Felicia Leatherwood, Loving Your Hair with Natural Care at Nettle and Moss, Jamaica
On Thursday, September 19, 2013, I was invited to be a part of Nettle and Moss‘ Takes Style Out event as they hosted celebrity hair stylist Felicia Leatherwood for a natural hair care workshop. I’ve seen the name and image of Felicia across my social media networks a few times but I do not follow her personally and I didn’t research before the event so I went in with open expectations. I figured there would be a few styling sessions and a lot of the information that I’ve already read on the many natural hair blogs so I was just hoping for a fun evening. What I left with was a confirmation of what information was myth and what wasn’t. For instance, Felicia wasn’t afraid of shampooing and encouraged shampooing your hair at least twice per month.
Of course, she does advise to research ingredients like sulfates and parabens, but suddenly I feel where she’s coming from because I’m still battling break outs and I’m sure I may need to shampoo/clarify more often than the once a month or so that I’m now doing. Co-washing once per week is probably leaving me with quite a bit of build-up. If nothing else, Felicia lives by clarifying with apple cider vinegar to remove the build-up so if you’re strict on the ingredients that you use in your hair and on your skin, here’s one natural ingredient that will help you to rid your hair of product build-up while balancing the acidity of your hair.
She also confirmed for me that our hair does need to be deep-conditioned at least twice-weekly. I do this once weekly right now because my hair has such a light colour and I know it needs all the moisture it can get and so I felt great about this routine of mine and took comfort in relaxing this to twice per week when I get really busy. She recommended some products and also had no issues with being a mixtress of your favourite natural moisturizing ingredients in your fridge if you find them working for you. You know how much I love my own deep condition mix and it works well for my hair so I’m sticking with it.
It was really great to meet Felicia and hear the genuine love she has for natural hair come out into her talk. I know, she has no hair! But she says there’s no style under the sun that she hasn’t tried and we all laughed at her jherri curl stories. She says even if she wasn’t particularly feeling the style, she still tried it because she wants to see and feel what her clients go through when they get the style. She’s worked on many natural hair celebrities and calls Jill Scott her barbie. How awesome it must be to work with Jill! Here she is with the owner of Nettle and Moss, Aisha Morgan who was stunting on all of us in a fabulous Reve Jewelry neck piece.
Aisha’s store Nettle and Moss is a fabulous retail outlet for all your favourite natural products and brands and had Felicia’s favourite detangling brush in stock as well. I have been meaning to visit and pick me up one of these Cordless Heating Cap
thingies with microwavable gel inserts that I can pop on my head when I’m deep conditioning to cut down on the time that I deep condition for. Felicia also stressed the need for a good leave-in conditioner. I can attest to that, my hair is nothing without it. It needs that leave-in to soften it, keep it moisturized all day long, make my curls pop and cut down on the frizz. My favourites right now are the Kinky-Curly Knot Today Leave In 
and the Jessicurl Aloeba Daily Conditioner
. Light and easy and great for detangling! And the KCKT is devoid of coconut oil which makes me break out. Felicia did a big chop and styling sessions after her chat. Here is an after photo from that, the before shots and all the other pictures can be seen on the Nettle and Moss facebook page.
