with “The Fifth Silhouette” powered by amika. “What you are going to witness is a life transition,” he says backstage whereas stitching up a tower coiffure adorned with pink flower petals. “Metamorphosis.”
This meant utilizing foliage, like branches, feathers, and textures grown within the earth, to reimagine a metaphorical tree of life within the type of hair. One look, for instance, consisted of a tree department hanging across the mannequin’s shoulders with twigs and leaves in her hair. One other had a mossy helmet with inexperienced and platinum furballs sticking up from a string. Like nature reworking from winter to spring, “it’s a tribute to that course of,” he says.
“Harmour” newcomer and hair grasp Isaac Poleon introduced hair to life in an electrifying method. His fashions’ eyes have been zombified utilizing white-colored lenses to hide their pupils with white voids. Her most dramatic look was a 2-foot-tall mohawk, minimize sq. on the edges and paired with pierced eyebrows and clustered eyelashes.
Two different fashions wore lobs — one blonde, one black — with electrocuted ponytails peeking out from the highest and aspect. In the meantime, one other had hair that was wider than it was tall, like an outsized puffy ball gone rogue. Her look was paired with black curved acrylics, all-black eyeballs, straight lashes, and a lip combo by way of Eadem’s Le ChouChou lip balm.
For Malcolm Marquez, his assortment “The Will to Change” targeted on metamorphosis, transitions and renewal via the pure world. “It’s humorous as a result of I really modified my design three weeks earlier than the present,” he says, which naturally embodies his transformative inspiration. “It’s not all the time an artist’s journey to know precisely what they’re going to do immediately.”
As a substitute, he adopted his intuition to reuse supplies that may in any other case be used as waste. “Magnificence tends to have a really heavy environmental impression,” he says, with overconsumption contributing to greater than 120 billion packaging items annually. “It was vital to me to top off on issues I already had. I like to make use of recycled supplies, recycle issues and get as few new issues as potential.”
Consequently, a slimy inexperienced fashion had triangular bangs with gold-encrusted ideas protruding like a crown. One other remodeled one mannequin right into a full hair cocoon and, after that, a method set in what seemed like a spider leg combine. And though the night was all about reimagining black hair via black girls, there was nonetheless room for the feminine gaze.
Barber Joshua Meekins delighted the present’s eyes together with his assortment of well-groomed males’s ‘Nonetheless You Need It’. The viewers screamed as they bared their chests and walked in traditional black kinds, together with waves, low cuts and braids. One mature mannequin even had her grey hair layered in a palm tree bun, proving that males can reinvent their hairstyles simply as a lot as girls.
This newest iteration of Black Hair Reimagined has come full circle for Wauchope, who says it did not hit him till he arrived and noticed the neighborhood he created. “There are lots of people who really feel uncared for, like me, or forgotten on this period of vogue and politics,” he says. “For us to return collectively and create neighborhood solely affirms the truth that what we’re doing at Echelon Noir is the best factor.”
Forward, uncover all of the hair seems to be from Echelon Noir 2026’s Black Hair Reimagined hair salon.
