Songstress Amel Larrieux is probably as well-known for her gorgeous flowing natural hair as she is for her signature voice. She’s been performing for nearly 20 years and asked the same question since she hit the scene in 1995, “What do you use in your hair?”
Larrieux finally decided to develop an elixir for all hair types, the Night Before Conditioner manufactured by her natural hair brand, Beautiful Us. Larrieux spoke to HelloBeautiful exclusively about her road to creating her natural product line.
“For a while, I was confused by people’s interest in my hair,” she explained. “Like it was always a conversation. I was always like ‘Well I’m here to sing and to write” and I was realizing that just the same way that I was inspired by people like Lisa Bonet and Cree Summer who would wear their hair natural in the 80s when it wasn’t as popular.”
“I had been wearing it natural for so long, I had been doing the whole braid out, oil your scalp, do a certain kind of spray, make your own little cocktail to put on your hair for so,so many years that I could just spout it off and kind of have this recipe for my natural hair routine and we just talked about it so often in so many interviews that my husband and I started realizing that it would make sense to actually offer it to our public because people are always asking me. ”
The process of developing the product took over three years. Larrieux created the product and immediately began testing on her family and friends with very positive feedback.
Despite the fact that the natural hair industry is packed with competitors like Miss Jessie’s, Shea Moisture and the list goes on, Larriuex is confident that all brands can co-exist.
“Honestly, I feel that we can all kind of co-exist together. I mean, I think that we’re all special in our own right. I respect what Shea Moisture does, I respect what all of these other companies do. It’s really about what each individual is finding that works for their hair and hair type.”
“Sometimes, with a lot of hair you have to be able to go back and forth with a lot of different products and have more than one because sometimes one stops working if you overuse it so I think it’s about all of us kind of being in cahoots together and being this arsenal of natural products that women who want to wear their hair natural can always go to and can all exist in your bathroom cabinet.”
Larriuex is most proud of the product’s versatility; the Night Before Conditioner isn’t just for hair, it can also be used all over the body.
” ‘Night Before’ is a base with delicious oils with Monoi being a really important one. It’s one of those things where honestly, what freaked me out is that you can use this product all over your body. There’s the coconut oil, there’s the shea, the olive, it’s the carrot extract. It’s so interesting because I can honestly use it the night before and literally the next morning use it again. It’s truly so versatile, it’s kind of shocking. It’s got one of those amazing smells that you just kind of want to bite the person who’s wearing it because it smells so delicious.”
“The Night Before Conditioner” by Beautiful Us is available now and can be purchased here.
article by Veronica Hilbring via hellobeautiful.com
If your first thought regarding park rangers resembles something close to a pesky bear and picnic baskets, you clearly haven’t met Betty Reid Soskin, 93, America’s oldest living park ranger.
The nonagenarian, who’s been a member of the National Park Service since she was 85, says she’s not sure that she ever really wanted to be a park ranger, but there’s no way she’s stopping now.
“I still love this uniform. Partly because there’s a silent message to every little girl of color that I pass on the street or in an elevator or on an escalator…that there’s a career choice she may have never thought of,” Soskin said in a recent interview on The Today Show.
Starting her historic career as a file clerk for a segregated union auxiliary in 1942, Soskin then moved to a white neighborhood after World War II, where she received death threats for attempting to build a home there.
Eventually, she found her home among the tons of visitors at Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, Calif., where she’s been since 2003.
A walking time capsule, Soskin has made a great joy out of recalling her life to anyone who is interested as she serves as tour guide for the park exhibit “Untold Stories and Lost Conversations,” about the history of wartime women laborers.
She also shares her personal stories as both a political activist and a Black woman in the workforce.
‘Since I’m working from memory, my work tends to be ‘in the moment’ and depends upon my ability to respond to questions out of a well that seems bottomless at times,” she said.
And she’s not planning on retiring any time soon. She clocks in five days a week and says, “And as long as that’s true, and as long as I’m developing new questions, then I’m going to go on living it.”
article by George Chapman Jr. via bet.com
