UK salon industry signals a change to serve Black clients
LEEDS, England — The purr of the gold clippers breaks the silence inside the Piranha Hair Studio as Qasim Sajjad teaches a lesson on how to cut Black hair.
Brian Swarry, the studio’s owner, offers extra instruction via Facetime while a junior hairdresser watches and listens.
It is an unremarkable scene, except that the junior hairdresser is white.
For years, Swarry, 48, known as Barber B, has built a reputation in an industry tailored to white customers for teaching trainees of all races to cut Black hair.
Most certified hairdressers in Britain never learn how, nor have they been required to do so.
“Ten years ago, there was nowhere we could go to learn to cut Black Afro hair,” Swarry said, referring to the way Black British people describe their coily or kinky-textured hair.
Now the agencies that set standards for the profession in Britain are signaling change, even if it is too soon to know how big the shift will be or how quickly it will come.
In May, after several years of lobbying by advocacy groups and a leading fashion magazine, the Hair and Beauty Industry Authority said it was updating its certification standards so that hairdressers can meet the “needs of the U.K.’s diverse community.”
The immediate question was whether every trainee, regardless of race, would now have to learn to cut Black hair.
The answer is still murky, partly because the industry is sprawling and decentralized, with at least six licensing organizations that certify the thousands of stylists produced by training schools every year.
But inside the industry there is growing recognition that change is coming and is long overdue. One certification organization, Qualifi, has started requiring graduates to demonstrate competence in working with “textured” hair.
Few commercial settings are more personal and intimate than a hair salon.
Even as many Black stylists see the changing standards as deeply significant, others worry that the change could present new competition for Black barber shops and salons.
There is no question that Black communities are underserved in
Britain.
According to one survey, the country has 314 Afro hairdressing salons out of almost 45,000 registered hair and beauty salons.
In some cities, getting an appointment can take weeks.
With Britain now grappling with how to confront racial inequality, the styling of Black hair has assumed growing political and cultural resonance,
including books, documentaries and advocacy campaigns on the subject.
The Halo Collective has raised awareness about how Black hair can lead to stigma and discrimination at school and in the workforce.
In 2020, a teenager was awarded about $11,800 in an out-of-court settlement after being repeatedly sent home from school because of her natural
hair.