Featured Collection: Confident Hands by Jennifer Lord

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With her latest work, Confident Hands, Jennifer Lord presents a beautifully thought out and meticulously crafted collection that highlights Ancestral Hair Styles from the various tribes of Mother Africa as well as her own stunning skillset and creativity. In addition to the still images, take a peek at the video of the collection as well as the poem Jennifer wrote for the collection and learn more about the collection from Jennifer below.

Confident Hands

Confident hands.

A melody and a dance played for the purpose of enhancing your pride, your beauty and your birthright!

Confident Hands.

A sacred right granting one the privilege to weave in and out of your crowns past present and future.

Confident Hands.

A beautiful collaboration of the mind, the heart, and the movement in our fingers predicting when to lay and where to flex.

Confident Hands.

A rich and rewarding encounter for each King and Queen presented with Intentional Care, Precise patterns & Acute designs.

They are Confident Hands.

Dedicated to all the pairs of Confident Hands before me and the bright pairs to come. I am immensely grateful to you, my ancestors in Mother Africa and Grenada. Thank you for empowering me to reach back and pay it forward with my own Confident Hands.

Tell us more about the inspiration behind your latest collection.

The inspiration behind my latest collection is the exquisite Ancestral Hair Styles from the different tribes of Mother Africa. Confident Hands is a natural hair campaign of photography and film, that highlights the exquisite details of African-inspired hairstyles and the protective care provided by Natural Hair Stylists in communities everywhere. Women with natural tresses have sought representation on the newsstands, on stage and on screens, big and small. Natural Hollywood is providing a response.

Model: Chantell Williams

Are there any tips and techniques you can share about how you created the looks?

When deciding on how to approach a vision, I feel it is important to take risks and do something you have’t done before. For Confident Hands I did just that. I had never created the Mangbetu inspired braided crown though I’ve admired the many versions by other visionaries. To showcase the Lipombo skull elongation, I decided to recycle some of my past braided pieces and take it up a notch. I left it airy instead of opaque and added wire with cowrie shells for the finishing touches. Cowrie shells symbolize prosperity and destiny. For the West African threading, I opted for a matte yarn allowing the scaly gold embellishment to pop even more. When creating the Fulani Coiffure I enjoyed using the silver adornments which played nicely with the Mua’s gold selection above the eyes. Finally, the Albaso braids of Ethiopia and Eritrea took the most valuable and loving thing one can put into a hair style, time.

Model: Azari'el Sudan

What do you love most about this collection?

What I love most about this collection is its regal vibe. As the Author of Natural Hollywood Vol. I - Special Edition, I pride myself on creating imagery that highlights the full spectrum of Black beauty with natural features. This collection is special because it pays homage to the sacred value of the Hair Stylist.

Model: Aduke Bada

What does this collection say about upcoming trends or movements within hair?

This collection Confident Hands is created to remind and inspire the visual talent, the visual editor, and stylists across all mediums to embrace textured tresses in print media, advertisement, film and television. It begs you to look at the intricacies of the past to inspire and present the beauty in all its glory, and to hire the talent capable of this skill set.

Were there any challenges in creating this collection?

I wanted to encourage the audience to indulge in the coffee table book Natural Hollywood Vol. I - Special Edition. To take a bit of a risk, I used the book as a prop. At first, I was nervous but as you can see from the images, it came together beautifully!

Model: Faneca Banks

What takeaways do you hope the audience has from this collection?

Audiences will witness a rich display of hair art produced and directed by Natural Hollywood, a natural hair platform and visual concept that marries natural hair and fashion. The hope is that they are moved to continue to embrace the unique value of natural hair and all its wonders. Natural hair is versatile, stylish, and fashion-forward.

Natural Hair Stylists have a unique ability to care for and style women who choose to maintain the natural texture of their hair. Yet, consistently, these talented stylists are overlooked, leaving performers, professionals and up-and-comers in the hands of inexperienced stylists who are trained to reverse instead of protect and style textured hair.

As a result of misrepresentation, many women are unaware of the hidden potential Natural Hair Stylists are trained to showcase and instead damage their hair and scalp to achieve the untextured styles that receive representation.