A Radical Twist

About six years ago, beauty chemist Lloyd Bell took a good long look at Whoopi Goldberg's dreads and said to his wife Kathy: "That's gonna be big." What? asked Kathy, half-listening, half not.

"Dreads," said Lloyd, "braids, twists, hair extensions, natural styles -- kinks and all."

Kathy, a human resources specialist in the telecommunications industry, had heard her husband ponder and speculate before, but this time, she says, it was different. She knew her husband was brilliant, more than just "a pair of hands," and she'd never seen him so dreamy, so creative.

"I had an idea," Lloyd Bell says decisively, sipping hot coffee from a bright blue cup. "A good one."

At the time, Bell was working for Image Labs in Oxnard, a few miles from his home on the Channel Islands coast of Southern California. Bell, possibly the only black chemist working in the $4 billion African-American hair-care industry, was responsible for Let's Jam, a group of gels, silicone sprays and relaxers for black hair that was very popular and made Image, a white-owned company, lots of black dollars. "So I went to this white guy, Michael Blair, known in the industry as the father of Let's Jam and president of Image, and I said let's do a braid spray." Blair, says Bell, showed absolutely no interest.

It wasn't surprising, says Kathy Bell, somberly. "All of Lloyd's career, companies were telling him not to put expensive chemicals into products because," she stresses, " Œthey won't know the difference. As long as it smells good Lloyd,‚ they'd say, Œyou people like sweet fragrances.‚ " And, says Lloyd, why would a company be interested in a rebel style of African-American hair that most white people hoped was trendy, destined to go the same way as the Afro.

"I was listening to Bob Marley and I was watching hip-hop explode," says Lloyd, adjusting his tie. "It was spreading to fashion, to sports, even to rock. There were legal cases about braiding licenses. And all the products available on the market," he says, "were about straightening and relaxing hair, how to change it, not how to keep it natural. I wanted to create a shampoo and conditioner, using all the best, highest-grade products, for tribal, Afrocentric hair." To clean it, he says, keep it healthy. And nobody, not the hair-care industry, not the banks, not even his close circle of friends, would hear of it. Nobody, that is, except Kathy.

About the same time as Lloyd Bell began to conceive of Nubian Secrets, Marietta Carter-Narcisse, a Barbados national, was the head makeup artist on Malcolm X , filming in Egypt. "I looked at my straightened hair and suddenly," she says, "I saw it as a contradiction. In August 1991, I decided to take all the chemicals out of my hair, so I shaved my head and started my locks." Fashion locks, she carefully explains, cultural, practical, not religious Rasta dreads that begin with sand and aloe and dirty, matted hair. "My mother cursed me, told me it wasn't accepted in respectable West Indian families. I told her I didn't want to look like a white person. Straight is right because white is right," she says, defiantly, tossing her honey-colored locks behind her shoulder. To wash her dreads, she admits, took hours, and a night to dry. And when it was "Pine-Sol clean," she tells me, "my scalp would itch."

Madrid Johnson is considered a damaged hair expert, a man who takes the few little broken strands that some people of color "hold onto" and renders it healthier, shinier, fuller and softer. From his salon in Oakland, California, Madrid's Exclusive Hair Design, he and his staff serve some 200 patrons in a week. He trains, teaches and travels the world for Luster Products, an all-around system for black hair care that includes relaxers, conditioners, shampoos, lotions, gels, sprays, spritzers and glossifiers. He stayed in touch with Lloyd Bell because, despite companies that catered to black hair care, there wasn't one line of product to keep hair healthy and natural. "The relaxer market," Johnson says, "has been astronomical" and has dominated the entire black hair-care industry. Relaxers are, he says, one of the most damaging things a person can do to his or her hair. Dreads, knots, twists, loops are chemical-free, innovative and alternative, not retro styles, he points out, and not one company was exploiting the trend that was putting people of color in touch with their heritage. "I thought that Lloyd Bell might formulate a product that could be revolutionary."