A Hooray for Oribe as They Launch Their Latest Line for Natural Hair
Conversations surrounding diversity and inclusion in beauty have been booming—rightfully so. However, it’s been felt that luxury hair care products have taken a back seat on including people of color, and when they have it often feels gimmicky. If a foundation shade doesn’t match you can wipe it off, but messing with one's hair is a bit riskier. Therefore my tresses are not going to be threatened by a product I don’t know to work.
This is why Oribe’s new products in their Moisture and Control collection for highly textured hair is huge a step forward in the luxury haircare space. The company worked with celebrity stylist and educator Stacey Ciceron to formulate the range. It’s four new products, including the Deep Treatment Masque, Priming Lotion Leave-In Conditioning Detangler, Styling Butter Curl Enhancing Créme, and Curl Gelée—are all made with type 4 hair in mind, each designed to nourish and de-stress. Ciceron, a hairdresser who counts Quincy Combs and Chanel Iman as past clients, is a self-described “naturalista” who was able to draw upon her own hair experience for the product line.
Ciceron was always a fan of the brand, citing the “buzz was just so strong” when it first came out while she was deep in session work and frequently working backstage at fashion shows, but she didn’t necessarily know where she fit within the brand. “It was selfishly motivated” she jokes about her excitement when first asked to help formulate the products. “ I also represent a large portion of women and men with highly textured hair, I know their needs and I have my unique stance.”
Alongside the brand, Ciceron worked for a year testing and working on the formula. Oribe had a moisture and control collection before she came along, but there were “gaps” she explained which needed to be filled. “They had products that catered to curls, but more like a looser curl type, and the needs of highly textured curl types (type 3, type 4) need more moisture, more butters, things that can make it more manageable and take away the stress.” This new range is filled with avocado butter, the brand’s nourishing butter complex, along with coconut oil and the classic Oribe scent—which I can only describe as making one feel Diddy rich—fully bringing your curls a hydrating and luxurious experience.
The launch is a full circle moment. The radiant hairstylist got her first relaxer like many black kids at age 11, and as the story often goes, it pretty much destroyed her hair after a year. Now not only does she rock her natural hair but so do her daughters. A frequent consultant for hair care brands, Ciceron says the experience was different this time because they didn’t go through this much detail in testing. “They could have thrown it around the office,” she says “but the office (staff) might have had textured hair.”
Ciceron never got to meet Oribe Canales herself, but says of his legacy “You know I would say [Canales] is a mood, okay! He is and was a whole entire mood. It wasn’t just a moment. It was the representation as a hairstylist just seeing the range, the growth, the options—that you can start out as this and end up as that.”
It was Canales’s dream to have an all-inclusive line of products that meet the needs of all hair types, and although he isn't here to see it happen, Ciceron's commitment has filled in the gaps.