Check On It
Visionary Hair by Hadiiya Barbel
Hadiiya Barbel
Emmy Award Winning Celebrity Hairstylist & Creator of the Crown, Hadiiya Barbel has adorned the heads of stars including Real Housewives of Atlanta Kim Zolciak, Star Jones, Wendy Williams, hip-hop artist/actress Eve, and supermodel Iman with her iconic and original Crowns. Ever so passionate about women’s empowerment, hair healing and eating green, Hadiiya Barbel is on a journey to transform every woman’s self doubt into the self-love and celebration of empowered goddesses. With a personal testimony of the transforming power of self-love and healing hands, Barbel was born blind in her left eye, and transformed from an “ugly duckling” to a fabulous swan. Barbel was recently featured in the New York Times for her first Crowns and Cocktails event, where she stated, “I don’t call them wigs, I call them crowns. A wig is something you take out of a bag and put on your head. It’s standard. It has no personality. It’s ready-to-wear. A crown is couture.”
Crowns and Cocktails is Barbel’s signature series of events- a gathering of New York City’s finest for a day of beauty, healing, sisterhood and crown adornment. With the success of her first event and greater demand after her New York Times feature, Barbel decided to expand the series into her philanthropic efforts by giving a percentage of proceeds from all events to worthy charities that share in her vision of creative healing, empowering women and children, and healthy lifestyle education. This spring’s Crowns and Cocktails event will be in support of Crowns for Cure –honoring cancer survivors, remembering those lost to the disease and supporting the progress being made to raise cancer awareness. Urban Zen Foundation was chosen as the beneficiary for the Spring Forward Capsule Collection because of their great creative and therapeutic work as advocates for raising awareness and funding toward finding a cure for cancer.
Photo Credit: New York Times
According to Hadiiya Barbel:
As the saying goes ‘to whom much is given much is expected’. After a successful career as a celebrity stylist which eventually led me to winning an Emmy for my work, I realized that I had been very fortunate in my life even through many ups and downs and that I was blessed with a talent that went far beyond just hair styling. I decided to give back not only to the world at large but also to myself by giving of my full talents in healing through beauty. After working with many cancer survivors and women suffering from alopecia who would always tell me that they just wanted to look normal, along with everyday women who needed something more than just a new hairstyle; I was inspired to make them look and feel much more than just normal. I wanted to work with these women to show them their inner and outer goddess/queen, and every queen must have her own custom crown. I created ‘Crowns and Cocktails’ as a series of events to celebrate these women of all ages and all walks of life and to give them a safe place to celebrate themselves by coming together through healing, conversation, beauty and sisterhood. I believe every woman deserves to be crowned in self-love because what we often see as flaws are just rough diamonds in our crowns in need of a little polish.
Barbel has plans to take her signature Crowns and Cocktails series both nationally and internationally with creative healing and philanthropy as its foundation.
For additional information on Hadiiya Barbel visit www.hadiiyabarbel.com.
As a New York City storyteller, filmmaker, digital content creator, and PR strategist, Renae Bluitt created "In Her Shoes" to empower and enlighten women committed to realizing their dreams.