A Brief History of Atlanta's Booming Beauty Industry
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Loading... - Khalish Jasmay
- 15 Apr 2022
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In 2016, Philadelphia native and hip-hop dancer Shoquor Wright enrolled in Atlanta's Morehouse College over other options for one reason: "Atlanta's network is crazy. I just knew all the possibilities," he says. Wright, a drama major, was enamored with Atlanta's entertainment scene. And sure enough, by his sophomore year, he found himself sitting next to one of Chris Rock's sons in class. Later, Wright worked as a choreographer for Cliff Vmir, who'd gone from creating wigs for Cardi B to recording his own rap anthems.
In a city known as the Hollywood of the South, with a steady stream of big-budget movie shoots (Georgia’s film and TV industry generated $4 billion in the fiscal year 2021), Wright's pitch to potential clients is simple: "You're always in front of a camera," he says. "Why not get a skin-care [specialist] who can have you glowing when you’re on these stages?"
Atlanta's history as a beauty hub and incubator dates back to the 1930s, and another Morehouse College student. On his paper route, Nathaniel Bronner Sr. also made deliveries for his sister's salon. He soon realized he was distributing more hair products than newspapers, and in 1939, after graduating from Morehouse, Nathaniel went on to get a second degree — from the Auburn Avenue campus of Sarah Spencer Washington's Apex Beauty College. Eight years later, Bronner and his brother Arthur launched a hair company and its accompanying Bronner Bros. Beauty Show.
"If you think about everything taking place in Harlem during the '20s, '30s, and '40s, the same
thing was taking place on Auburn Avenue [in Atlanta]," says hairstylist Ricci de Forest, curator of the city’s Madam C.J. Walker Museum. "But New York has the weight of being New York, so Atlanta doesn’t get the same name recognition."
By 1980, when de Forest first arrived in the city, Atlanta was undergoing yet another renaissance and, with the help of Bronner Bros., solidifying its place as the epicenter of Black hair culture and innovation. At the Bronner show, hair instructor Juanita Garmon (who was also Nathaniel and Arthur's sister) helped bring to a much wider audience the sew-in weave technique that Christina Jenkins had pioneered. The decade also saw the launch of the annual expo's "fantasy competition," where stylists compete to see whose artistry is the most innovative. (You can check out the next-level creativity in an episode of Netflix's 2020 docuseries, We Are the Champions.)
"Stylists and barbers and makeup artists working behind the scenes come to the show to brush up on their skills and see what's trending for the year," says James Bronner, Nathaniel's youngest son and current director of the Bronner Bros. International Beauty Show. And it's become a business incubator of sorts. When rapper Rick Ross, a Miami transplant, wanted to launch his line of hair-care and beard-grooming kits, he turned to none other than James Bronner. Prepandemic, the show was bringing in an estimated $60 million a year. (There were 300 attendees at the first show in 1947; 20,000 participated in 2019.)
De Forest says that some of the biggest trendsetters to visit the Bronner Bros. show have hailed not from New York or Chicago or L.A., but from Atlanta's own southwest artery, Campbellton Road. "They were cutting edge, the who's who of the hair industry," he says. The beauty scene there was so vibrant that it became part of landmark hip-hop group OutKast's origin story. In the early '90s, producer Rico Wade auditioned members André 3000 and Big Boi in front of Lamonte’s Beauty Supply, where Wade worked at the time. Beauty parlors later became an integral part of how André described his city in OutKast's 1998 song, "Aquemini," among the "baby bottles and bowlin' ball Impalas."
But the Atlanta beauty scene also has its quieter beauty success stories. In 2003, Yolanda Owens was inspired by the city's beauty entrepreneurs to start selling her own lotions. Botox had just received FDA approval to smooth lines, but Owens put far more stock in her grandma's home remedies. "For my eczema, she literally put me in the bathtub with onions, garlic, and collard greens," she recalls. With her preservative-free skin-care line, Iwi Fresh ("iwi" is her shorthand for "it is what it is"), Owens made a bet on a burgeoning "natural beauty" trend back when "goop" meant nothing more than semi-fluid matter. By 2017, Iwi Fresh was available in Whole Foods and singer Kelly Rowland was using Iwi's rose-beet cream to help treat her own eczema.
In fall 2020, Owens opened her wellness center, Farm Oasis, in Lakewood Heights, complete with a Himalayan salt meditation room. Owens says that Iwi Fresh speaks to Atlanta's lesser-known reputation as a haven for healthy living, as seen in Black-owned vegan and vegetarian restaurants like Tassili's Raw Reality Café and Local Green Atlanta. Read More...
