This trend snack looks at how a trend uncovered in our New Urban Tribes// 2018 Edition has spilled over into the grooming industry with businesses such as hair salons and barbershops choosing to not only offer hair cuts and blow outs, but also address the mental and social issues facing their customers.
The woke entrepreneur movement is defined by individuals who opt to create businesses that meet the needs of under-represented or overlooked communities by highlighting social, political or economic issues.
Continue reading to see how these grooming spaces have become safe spaces.
Tom Chapman, created Lions Barber Collective in response to his friends suicide. He wanted to create a safe space where men could not only get a hair cut or trim, but deal with their mental health problems. Lions Barber Collective is an non profit organisation of top international barbers who came together to raise awareness around suicide caused by mental health problems. They have an online store where you can either donate or purchase t-shirts and beard kits to support the organisation. The collective plans to train hair dressers and barbers to use different counselling techniques to assist their patrons as well as develop an app . Another similar initiative to this one, is The Confess Project based in the USA, started by Lorenzo Lewis, to help men and boys of colour with mental health issues .
About: More on Lions Barber Collective.
This hair salon was created by life partners, Julia Stevens and Angela Poignée, when they realised that there was a need for safe public spaces specifically for the Transgender and gender diverse community. They hope that their salon will not only help those who choose to dress and appear as their true gender to feel comfortable, but also those who are still going through their transitioning process. The hair salon has been awarded ANZ Excellence in Small Business at the GLOBE Community Awards, which is one of Victoria, Australia’s largest LBGTI awards evening.
Lejemalik Salon & Boutique , is a Brooklyn based hijab friendly salon, which caters to women only. The word Le’Jemalik, means, ‘for your beauty’ in Arabic and is open to not only Muslim women, even though that is their main demographic, but also women of other faiths. Huda Quhshi , the owner of the salon, created this space because she found that it was difficult to find a salon which accommodates her need for privacy. She hopes that this salon will help young women, especially Yemeni women, to safely come out of their box and express themselves.
Above: The story behind Lejemalik Salon & Boutique
Flux Trends’ experts are available for comment and interviews. For all media enquiries please contact Faeeza Khan on info@fluxtrends.co.za .
To book our corporate presentations please contact Bethea Clayton on connected@fluxtrends.co.za .
—
Abou
t Tumelo
Tumelo Mojapelo is a silent force behind the scenes at Flux Trends, and steers the direction of the content created by the Flux Trends Team. Her interest in trends analysis emanates from her desire to want to give people opportunities to do, think and act better – to make better decisions because they understand the connections between seemingly unrelated factors and phenomena.
– –
Image credit: Alex Mihai AND Points of Light AND Broadsheet AND Uluru Times
Video credit: Samaritans AND Huffingtonpost
