How Bread Beauty Supply Founder Maeva Heim Made the Change She Wanted to See in the Industry

Photo: Courtesy of Maeva Heim

Texture Diaries is a space for Black people 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, they 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.

In 2020, Maeva Heim set out to simplify the hair routines of naturalistas everywhere with Bread Beauty Supply, a line of nourishing hair necessities wrapped in chic glass bottles and pouches. Her hair oil is award-winning, her oversized puffy scrunchies beloved, and her wash kits stocked at Sephora.

Heim, 31, grew up in the world of hair care. In the ’90s, her mother owned the first African hair braiding salon in Perth, Australia. “It was basically this tiny shed-garage attached to the back of this Italian restaurant downtown,” she says. “I would spend all of my time there when I wasn’t at school.” As she got older, she would help braid customers’ hair and answer phone calls at the shop. She also became fascinated with products. “The salon was almost like a mini beauty supply as well, because we’d import textured hair care products from America to have in the salon, because you couldn’t find anything like that in Australia,” she says.

When it came time for college, where she studied business and law at Edith Cowan University in western Australia, the beauty world was still a huge part of her life. She worked in marketing at L’Oréal, followed by an internship at Procter Gamble in Singapore. “After working at these big brands, I felt they weren’t talking to me, or the people who look like me,” she says. “I really felt like more women of color and more Black women specifically needed to be running these brands, so the decisions that they were making would trickle down into the market.” Heim also began questioning her own decision to relax her hair, which she’d begun doing around age seven. “I had never seen my hair in its natural state,” she says. But at age 26, when she was on a flight from New York to Chicago, her relaxer exploded all over her clothes in her luggage. That moment triggered her to overhaul her routine: “It felt like a sign.”

Heim says patience was a key part of her natural hair journey: “It’s hard to switch from feeling insecure to supercomfortable with something overnight.” She first started wearing her Afro around the house, then around friends and family. “It can take a lot of time and conditioning to undo certain thoughts,” she says. Now, she’s found success in embracing flexibility both in her personal approach to beauty and in her business. “Rules can be broken and mended,” she says. “That mentality is where true change and innovation blooms from.”

Last month, Bread Beauty Supply launched an Australia-sourced and cold-pressed macadamia hair and body oil, with a mission of making it a hair-routine staple. But lately Heim has found herself most reliant on the company’s Hair-Wash, in part due to its delicious “fruit loop cereal milk” scent, she notes with a laugh. As for her go-to style, Heim opts for an updo with major fringe to frame her face.

Today, for hair inspiration, she turns to “girls I see online, rather than a celebrity,” she says. “I love seeing girls who rock their hair big and proud.” Heim’s appreciation is evident on Bread Beauty Supply’s Instagram, where all curl patterns are celebrated. “I think today, especially, I’m looking up to people who have a casual approach to their hair, especially during this pandemic, where, for so long, we didn’t have access to salons,” Heim adds. “I’ve found a lot of inspiration from those who were just making it work where they could.”