For the first 20 years of my life, I never stepped foot in a hair salon. Growing up, my haircuts exclusively took place in the living room of a family friend’s terraced house in Acton, the only person whom my mum trusted to lay a finger on her children’s hair. She knew that more often than not, when a little girl walks into a hair salon with afro hair, the question is not how to care for it, but how to tame, straighten or hide it away.
Even growing up in a city as multicultural as London, mainstream hair salons have, for the most part, been ill-equipped to deal with textured hair. As a result, the few black hair salons that do exist are often vastly oversubscribed. According to one survey, the UK has just 314 afro hair salons out of almost 45,000 registered hair and beauty salons. The options are extremely limited, and when the supply doesn’t match the demand, customer experience can suffer. Every black woman I know has a horror story about multiple hour-long wait times and less than optimal service, to put it mildly. Even for those who can afford a more luxury experience, for a long time the options simply haven’t existed.
