Remember me
When Akinade moved to London for university, the Nigerian side of his family lived nearby. He reconnected with his relatives and West African heritage and noticed more Londoners embracing their curly hair. It took two years of watching YouTube tutorials and experimenting with products for him to figure out a routine. Now, he braids and twists his own hair. “Hair is such a big part of our culture within the Black community,” he says. “For a lot of the time growing up, I didn’t know how to manage my hair or the way it grows. It was definitely like having a bit of an identity crisis.”
Aaron Christian, a London-based filmmaker who celebrates stylish men from South Asia on his Instagram account, @theasianman_, started growing his hair out after his wedding. His wife suggested that Christian – who’s of Malaysian, South Indian and Sri Lankan heritage – could have lush waves like the actor Dev Patel. “My dad’s been bald for as long as I can remember, and it wasn’t until I went through younger photos of him that I saw he had curly hair,” he says. “I’m starting to understand how different the hair types are, even within the different diasporas,” he says. Christian marvelled at the “thick, rich, curly hair” worn longer by some Bangladeshi men, and it was during this period of discovery that he realised Tamil and Sri Lankan men have been embracing their natural curls for some time.
“My experience has been that South Asians, especially within the UK, were a bit scared to buck the trend, to do something that would put eyeballs on them. I think there probably was a stigma, but I think the generation below us is just becoming much more brave and experimental,” he says. “There’s an element of pride as well, which is rooting me to my culture in a way that I didn’t think it would.”
For Daniel Roche, his curls are wrapped up in another identity. You’d likely recognise him as Ben Brockman from the BBC sitcom Outnumbered, the little boy with angelic ringlets. “It’s one of the iconic things about the character. But also for me as an actor growing up separate from that, I definitely think it got me a lot of roles,” Roche says. “The roles that I had as a kid were based around cuteness. I had this cherub-type appearance that was really sold to casting agents.
“I remember not necessarily resenting [my hair as a teen], but definitely just getting increasingly frustrated with it,” he adds. “I always felt like there was so much more potential for a bad hair day.”
After the show ended, Roche decided to try a new look. He started cutting his hair, chopping more and more of his curls until it was so short that all evidence of his past role was gone. He kept it that way until lockdown, when the mandatory closure of salons and barbers coincided with Outnumbered debuting on Netflix. It forced him to go back to his roots. Ben’s unruly ringlets returned.
Roche was getting stopped for autographs once again. Memories of his defining curls rose to the surface. “When you act as a kid, you outgrow everything you’re known for so quickly. In my head, long, curly hair was typical of kids and people younger than me,” he says. “But it was also directly associated with an image of me that people had.”
Shirt and collar by Dior.
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