The Met Gala is the planetary force around which nearly a week’s worth of parties orbit. There are the infamous afterparties and lesser-known pre-parties, one of which this year stands to spark nearly as much conversation as the main event. Inspired by the pageantry of the legendary Bronner Bros. hair show and modernized by the fashion world taste of its producers, hairstylist Jawara Wauchope and creative Jrod Lacks, Black Hair Reimagined is a runway showcase that will feature the work of a jawdropping roster of fashion folks. Aside from Jawara, stylists Cyndia Harvey, Malcolm Marquez, Vernon François, and Yusef Williams are getting to work on hair, and the likes of Solange Knowles, Paloma Elsesser, and Anok Yai will be there to support. Oh, and Tracee Ellis Ross is hosting. It’s all happening tonight, the Friday before Met Gala Monday, and it’s going to be so good.
Black Hair Reimagined is the debut project of Echelon Noir Productions, which was established this year by Jawara and Jrod. Below, they talk about how it all came together, why Tracee Ellis Ross was the only person who could host, and what it means to build a legacy that centers and celebrates Black hair on its own terms.
Jawara: I had been dreaming about doing a charity hair show for years, but it wasn’t until last year that I realized Jrod had been thinking about the same thing. We both come from hair culture—Jrod was a hairstylist when he was younger. So when he called me and said, “We should do a hair show. You have a lot of connections, and you’ve done enough in your career that people would buy into it,” that was really how it all started.
Jrod: That was in October of last year. Right after that conversation, I put together a deck and presented it to him. By January, we’d formed our business, Echelon Noir Productions. Hair is so important to Black culture. Even if you’ve never been to a hair show, you’ve heard of a hair show—like Bronner Bros. We wanted to take that experience and elevate it. We’ve been fortunate to work at places like Condé Nast, or in Jawara’s case, backstage at the highest levels of fashion. We wanted to bring that to the community and elevate it because we have the resources, the connections, and the level of taste to modernize and reimagine it.
Tracee [Ellis Ross] was our first choice to host. I mean, who else culturally makes more sense to host a hair show? She is hair. She is excellence. She is fashion. And Met Gala weekend, hearing that the theme was celebrating Black style, was a perfect alignment timing-wise. And while we think of this show as an experience, we want to do more with Echelon Noir Productions in the future.
Jawara: We want to offer masterclasses, and maybe one day, create publications, books—even online tools to help people learn. We're also looking to partner with nonprofits. One organization we’re in talks with works with schoolchildren. When I was young, no one ever came to my school and said, “You could be a hairstylist in fashion.” There wasn’t anyone who looked like me doing that. So I feel a duty to go back into our communities and talk about these kinds of careers. You hear about becoming a doctor or a lawyer, but no one talks about these creative, nontraditional paths.
Jrod: Like Jawara was saying, I did hairstyling when I was younger, but I got into it randomly. Basically, I didn't want to work when I was in high school and college, but I realized I could make money doing hair. I must’ve picked it up without realizing—when I was little, I used to go with my mom to my cousin’s salon. But I’ve always had an affinity for beauty. My first job out of college was at Allure. I assisted Paul Cavaco and got the kind of training you only get from 90s and early 2000s Condé Nast. Activating on set with Steven Meisel, Patrick Demarchelier—all these people you hear about—just continued my interest in beauty.
Eventually, I moved from editorial to the brand side. I worked at Michael Kors on runway shows, ready-to-wear, and campaigns. Then I joined Nike—which was my dream job—but even then, something felt like it was missing. I felt creatively boxed in. So I resigned and decided to return to my roots in beauty. It all comes back to being that kid in my cousin’s salon, waiting for my mom to get her hair done.
Jawara: I fell in love with hair when I was five. I was born in New York but raised in Jamaica, and there's a big hair culture in Jamaica and in my family. My aunt had a salon, and it was a whole ecosystem. I loved how different kinds of people came together around hair.
Not everyone in my community supported me doing hair, but my parents did. That meant everything—getting validation that the thing I loved wasn’t taboo but a gift. When I was 15, my parents turned part of our basement into a hair salon. After graduating from FIT, I started assisting in salons and eventually became a lead stylist. At the same time I worked backstage at fashion shows, and one day at a Marc Jacobs show, I decided to go all in. I moved to London because the people I wanted to learn from were there. I started working with Sam McKnight a lot, and after years of assisting, I went out on my own in 2013.
Since then, life has been a whirlwind of clients and brands. I'm very thankful for it. I've been able to see and do things I could've never imagined because I didn't see a Black man doing these things. This project feels like a birthright—it’s going to be my life’s work.
Jrod: This is legacy for us. In the future, we want to take this show on the road—to Paris, to Africa.
Jawara: I feel like the rest of the world doesn’t know how beautiful Black hair show culture is—what it really feels like.
Jrod: Obviously we want to expose this level of hair artistry to other Black creators, but we also want to expose it to white audiences and other cultures. People have this idea of what Black hair is—
Jawara: Sometimes they don’t even think about it at all.
Jrod: And we want to change that. Whatever you can imagine in your mind—that’s what Black hair is.
Jawara: This is what it is, and this is where it could go. And honestly, in the service industry, there are still people who don’t know how to do all hair types. It’s crazy. Someone comes in for a service and can’t get the basics because you decided it wasn’t important to learn.
Jrod: And being on sets... Working in these corporate spaces, I’ve seen how artists don't know how to work with Black talent. I would be there thinking, I don't think he know how to do hair…
Jawara: I also want more people to talk about the people who came before me, the Black hairstylists who worked on celebrities and who were trying to work in fashion and maybe didn't get to succeed in that because of the gatekeeping. Like Chuckie Amos and Oscar James. We want to honor those people as well, the people who should've gotten their due.
And the ultimate inspiration in life for me is Black women. I've become the person who I've become because of Black women.
Jrod: I was lucky enough to grow up surrounded by five generations of women. Watching them go to church, making a way out of no way, their beauty rituals, their glowing skin... Black people inspire me, but Black women especially and always.
Jawara: Hair means so much more than hair to us. We speak through our hair. I can look at someone and see how they’re doing—like ooh, girl. I can tell what’s going on in your life, how much money you have—
Jrod: For men too. We’ll pay for a haircut. And you’re not stepping out unless your hair’s done.
Jawara: In Black culture, you could have no makeup, no outfit—but your hair has to be done. For me, Black hair means freedom—because that’s what it gave me.
Jrod: For me, it’s expression. And now, it’s letting me dream again.
Jawara: I want us to get more creative with hair. We used to do more. And we need to put these damn wigs down.
Jrod: We look at Bronner Bros.—what they built—and use that as a catalyst to go even further. We’re lucky that many of the friends we started with in this industry are now top dogs. We can make calls and make something impactful. We have to remind ourselves that we have the juice. We are creatives, we're talented and special, but also Black people—
Jawara: are the drivers of culture. We are the most resilient, the most innovative. We are the party.
—as told to ITG
Photo via Echelon Noir Productions