During Latine Heritage Month, Reflect Beauty will highlight Latine-founded beauty brands that honor diversity and Latine American cultural roots. Below we highlight six hair care brand founders whose small businesses are making a big impact in the beauty industry.
[SEE ALSO: How Dominican Coffee Inspired This Haircare Line]
Ocoa
Ocoa was founded by sisters Cory and Nicol Varona to honor curly-haired Latina women and all curly-haired people. The sisters moved from the Dominican Republic to the United States, and launched Ocoa with a mission to help people embrace their natural hair texture rather than believe that straightened hair is the only way to be beautiful.
The products are designed for wavy and curly hair, from those with 2A curls to those with 4A curl textures. Ocoa’s product line features every step needed in a hair routine for defined and nourished curls, from a clease + condition, that includes a scalp massager, all the way to a Hydrating Curl Cream and Curl Defining Styling Gel.
Botanika Beauty
In homage to botanicas which sell healing herbs, Aisha Ceballos-Crump’s Botanika Beauty ensures each of the products in her line includes healing herbs to aid mental and physical wellness.
Botanika Beauty offers a full-range hair care line including oil serum, deep conditioning masks, volumizer spray and more. Ceballos-Crump is also the founder of her first hair-care brand, Honey Baby Naturals which offers hair balms, hair smoothies and hair gel for your little ones.
Hause of Curls
What’s a great hair care routine without the accessories to protect your style? Dominican-American fashion stylist Sherly Tavarez founded Hause of Curls as a way for women to embrace their natural hair journey through their style and hair accessories. Some of her hair care products include microfiber towels and reversible satin hair bonnets with art and embroidery that say, “Pelo Malo Where?” A new product Tavarez just released is the Caribbean Hair Scarf which features a dreamy portrait of a beach.
Hause of Curls also offers more than just products. They also offer in-person lifestyle experiences for curly girls to get together, learn about hair care, and partake in community-building activities at the Hause of Curl retreats.
Rëzo Hair Care
Rëzo Hair Care was founded by Nubia Suarez, a Colombian hair stylist who moved to the U.S. and trained with leading hair educators from legacy hair care brands. She coined her signature RëzoCut and in 2016, opened the Rëzo Academy to teach hair stylists her specialized curly haircut and color techniques. If you’re not getting your hair done by a Rëzo Cut-trained stylist or at the Rëzo hair salon, you can purchase Rëzo’s full hair care line on her website.
Ceremonia
Ceremonia was founded by Babba Rivera, a Swedish Latina based in New York City, with the goal of celebrating Latin culture and traditions while championing Latinx values of sustainability, inclusivity, and self-care with products sourced across Latin America. The brand first launched in 2020 with its now-famous and award-winning Aceite de Moska, a scalp oil that was popularized in the Dominican Republic. Their products cater to all hair textures and some of their most popular items include their Guava Leave-In Conditioner and Papaya Scalp Scrub and Mascarilla de Babassu mask.
Bomba Curls
Lulu Cordero founded Bomba Curls while on her own journey of facing severe traction alopecia. By creating her own hair care recipes based on Dominican traditions from home, Cordero used those blends to start her line of natural hair products. Cordero formulated her products with kinky, curly, coily, and wavy textures in mind and continues to celebrate her Dominican heritage through Bomba Curls products such as the award-winning Dominican Forbidden Oil, Forbidden Hair Mask and even Bomba Beauty Bites multivitamin gummies to promote hair growth.
What brand will you be trying this month? Let us know in the comment section!
