Watch Tracee Ellis Ross and Jawara Create the Most Mood-Boosting Updo

I cannot.[gasps]

Do you love it?

I love it.

[upbeat music]

Hi, I m Tracy Ellis Ross and--

I m Jawara.

[laughs] And we are gonna create some thing beautiful.

Beautiful up to you.

Some sort of modern take on a historical something.

[upbeat music]

Jawara is not only g-g gorgeous and g-g gentle,

He s so talented.

Your ability to kind of call in the legacy of our hair

and our texture and all of that, and the history of that

but then also bring in your creativity and make it modern

and feel so exciting is what I always love

and seeing your work.

Thank you.

And I am sort of dry

but I ve got leave and condition my hair.

Amazing.

And it s wet at the roots. [laughs]

Definitely we gonna use your texture today for sure.

I have a lot of hair and I love wearing my hair out

but the truth is

[Jawara laughs]

particularly as I ve gotten older,

I love a snatch so-

Something snatch.

I love that, I love you just snatch that hair up.

[upbeat music]

[sprays]

Hair care is extremely important

before you start any hair styling.

So today I m gonna continue what

you have been starting already.

I also love a reference.

You sent me so many good ones.

It was really hard to choose, but I loved that

this idea allowed volume to be involved with the sculpture.

Yes. Which we love.

Yeah, and I also love glamor and drama,

not in my life, but in my hair.

I started doing hair at a young age.

I had an aunt that taught me how to do hair.

Wow.

So I started working in my aunt salon

and these beautiful black women that just love themselves

and adorn themselves in these beautiful clothes

and this beautiful hair.

[slow piano music]

[drier blows]

It s also nothing better than someone touching your hair.

And this is my little trick.

I love to get in there at my root.

Almost like it s fingers.

Do you remember that thing you used to--

The back Scratch. Exactly.

[laughing]

That s what it s like.

So now you re parting

Parting, little braid moment in here as [indistinct].

[upbeat music]

When I was young, before I sort of got into caring,

what I looked like and all that, you know,

when you re at that tender, cute age,

I just wore my hair naturally.

It was my natural texture and my texture has gone

through so many different phases.

It was really fine.

And like, not a lot of curls, but waves when I was young.

And then I started wanting what everybody had

which was the downfall.

I started going to the salon every Saturday

and get my hair blown out.

I beat my hair into submission and it was dry and fried

and dead and tired.

And so my hair started to break.

[Jawara] Oh.

And I did not do a big chop, but that was when

I started to go natural.

And I started to learn about my hair

and gain a relationship to it.

And I got really fiercely protective of my hair.

I would wake up at like three o clock in the morning--

And go it yourself? Do it myself.

Wow.

All through high school, I had figured out

like the humidity level changes, how your hair is

but what water you use.

So I learned how to braid my hair.

I learned all the different things.

And that was when the idea for pattern came.

And I started to notice that like certain products

said they were for curly hair, but they didn t do anything.

Certain products said they were for hydration

and like deep conditioners.

So I started to realize that deep conditioners

were the ones that worked best for my hair.

Best for your hair.

I know you probably experienced this,

but my big pet peeve like the fact that

it said use a dime size of condition.

Yeah I was like no okay. Sure.

Not for hair.

Not for curly coily anti textures.

No. not gonna happen.

No.

Well, as you were about to say, not for black people.

[laughing ]

I ve done size of anything. You gotta be kidding me.

For my entire childhood,

the section in the store for black hair.

So small.

And it was the same products that my mom had access to

that I had access to

that my nieces and nephew,

it was just like it just--

But with all the different hair types

it just always felt unfinished, unthought of.

It was like nothing had evolved, Madam CJ Walker

and then it just fell off.

[laughing]

My dream has been to sort of expand the market

and really help people to understand

from an industry standpoint

that black hair care is not niche

that we are vast and that we are not all the same.

Yeah, what are some of your hair heroes?

Nina Simone. Okay.

Sicily Tyson Okay.

My mom.

Oh, your mom is my hair hero for sure.

The fact that she wore natural texture, you know

one of the questions I asked her, I was like

what made you know that that was a choice, you know

in the seventies and sixties

when she made that leap out of the Supremes sort

of bouffant hairstyles, she said, I don t know.

I just liked it. [Jawara laughs]

There was no real answer.

I was like, okay.

Who are your hair heroes?

Your mom.

All of us.

My mom is a huge hair hero of mine.

[Tracy] I love it.

She s had long natural locks since, before I was born.

[Tracy] Amazing.

And kind of like raised us to like wear natural hair

as opposed to what was being shown in school.

I hear you on that.

[slow music]

So there s a quick little trick

that I ve been using for years.

I ll show you with the donut padding

just to add a little bit more volume in your hair.

Yeah.

So what I do is I cut them in half like this.

If you wanna like alter the shape a bit

you kind of just pull this apart.

Oh my God. That s amazing.

And then you can kind of--

That s actually really pretty.

Isn t it nice. Yeah.

Like I wanted to love to see a dress made out of these--

So would I was gonna say you,

we could also wrap it over--

Yeah, wrap it around, right?

Yeah.

The next step is to do the roll

in the back and start putting them in.

To fill the rolls. Fill the rolls.

[laughing]

My Regal rolls. Regal rolls.

Not that you need much of it

but I m gonna do a little back combining in the root.

[sprays]

Just somewhere to anchor the pins.

Okay.

Cause your hair has the perfect volume already for this,

especially since we diffused it.

Bigger or smaller?

Bigger. Okay.

[laughing]

I m gonna secure these barbed wires in,

cause I m leaving some pieces like this a bit looser

so we can kind of see the extra at going into it. .

For some reason, right now I m very drawn

to the rockabilly, like beehive kind of thing.

But doing that with texture.

I did an exhibition named course

the ingenuity of black hair.

It basically was for focusing

on things that people normally deemed negative.

And we wanted to celebrate those things

and had all these amazing pictures

of black hairstyles that reminded me

of times in my youth and different styles and hair.

I definitely have seen some sort of a change

in the fashion industry as opposed to when I first started.

I remember being backstage, no one being able to work

on anyone with textured hair, black hair.

There are a lot who still don t know.

But I do feel like there are people

making a real effort to--

To figure it To figure it out.

What about in Hollywood?

What d you say?

I think there s a new appreciation for authenticity.

I feel like when I was younger, it was more

like a fetishization, ethnic or you know, those words.

[laughing]

Similar to editorial and fashion industry,

there s not a lot of stylists that can do black hair

and that know how to do it

with variation and possibility and sort of creativity.

And there is still the remnants

of respectability politics that comes in,

in terms of what hairstyles are appropriate?

What feels like accessible to everybody?

What people are gonna understand?

In our culture and for black women

there is so much that is connected to our hair.

Absolutely.

It s such a sacred thing.

Particularly if you re somebody who does wear wigs

or weaves or any of those things

and sort of that relationship with you and your stylist--

It s so personal. It s so personal.

It become more personal than spouses.

[laughs]

Seriously, because you know, there s a lot

of people who spouses have never seen their natural air.

Seen their natural hair, right.

It s isn t it crazy?

[upbeat music]

We re gonna do a little edge detail,

where we do the finishing touches.

[sprays]

Little bit of hairspray.

Lock it in.

I am obsessed.

Okay, I m starting to get expression

for what we re gonna call this.

Okay, what are you thinking?

There s like a rockabilly energy.

I am dying.

It s a Afro-Billy.

It s an Afro-Billy

Afro-Billy

[laughs] Afro-Billy.

Oh my God. Jawara, yes!

When we are done, I am going to put

on a gorgeous pink dress to go with this and a lip.

You need a lip.

When your hair looks epic, you need a lip.

Well, at least I need a lip.

I love a lip.

Oh my God.

This is, I m dying.

Telling you sometimes hair

changes the whole mood Changes the whole mood.

Changes the whole persona. Changes the whole thing.

Okay, let s take a look.

I cannot.[gasps]

And the braid? [laughs]

The braid is what kills it.

It brings it to I m...

I gotta go look at this.

Do you love it?

I love it.

This is some beautiful art right here.

I m gonna have to turn so they can see the best detail.

Yes.

What and what and what?

And nothing like every angle

when you have good hair from every--

All around, right.

All around.

Well, you always have great hair.

No, I don t always have great hair.

This is beyond great.

I think this is what you call extraordinary.

Oh my gosh. Unbelievable.

All right, now we re gonna go put some cute on.

[laughing]

[upbeat music]