Rufus R. Noble Let’s go back to Sunday Ju, June 26, 2016. I’m walking before a crowd gathering around a stage on Prospect Park’s lawns. As I walk closer, the music becomes louder, and I spot Black people sporting hairstyles such as Afros, braids twists, braids, and other styles with textures in different lengths and colors, dancing, sitting on blankets, purchasing food, and browsing the vendors that black people mostly own. I’m almost scurrying away from the crowd, smiling broadly and swaying my hips. I had finally arrived at my very first curlfest.
Seven years later, I returned to the festival on Randall’s Island on July 15, 2023. The seventh year of the festival, started in 2014 by The Curly Girl Collective in 2014, was a return celebration after a gap of three years. The theme for 2014 included “Bounce Back.”
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And it bounced back. While its location changed and I wasn’t the blonde girl from college, when I saw crowds and listened to the music of soca playing, I felt exactly the way I did when I first went to the event in 2016: excited with excitement, enthralled, and eager to enjoy myself.
Curlfest can be described as it’s a festival, a party market, and finally, it’s a celebration of blackness as well as Black beauty. While I walked through the crowds sweating heavily due to hot temperatures (thanks to the climate change), I was shaking my head in and out while trying all the hairstyles that I could, such as a bright orange hairstyle, a kinky Kool-aid mohawk in red, 3D butterflies and flowers, woven into afros, locs, curls, and a myriad of different hairstyles.
Since Curlfest isn’t coming back this year, here are some innovative styles to help you get through until the next unique event.
Jocelyn Williams
Jocelyn Blue Williams and her multi-tonal blue and kinky hair was the first thing I noticed when I entered. Her hair was more impressive closer up, and I could fully admire the bejeweled headband comprised of braids of blue. The model used hot glue to tie one braid into a crown. She topped it off with a variety of crystals.
She told Allure that her inspiration was derived from the popular Netflix program Bridgerton. “I’ve been watching Bridgerton and thought I would like to become a queen. I want to be the princess of the world. I want to be the best-dressed diamond of the year. So let me go to Curlfest and become the jewel in the midst of Curlfest,” she says.
T’kheya Yisrael
The Brooklyn-born native of Brooklyn, T’kheya Yisrael, was at Curlfest for the very first time this year. “I felt like all of the Curlfest pictures I saw were very festival-like, so I kind of wanted to emulate that but more casually,” she told the magazine. Her braids of the ginger goddess were styled in half-up looks and were paired with their bright and orange top. Her eye makeup reminds me of the sunset thanks to the bright orange hues on her lids and the angled lines of yellow drawn in each outer corner. Regarding her top hair-care cosmetics, Yisrael says she’s loyal to her grease tub, specifically Blue Magic.
Melody Henderson
Melody Henderson, the creative director of Curlfest, looked vibrant and stylish in a tangerine dress with her hair braided with loose ends, creating a spherical form. Her hairstyle was inspired by the Malagasy haircut — which is how the Malagasy people live in Madagascar, which she made herself, with some help from YouTube tutorials.
The return of Curlfest is a considerable boost, Henderson tells Allure, “It’s a powerful space for the upcoming generation. It feels like we’re serving the midst of something greater than ourselves.”
Everybody has one hair product that must be physically removed from our fingers to be able to let it rest. For Henderson, the product is Natural Blessings’ Hair Pomade, which is a kind that is made up of hair oil.
Joy Kershaw
A different Brooklyn resident, Joy Kershaw, attended her fourth Curlfest this year. “When I learned that they wouldn’t be doing this last year, that was understandable; however, I was devastated. I’m thrilled that they came back stronger and more beautiful than ever, and I returned with my curls longer and stronger than ever before,” she tells Allure.
Her dazzling ginger curls form a ring around her head because of the Perm Rod set. “Since I was very young, I wanted to have my hair this color, but growing up in a Caribbean household, you can’t do whatever you want.,” she says. “Once I got out, I was like, we’re going to have my inside match our outside.” Her curls were orange and matched her dress and complemented the red, yellow, and orange shadows that glowed over the lids. Her top products include Lottabody’s Wrap Me Mousse and Edge Control, specifically the ORS Olive Edge Control Gel and Ebin New York 24-Hour Edge Tamer.
