Five years ago, I loc’d my hair, mostly because I wanted to wake up every morning and know what it was going to look like. When I left the loctician’s shop, I blended in with all the other people walking through New York City, nobody blinking twice. Which is why I was unprepared for the reaction when I left New York, or that there would be a reaction at all. In Accra, Ghana, security guards whispered “Rasta” under their breath; in Negril, Jamaica, men called me Queen Sheba and serenaded me on the beach; and in Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico, where I spend part of the year, a woman told me that I—with my locs curled in every direction—looked like Medusa. (She was right.)
So yeah, people had thoughts. Including me: Recently I found myself getting a bit tired of the style, wanting something that would, by some miracle of framing, give me cheekbones. And I was having the most classic of lesbian problems: confusing what I found attractive with how I wanted to look. Maybe it was time to finally get a blowout or go back to getting braids. Either way, I was bored with my hair.
I told this to the stylist Travis J Speck when I went into Suite Caroline, a chic salon on Greene Street. He reminded me that hair can offer more than simple stability. “Have you played enough?” he asked, piling my hair into a messy bun. Then he attached a bejeweled dragonfly to my crown, the wings catching the early April light. He was right; I have never dyed or cut my hair drastically, bouncing between the same few hairstyles for the past 10 years. I needed to play.
Together, Speck and I cribbed notes from an array of inspirations. First: the other Black women of New York City, with cowrie shells, slender gold ropes, and ivory beads dotting all their different styles. Speck and I also peeped the fall runways: At Chloé, stylist Anthony Turner wanted hair to be “animated” by accessories like feathers and charms, weathered and windswept. “These are trinkets this woman has found along the way on her adventures and attached them to her hair,” he says. Hair was braided and teased out, then punctuated with thin metal coils and dangling silver charms, like ornaments on a tree. “I like the idea that these pieces weren’t what we would ordinarily put into hair,” he added. At Dries Van Noten, earrings arranged by hairstylist Olivier Schawalder ascended from the earlobe into the hair, while at Ann Demeulemeester, a silver, choker-like hair band held back strands with a gritty texture. At Simone Rocha, a sparkly clip pinned hair at the temple. Cartier is newly selling a feather-like piece you tuck into a bun, while Bvlgari just came out with a brooch that can be converted into a clip.
Speck sent me home with my own assortment of goodies: delicate pearl and rhinestone Jennifer Behr magnets that I could stick into an updo; thin gold snakes twisted into a spiral, meant to clasp an individual loc; that dragonfly, which I wore in my hair all afternoon, enjoying the amused looks I was getting on the way back to Brooklyn. Once home, I packed them carefully in my carry-on—I was returning to Oaxaca the following day. Oaxaca is an emphatically stylish town, dressing itself in the most radiant colors: a kaleidoscope of egg-yolk yellow or sky blue façades with turquoise flags hanging over the streets. And when the city celebrates, in festivals or wedding processions, people embrace adornment, ribbons woven through long, jet-black ponytails, fresh flowers tucked behind ears.
