I bought my V.I.P tickets in April of this year so I had been looking forward to the event for a while now. I got the 5:30am train from Leeds to London Kings Cross, arriving at 7:50am and meeting an old friend for breakfast before heading to the venue- which was a 2 minute walk from West Brompton Station.
As I walked in, I was one of the first attendees to arrive, I was handed my V.I.P tag and my goodie bag. The majority of items in the good bag were labelled "free sample" which was incredibly disappointing in all honesty, and gave the goodie bag a cheap feel to it.
There were a large variety of stalls selling all sorts of lotions and potions for your natural, dyed or relaxed hair. It was great seeing a variety of small, medium and large black owned business.
The fashion area was bursting full of beautifully vivid colours and striking and bold African design; I bought a beautiful top from Afrocentric 805 and the owner, Sheilla, was a lovely woman.
The workshops started at 11am, and my first was Smoothies : Beauty Superfoods For Better Skin And Hair.
This was being run by Leah Salmon, and she was amazing, in the space of about 20 minutes, she had made from fresh and given out samples of 5 different meals to around 20-25 women! The meals included a Plantain Okra Stew which was delicate and fresh and a Berry Yoghurt smoothie with Irish moss which was comforting and naturally sweet (All ingredients purchased from the local Tesco!). The mother of 6 children, began to pursue her natural vegan lifestyle 12 years ago after suffering from menstrual problems and fertility concerns. I can't recommend her ethos of healthy, clean eating enough, she was an inspiration and had beautiful skin. I even managed to get a selfie taken with her!
At 12 noon, Cantu did a natural hairstyles workshop, I was really excited to go to this workshop as a user of Cantu products but it felt like the workshop lacked planning and I left about half way through.
As a V.I.P, I was supposed to have lunch with Mahogany Curls, a natural hair blogger. However, we had been told that she was unable to attend due to a family member not being well. So, the programme said that we were due to have lunch with UK Bloggers, also the programme said that we would be having a 3-course meal but we only had 1 course while I was there- I stayed until 2pm (The lunch was from 1pm-3pm).
At 2pm, I had another walk around the venue, to make sure I hadn't missed anything earlier in the day, then watched the fashion show at 2:30pm. At 3pm, the was the Science of Black hair workshop being run by the lovely ladies at Afrocenchix .
Afrocenchix are the first black hair brand to be sold at WholeFoods UK; successfully disrupting the UK's black hair market, with their strong emphasis on different types of "normal", they challenge the very dominate white beauty myth which has shaped the direction of black hair market in the UK. Their talk was incredibly informative and they were engaging, leading to me buying 4 of their products (reviews to follow 😁😁).
The final session I was able to attend before jumping back on the train to Leeds, was the Beauty Panel: Black Beauty, Still Tangled in Politics. The panel included Lekia Lee of Project Embrace, Jay and Tina of Curlture and Aaron Wallace of Shear and Shine. It was a good way to end a positive, inspirational day. There were a variety of opinions, with the audience challenging the panellists views as much as the panellists were putting their views and experiences across. Beautifully, the theory behind the #blacklivesmatter and other modern black power movements was at the core of the discourse: We have opinions, we are beautiful, we have a voice, we won't wait for change.
All in all, despite a few disappointments, I highly recommend the event to any POC, the event has something for everyone and is an important space that will require the support of the people it is geared towards in order to have longevity and continue to reach as many POC as possible, I look forward to the next event run by CurlyTreats 👍👍👍
xx
