Chef Sophia Roe on Her Daily Braiding Ritual, and Embracing the Grays
Texture Diaries is a space for Black women across industries to reflect on their journeys to self-love, and how accepting their hair, in all its glory, played a pivotal role in this process. Each week, these women share their favorite hair rituals, products, and the biggest lessons they’ve learned when it comes to affirming their beauty and owning their unique hair texture.
Chef Sophia Roe is here to make the food world a more inclusive one. She speaks passionately during her IG lives on topics from colorism and anti-racism to clean beauty and delicious recipes. She is also the co-host of Pillow Talk Sessions, a conversation series that covers everything from interracial relationships to CBD. She centers community and advocacy for marginalized groups in all she does, while emphasizing the importance of self-care through it all. For Roe, self-care can mean emotional work, following a skin-care routine, or braiding her hair. “Our relationship to our hair is, in essence, our relationship to our ancestry,” Roe tells Vogue from over the phone. “It’s just so much more than hair.”
This keen understanding developed later in life for Roe. “I didn’t love my hair until well into my twenties,” she says. This was in large part because no one around her growing up knew how to do it properly. “My mom didn t know how to do it. Then I go to a group home and they certainly didn t know how to do it,” she said of her childhood. “The products that were available weren t products for my hair. It just was unmanageable,” she recalls. “I always wanted to make it look like it was wet so that no one saw what it actually looked like,” she says. She would part her hair in the middle and wind her tresses into a low bun. “I have really thick brows, but I remember plucking those down super thinly, too.” Of course, working in the food business was another reason to keep her hair tucked away. “I mean you could get in trouble for wearing lipstick,” Roe remembers of her time working in restaurants. “This is a job where you can t have fingernail polish on, you know what I mean? So there s almost this sort of military regimented thing. We all need to look alike. There is no place for expression, except for on the plate. So it really did suppress a lot of self-love for me in general with working in that kind of environment.”
She admits she didn’t have much time to explore or express herself until she moved to New York at age 24. “Most of my life has been about, ‘you ve got to focus because you are responsible for eating your next meal. There s no help,” she says. “I never really felt like I could just spiritually take my shirt off and love who I am, because there s no time for that. It was always, ‘you got to get to work, you got to make money.’”
In New York, Roe saw people with hair like hers. Then she began working as a private chef, where she was able to be more playful with her look. Taking inspiration from Donna Summer and disco culture, today Roe reaches for hemp oil to nourish her spirals because of its non-comedogenic nature. “It can t actually clog your pores. I have acne-prone skin, so my hair is so long, it touches my face, it touches my body, so it s really important that I use products on my hair that are also body and skin safe.” For definition, Roe turns to Not Your Mother’s Curl Talk, while Shea Moisture’s Jamaican Black Castor Oil Strengthen Restore Shampoo makes for the perfect cleansing aid.
