Courtesy of Create To Heal
“On the chair” highlights the unimaginable hair and make-up artists in our neighborhood who encourage us a lot. Every week, they talk about their private magnificence {and professional} journeys, what they’ve discovered from their shoppers, and their greatest glam ideas. This iteration is in partnership with ESSENCE Create to Heal Initiative Mayavana.
Your subsequent appointment/haircut will help save a salon within the Altadena neighborhood. Make a donation right here And right here.
Not all heroes put on capes, however Geoff Cathcart has a lot to select from. Barber capes, to be precise.
As a grasp barber, licensed actual property agent and father of six, Cathcart approaches his work with care, precision and a deep sense of duty to his neighborhood.
In the present day, this dedication meets a second that may rework right into a motion. His consumer, Mrs. Carolyn Elaine Smith, 77, slowly settles into her chair. For nearly 20 years, her hair has remained intact within the fingers of no skilled, not even his personal. They’re tangled, heavy, and pull on his neck with fixed ache. The burden he carries is not simply bodily. It’s emotional, psychological and religious. “Hair care boosts shallowness,” says Cathcart. “Individuals are available in not feeling their greatest, and you may make them really feel that manner once more.”
Nevertheless it’s greater than a routine salon appointment. Each Cathcart and Ms. Carolyn are survivors of the controversial Eaton Fireplace, which on January 7, 2025, ravaged the small Los Angeles County mountain city of Altadena, a historic and vibrant haven in black Southern California the place hard-earned property, connections and neighborhood reign.
In lower than 24 hours, the lethal flames decreased your entire metropolis to ashes, displacing generations of households in a single day. Now, just a little over a yr later, this special occasion is an element of a bigger effort to assist Altadena’s restoration.
ESSENCE, by its Create to Heal initiative led by Varsay Sirleaf, Senior Director of Neighborhood and International Engagement, partnered with Myavana and Do not Overlook About Me to create a day of self-care for ladies affected by the fires.
The expertise was designed by Candace Mitchell, founder and CEO of Myavana, an AI-powered magnificence expertise firm targeted on customized hair and scalp care. Plus, it got here to life with Luis Burgos, founding father of Do not Overlook About Me, whose group supplies magnificence and wellness companies to trauma survivors.
The native connection to Altadena survivors got here by Samantha Stokes and Namane Mohlabane, who launched ESSENCE and Do not Overlook About Me to 2 unimaginable organizations engaged on the entrance traces of restoration: the Black Freedom Fund, led by Marc Philpart, and the Shared Harvest Basis/Dena Ahead Alliance, led by Dr. NanaEfua Afoh-Manin.
On the middle of the therapeutic expertise is Lawrence and Colbert Salon, Altadena’s oldest black-owned salon, based in 1978 by neighborhood pillar Lynn Lawrence. For many years, the salon has been greater than only a place for hair care. It’s a multi-generational area of pleasure, stability and entrepreneurship, serving as an anchor inside the neighborhood.
If the constructing survived the hearth, this isn’t the case for almost all of its clientele’s residences. “In some ways we’re ranging from scratch,” says Geoff. Altadena however stays deeply rooted in what it has all the time been.
Located within the foothills, the realm is thought for its pure wonders, beautiful highland views, plentiful kumquat, lemon, pomegranate and oak timber, with an openness and heat, numerous welcome that longtime residents say is tough to explain till you expertise it.
Geoff just lately had a consumer are available in from Inglewood to assist Altadena by getting a haircut at Lawrence and Colbert salon.
When the visitor arrived, he went exterior, admiring the mountains which are nonetheless a part of the Altadena panorama, and was amazed by the colourful, brilliant inexperienced wild parrots flying by the sky in giant, noisy flocks. “Man, it’s so lovely,” he stated. “You actually don’t perceive it till you see it for your self,” provides Geoff.
For Ms. Carolyn, that magnificence has all the time been about folks. “We care for one another,” she stated. “It’s like an prolonged household.” This sense of belonging partly explains why she stayed. As a single girl in her 40s, Ms. Carolyn purchased her Altadena house and spent three a long time paying it off, lastly taking possession in late 2024. Lower than two months later, it was destroyed within the Los Angeles fires. She now plans to rebuild on the charred land. “Why would I am going anyplace else?” she stated. “That is my home.”
Again in her chair, her hair displays every part she has worn, years of caring for her beloved 96-year-old aunt with dementia, in addition to the grief of shedding her mom, the stresses of life and the bodily influence of the poisonous ash and particles from the hearth that was by no means washed or faraway from her hair. “It’s not simply an aesthetic problem,” says Geoff. “It’s about his well being.”
With the cape adjusted, he activates his clippers. The discharge is fast. “I instantly felt mild,” Ms. Carolyn stated, rolling her shoulders in aid. She research her reflection, observing the transformation with a large, real smile. “I appear like I used to be in faculty,” she says. “The me who marched for civil rights. The me who is able to maintain preventing.” She expires.
“What does my hair imply to me now? » she thought. “Freedom.” Free of every part she carried. This was greater than only a haircut. It’s a launch from ache. A return to oneself. A step in direction of one thing new. It’s the restoration of the spirit. Neighborhood restoration. Restoration of Altadena. A restoration which, that day, started within the armchair.
Beneath, Cathcart shares extra about her journey.
The way it began:
Contemporary out of highschool, I wanted a authorized technique to pay for my training. I educated with Luke Walker at a neighborhood hair salon, and that is when it clicked.
Its important merchandise:
Bevel, Credo, Clubman. I am from the old fashioned, so additionally from Murray’s.
Her greatest recommendation for wholesome hair:
Begin with the scalp. And watch your weight loss plan, it is simply as vital.
What being a barber taught him:
Endurance. Hear. Individuals carry greater than what you see. The black males’s barbershop is usually a spot of psychology and remedy. It is a secure setting the place we come to debate and specific ourselves about issues that we regularly do not feel snug discussing elsewhere, with different males who can relate. From ages 5 to 80, there’s such a wealth of information shared.
Her favourite types to do:
Flat tops, field fades, tapers, 360 waves, I’ve carried out all of them. The humorous factor is that types change, however they all the time come again. They begin within the hood, hit the leisure, somebody like Bobby Brown again within the day rocks, after which it takes off.
Then it goes straight again to the chair the place it began. Individuals maintain up the most recent ESSENCE journal or the most recent retailer images and say, “That is what I need.” We’ve come full circle and that’s the reason we’ll all the time want one another. That is what neighborhood appears like.