Dominican-American Mariel Mejia was inspired to create her own natural hair line after transitioning back to her natural texture. The brand started with the motto "We don't believe in bad hair, just bad hair care," and it has continued to be the foundation behind the brand's identity. "When I first started working on formulas, I was in a space where I was feeling insecure about my hair because I had damaged it so much by trying to alter its natural texture, so when creating our products, it was really like bringing a rebellion to life. I was cutting out any negative perceptions that I learned about natural hair and made formulas with my health in mind," Mejia told us. "All hair is good hair, and all it takes is a good routine to feel good about it, which most of us were not taught."
Mejia, who grew up going to the Dominican salon, getting her hair blown out, and using products from the Dominican Republic, like the staple repairing mask treatment Emergencia, said that being Dominican has not only shaped her views of beauty but has also allowed her to appreciate the good parts of it while doing away with the Eurocentric beauty standards it often pushes. "I think the Dominican community has influenced the beauty space a lot. Firstly, there is the famous Dominican blowout that everyone lined up to get on a weekly basis growing up. While I think that's lost a bit of popularity over the recent years, I still feel the influence of our take on beauty when I walk down the aisle at my local beauty supply store," she said. "Hair care in particular has always been so big in this community, and I think that's why being a part of it came to me so naturally. My family and I would often come back from our trips to the Dominican Republic with new products, a lot of them being handmade, and we'd use them until the bottles were done and it was time for someone else to bring back some more. The obsession with hair care and hair health was really a tradition within the household, and recipes and treatments were passed down from one generation to the next."
Mejia took her passion for health care, creating formulas, and new knowledge of textured hair and incorporated that into Pink Root. The Pink Root Curl Enhancing Lotion ($22) is formulated with ingredients like avocado oil and baobab protein, which work to not just revitalize, rejuvenate, and repair hair from roots to ends but also leave curls super defined and bouncy.
