On any given day if you come by the Atelier you’ll find a variety of people - old, young, black, white, brown, American, non- American, Christian, Jewish, Agnostic, Muslim…the list goes on. We’ve long been a place that welcomes everyone regardless of labels and for that we’re proud.
You see it’s not that common to see people of different ethnicities all under one roof getting their hair done. There are a myriad of reasons as to why, but one is that across the country hair stylists aren’t required to learn how to style textured, coily or kinky hair. As is typical in America, the focus is on Caucasian hair thus leaving anyone else with curly, textured hair out of the equation.
Where does that leave everyone who doesn’t fit into that category? Like a problem that can’t even bothered to be solved let alone addressed. As though there is something wrong with or challenging about having hair that doesn’t check the boxes of fine or straight. As though there is something different or lacking in us. Which means that in our search for someone to do our hair, we find someone who looks like us and caters to us and so the separation continues.
At Highbrow Hippie, we’re grateful to truly have a diverse clientele, and a diverse team. Getting your hair done can be a very intimate experience and being able to share that experience with different people creates a valuable subliminal effect. Throwing stereotypes out the door has always been our jam, and though creating this environment isn’t always a smooth process, for us it was the only way forward. It’s a work in progress that requires everyone coming to the table with an open mind, and time and patience to educate one another.
We hope that by looking around and seeing other people participating in the same beauty rituals that we do and talking about the same concerns we might have all under the same roof, creates a sense of community and understanding that at the end of the day we are more alike than different.
If you’ve been to the atelier, we hope you feel the depth of that community and uniqueness, and if you haven’t been, we hope that you find that diversity of community in other places.
