ontario Archives - Black Hair Spot

Interview with Jazma Salon owner, Asha MacLeod

Why did you open your salon?

Read the #HerStory of why Asha MacLeod opened her award-winning salon here

What keeps you motivated?

Kids. Kids who are passionate about hair. When I teach young people about how hair grows out of the scalp. I love to teach them about hair textures, why hair gets dry and other things about black hair. I enjoy when kids come to me with questions and challenge me to do more of my own research. Then I have the opportunity to come back to them with my own research and see their excitement. That’s what gives me the energy to continue every day.

Who inspires you?

The artistic part of me admires artists like Vidal Sassoon and Trevor Sorbie and the black artists that work with them like Jon Atkinson. The first time I saw black hair move was on a Vidal Sassoon stage. I gasped and turned to my mom and said, “I want to do that!”

How many staff do you have?

I have 4 stylists, 1 colour technician and 3 assistants/apprentices.

What has been your biggest success?

My biggest success has been creating a product line for semi-natural hair and natural hair. We not only created a product line but also encouraged people to enjoy the beauty of afro-textured hair in my seminars and my training. Twenty years ago in Atlanta I started teaching people to embrace afro-textured hair. I feel like I have pioneered the idea.

What has been your biggest challenge?

My biggest challenge was business. Because I am passionate about hair and my art, having to do business was a challenge. Dealing with employees has been especially difficult. I don’t like training and then not seeing my employees want to pay it forward. I put so much into giving and sharing. I expect that at least one out of every hundred should be paying it forward! I don’t see that kind of sharing and that’s a little hurtful and challenging.

What do you want you business to look like in 10 years?

I would like to see a bunch of little Jazma’s all over the world with our Kerasoft products. Not because I want to leave a legacy but because I am concerned about the black dollar. The black hair industry is the only industry in the world that blacks have that they can actually rotate their dollar.

Currently, a dollar circulates in the Asian community for a month, in the Jewish community for twenty days, and in the white community for seventeen days. A dollar circulates in the black community for six hours.

What I would like to see in ten years is that my business trains and educates young people on the fact that the only way for the black dollar to grow in our community is in the black hair industry. Black chemists will create the product. Black distributors will sell it, and black people will purchase it. That is the way to strengthen the black dollar. If we don’t do it, who will?

What advice would you give to new Canadian salons or hairdressers?

I would say to remember two things:
We are in the service business. We are here to serve. We just happen to do hair. If you think of it that way it will make you more successful.
Continue to educate yourself and share the knowledge you acquire.

What do you specialize in?

Semi-natural hair, hair cutting, and we have one of the best colourists in the world.

I want to explain what I mean by semi-natural hair. Once you put heat on your hair it affects the sulfur bonds so your hair is not natural anymore. Once you pull on your hair with extensions or braids you weaken the elasticity of your hair; the colour from the extensions then bleeds onto your hair and your hair is not natural anymore. When you colour it, it’s not natural anymore.

Here, we say no hair is altogether natural because it has been affected one way or another. So we specialize in embracing natural textures.

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

There are many myths out there on the Internet. I would like consumers to think of solubility of products before they use them.

Remember: if you want you hair hydrated it can only come from water.

If you want your scalp to heal from the abuse of tight ponytails or extensions there is no solution but oxygen. Try getting simple and logical. There is no miracle in a jar. If you want your hair to be long and healthy—avoid certain things. Once your hair is abused and dead you have to grow it out all over again. Don’t trust everything you read or hear on the Internet. Educate yourself from people who have factual knowledge on the science of black hair.

Asha is an award winning hair stylist whose style work has graced the pages of Vogue, Essence, Passion, Modern Salon, American Salon, and Shop Talk. Asha’s story of how she opened her salon, Jazma Salon, is start studded and filled with obstacles.

Check out the Jazma Salon Profile here

I grew up in Trinidad and was working in my mother’s hairdressing school and salon. At five years old I was scraping scabs off of my aunt’s scalp because they got so burnt from pressing combs, hot oils, and relaxers. I was traumatized.

I came to Canada when I was 13 years old and after school I started working in white, Jewish salons. I was surprised that no one’s scalp was burnt and no hair was breaking off. I decided I would never do black hair again. It made no sense to me why people were in pain.

After hairdressing school my mom kidnapped me and took me to Brooklyn. She left me in New York until I was able to do black hair and not be afraid of the trauma I went through as a kid.

When I was in New York I worked with the top artists but I realized that even the biggest celebrities were getting their scalp burnt. Everyone was getting their scalp burnt. What my mother had been doing back home wasn’t that different from what I learnt working with the best artists in the world in New York. I couldn’t understand why no one was coming up with a solution.

My mom was very famous. She knew people like Paul Mitchell and all of the top artists in the world. So of course—she wanted me to take over her business. One day I met a lady on the plane while I was on a trip. She was a black lady and she said to me, “You’re a stylist? I have a salon in Yorkville.” And I thought to myself there are black people in Yorkville? She invited me to come and work with her, so I did. I was so excited.

My boss—who eventually owned and created MAC Cosmetics — wanted me to introduce black hair products to his community. But I didn’t want to introduce anything that didn’t have the proper research behind it. However, I was still doing all my black friend’s hair on the side.

I decided that I was going to figure out black hair. Then I realized: the less you do with it, the stronger it is. So I started to talk to different chemists and visited different labs. Then I met my husband Ron, who is Canadian black. My husband was always very interested in the black hair I was doing in my basement. My entire network started to pressure me to open my own salon.

But I was still doubtful. How could I open up my own salon when I didn’t have all the answers? Ron had a degree in chemistry and decided to research the questions I had. So I wrote out some questions for him to answer.
Why does relaxer burn the scalp?
Why are shampoos dehydrating instead of hydrating?
Why does black hair break?
How can we handle our hair on a daily basis like other races?
What is the growth potential of black hair?

Ron discovered that in the 50s when they invented the chemical relaxer, they called it a hair straightener. The reason why they changed it to relaxer is because when you straighten the hair you take all of the strength out of it and the chemical makes it break. Instead of educating the consumer, they just changed the name so they couldn’t be sued. Nobody read the jar. I realized that no one was paying attention.

So I learned:
When you relax black hair you take all the strength out of it
If you take the salt out of shampoo it helps hair retain moisture

Almost thirty years ago when we started Jazma we were the first to create a shampoo without salt. Ron sent me to a lab to see how products are made. I understood for the first time what moisture was. Moisture has nothing to do with oils and silicones. Moisture comes from water and sealing those water molecules.

When I told clients they had to shampoo more often and hydrate with water I had people telling me I was crazy. It was a struggle. But I didn’t open up a salon just to do hair or to make money. I was on a mission to educate my consumers on the fact that kinky/coily/curly hair is beautiful.

At the time I was also doing seminars for about twenty years at the Bronner Brothers and Proud Lady. The name of my class was: “Kinky/Coily/Curly Hair is Beautiful”.

Many people would come to these seminars but there would always be a fight. People would always argue that it’s impossible to grow black hair long and strong. So I provided slides and photographs of my own clients (Canadian Blacks) who didn’t want their hair processed and didn’t want their hair straight—and their hair was halfway down their back.

Then we came up with the wash ‘n’ wear relaxer. We loosened the curls 50%–just enough that clients could wake up, shake it, and go. As years went by we also created more products.

When people say to me “I don’t want chemicals in my hair” I think to myself everything is a chemical. When you think about it even sugar and salt are chemicals. My older brother is a chemist and my husband has a degree in chemistry and this is the way I think. I can only think about things in a factual way.

Would you take a cup of salt or a cup of sugar and put it in your food? No. You would use a pinch. And that is how we should be handling a chemical when we’re using it to relax our hair by degrees. When you use a pinch you are enhancing the hair just like we enhance our food. We came up with a product to gently relax the hair.

When people say that they don’t want a chemical in their hair I have to point out the fact that many of us put braids and extensions in our hair. These plastics bleed out chemicals onto our hair. Every time you shampoo your hair with salt, you’re putting in a chemical. Everything in a jar is preserved with chemicals. I believe that if you’re going to use a chemical, use it to enhance. Don’t use it to destroy.

I was sort of forced to open the salon. Once I had all of this knowledge I went out on the road to provide education to other salons about what I learnt about the power of water and moisture and hydration. They basically kicked me out. I didn’t know what do to, so I finally opened up my own place. My boss wanted to go into cosmetics so he sold me the salon.

But then my white clients kept leaving. The more I got into black hair the more they left. Because I was young I didn’t know it was racism. And then I decided that I was going to open up a salon and show them that we can create a safe place for black people to come and have their hair serviced. It was because of the racism that I finally decided yes, I’m going to do this.

Asha: It was such a freeing experience, I realized that I was not bound anymore by anyone's… Click To Tweet