A post on Reddit's r/Naturalhair with the simple caption "I hate how good these products are," accompanied by a photo of shelves lined with Redken and Ouai products, has racked up over six hundred upvotes, with comments overwhelmingly agreeing. This is far from an isolated case. Search "Black hair" or "curly hair" alongside almost any salon brand name on TikTok or YouTube, and you'll find countless Black natural hair users sharing their experiences of how Redken, Amika, Matrix, Olaplex, and K18 have transformed their curls.
Natural hair care used to be dominated for a long time by brands designed specifically for Black hair, but over the past year, more users have started mixing and matching different brands to suit their styling needs week to week. Natalie Tuffuoh, who works in fashion, says that when her hair really needs deep nourishment, she'll pair Cécred with drugstore staple Silicon Mix, but for a long-lasting blowout, she always reaches for Amika, Kenra, or IGK. Amsterdam-based creator @5sabrine says in one of her videos that her hair only truly started growing once she "started treating my hair as hair, not just as curly hair" — one entry in her "fine curly hair routine" video series, which has racked up over a million views.
Hair Volume and Fineness Matter Just as Much as Texture
Creator @yapahcurls, who identifies as part of the "fine hair sisterhood," has long championed one core idea: natural curls that are fine and low-density can't simply follow the same advice given by creators with thick, dense curls, like Whitney White (@naptural85). Yar Sudani, who has over 2.4 million followers, alternates between salon brands like Olaplex, K18, Bumble and Bumble, and Innersense, as well as brands geared toward Black hair textures like Pattern Beauty, Mizani, and Carol's Daughter, in her "wash day" video series.
Cosmetic scientist Javon Ford points out that over the past two decades, brands targeting Black consumers have largely leaned into a "natural" positioning, emphasizing plant-based oils and butters along with silicone-free, sulfate-free formulas, distinguishing themselves from 20th-century legacy brands like Lustre Pink and Soft Sheen. Cosmetic scientist AJ Addae of Sula Labs adds that this preference for "clean ingredients" partly stems from a historical distrust rooted in how the medical and beauty industries have used Black bodies as experimental subjects — including early dermatological experiments conducted on Black inmates at Holmesburg Prison, as well as more recent concerns about scalp burns, carcinogen absorption, and endocrine disruption linked to lye-based relaxers.
Salon Brands Start Building Curly Hair Textures Into Their R&D
In recent years, salon brands that once defaulted to designing for straight or mainstream Western hair textures have gradually launched product lines tailored to curl patterns. In 2024, a decade after its founding, Olaplex introduced its Bond Shaping Technology line specifically for curly hair, while K18 has run research programs analyzing the fragility and moisture retention of curly and coily hair. L'Oréal-owned Redken launched its Acidic Bonding Curls line in 2024, based on a curl classification study spanning 22 countries that measured curl radius and shrinkage ratios. Hairstylist and Olaplex ambassador Naeemah LaFond explains that the fiber structure of curly and coily hair distributes stress unevenly, and once the disulfide bonds linking the fibers break down — whether from chemical treatments or repeated heat styling — the hair's resilience drops significantly. This is exactly the kind of chemistry formulators now have to account for when designing products for diverse hair textures.
Nilofer Vahora, Chief Marketing Officer at Amika, says the brand's approach isn't to treat curly or Black hair textures as a separate niche initiative, but to build texture diversity into the brand's foundation from the very start. According to data provided by the brand, Amika's adoption rate among curly hair consumers is 1.9 times the category average, and 1.4 times among Black hair professionals.
