Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Tiny Textures Hair Salon Coming to Midtown Row Helps Children Embrace Their Natural Hair

Founded in Richmond, Tiny Textures is a kids salon that specializes in styling natural hair. (Courtesy of Regina Holden)

WILLIAMSBURG — A children’s salon that caters to diversity and inclusion will soon open in Williamsburg.

Tiny Textures, a salon that specializes in styling children with naturally textured hair, will open in Midtown Row, 218B Monticello Ave., this spring.

The salon, which currently has a location in Richmond and will open its second in Williamsburg, will offer natural hair styling for kids, educational classes for parents, as well as spa parties.

Regina Holden opened the Richmond location in 2018 after running a mobile salon with a team of stylists that traveled to clients’ homes.

She started Tiny Textures to provide a safe and educational space for parents of adopted or fostered children outside of their ethnicity, as well as biracial families and other families of children who have natural hair.

“Our goal is to provide a salon of inclusion, where all children with textured hair feel welcome,” Regina said. “And it’s a place created just for them to have a comfortable hair styling experience, but to also be able to educate parents who want to know how to do this at home.”

The idea for Tiny Textures came when Regina’s daughter attended school with two young girls who were adopted from Haiti and did not have any hair.

Regina met their adoptive mother, who said that when she adopted them, they had braids in their hair. As the girls could not speak English, they were not able to tell her how long the braids had been in, and she could not find a place that would help take the braids out and care for their hair.

“Everyone was telling her, ‘We don’t style that texture,'” she said. “She was referred to a barber shop and they pretty much told her that the only thing they could do was cut the braids out, and that is what they unfortunately had to do.”

After teaching the adoptive parents how to style their daughters’ hair and forming a bond with the family, she saw how crucial the need was for parents to learn about styling and caring for natural hair.

A 3D rendering of the salon space in the Williamsburg location. (Courtesy of Regina Holden)

“You have a lot of adoptive moms who want to bond with their children over hair styling,” Regina said. “That’s where they’re looking to make a connection with their kid. And it ends up being the sore spot in the entire household because the mom is not detangling properly and it hurts, or the mom realizes this is not a 10 minute wash, this is actually a 45 minute wash and condition and detangle. And the finished product is not as nice as the parents want or the child’s self esteem has taken a hit because their hair doesn’t look like they thought it was going to look.”

Since opening up a wait list for the Williamsburg location, Regina found that Williamsburg and the surrounding area has a big transracial adoption community.

“We already have like 50 families signed up, so the community there is definitely really excited,” she said. “When we did the wait list, we found that there are a lot of parents that have either biracial families or transracial adoptions, where the parents are maybe Caucasian and the child is African American. So we’re excited to bring this offering to the area.”

Regina also noted that adding a Williamsburg location is also a convenience to their clients.

“We have clients that are already traveling from Williamsburg to Richmond, so we are removing their commute completely,” she said. “But then we have clients from Virginia beach and Newport News that are commuting every three weeks as well, so we are really saving them that commute. Williamsburg is such a great location.”

In addition to offering natural hair styling for kids, Tiny Textures also provides on-site education classes to teach parents how to take care of their child’s hair.

“A biracial mother can have three children from the same husband, and all three of those children will have different hair textures,” Regina said. “I don’t think people recognize how much of a pain point hair can be and has been for a lot of families. And most people shy away from this particular thing because no one wants to style textured hair for kids. They already don’t necessarily like to style textured hair, and then to try to do that for children that are squirming and moving and might be tender-headed.”

“The salon includes a platform stage with lights and a mirror, so at the end of every appointment they’ll be able to go up on the stage and do a mini fashion show and look in the mirror and see just how beautiful they are,” Regina said. (Courtesy of Regina Holden)

Regina has hired staff from Williamsburg for the new location, and they will have completed two months of vetting and training before the salon’s grand opening.

She said that a consultation call is done with each client to learn about the child and any particular needs that they might have, before assigning them to one of their fully trained stylists who will best suit the child’s needs.

“We have so many kids come into the salon where they have so much anxiety about getting their hair washed, we can barely wash it,” Regina said. “What we’ve done is we’ve built so many relationships with families because we’ve been able to help their children to overcome anxiety associated with getting their hair done.”

Appointments are typically two-and-a-half hours, and the parents can then leave the styles in for three weeks.

Tiny Textures also offers spa parties, which includes manicures, pedicures, facials and dance parties.

Tiny Textures will be at Midtown Row’s upcoming Shredding Party on March 19 where they will have a tent set up where parents come meet the team and add themselves the waitlist.

The community is also invited to the salon’s grand opening, which is currently set for April 2 at noon.

For more information or to sign up for the Williamsburg location waitlist, visit here.

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