“This young maroon was [a] lit­tle ret­i­cent ini­tially to have his pic­ture taken, but I was very taken with the head­wear and perservered.” Image and Quote Cour­tesy Claude Fletcher

The first time I wore one, I wasn’t feel­ing par­tic­u­larly pow­er­ful, styl­ish or proud.

I felt like screaming—and I prob­a­bly did at the exact moment a no-name ver­sion of a Gold N Hot curl­ing iron hit the left or right side of my forehead—from the sear­ing pain, yes, but mostly out of extreme frus­tra­tion. It did not mat­ter which for this was not the first time, and with the burn of this expe­ri­ence I knew it would surely hap­pen again.

As I gin­gerly scru­ti­nized and prod­ded the lat­est tat­too of a brand in the mir­ror, I knew some­thing had to give. There was clearly no way to cre­ate a mole (and I hope that some­one else can tes­tify to try­ing to turn pim­ple into beauty mark) out of this painful mess. And so I did the next best thing. I grabbed a bolt of fab­ric and made the best of things.

As I write this I can­not remem­ber what it was that I grabbed. It might have been a wool scarf, a t-shirt or a sarong. I know that it was not a table cloth or a dress, as such brash­ness would come much later.

I did not invent the headwrap—These are not the sort of illu­sions I have. I did not invent a spe­cial way of styling it on my head—There’s just too much vivid his­tory and detailed know-how at my fin­ger­tips for any­thing but preg­nant transparency.

Besides that, there was my mom, who rose on any num­ber of occa­sions to new heights, with every twist and turn of a fab­ric around her lovely head. She would only be rivaled in my early 20’s by the men and women strut­ting their equally hot stuff on New York City streets. The lat­ter, were prin­ci­pal in my lessons on how to turn a side­walk into a runway.

And so, what I did, maybe even from that first moment out of sheer frus­tra­tion and a bit of des­per­a­tion, with a blis­ter­ing burn on my fore­head, was own the headwrap.

I made it my signature.

Skirt as Headwrap

The fall/winter of 2000 was a sea­son when Musiq (back then he was also Soul­Child) claimed it with broth­erly swag, India and Miss Badu torqued it around their locks, and Ali­cia Keys had any num­ber of Nina Simone moments as she scarfed it up with corn­rows. The head­wrap was in a bit of a renais­sance, although iron­i­cally it had never left, and I, like so many new­bies took notice.

My friend, Ken Irish-Bramble, who more often than not wears his locks free and flow­ing bought me my very first offi­cial head­wrap cloth. Our jaunt through the city that day led to a down­town shop that intro­duced my senses to Nag Champa, Blue Nile, and Myrrh, along with the nov­elty of walls hung with rain­bows of fab­ric, and other curi­ous artifacts.

I wanted every­thing, and I wanted it all at once, but I set­tled on some­thing that was soft, black, and unassuming.

My intense attrac­tion to the style and styling tool is a mat­ter of its refined sim­plic­ity. I pre­fer a low chignon, most often, off-center per­haps as a reminder of the burn it once hid, but mostly because I believe that I have a good side.

It is a mod­ern form of call and response. If there was ever a need for an ice-breaker in my life then my head­wrap informs that. I can’t even recount how many times women, men, young, old, black, white and brown have walked, or even run up to me and tapped me on the shoul­der to say, ‘that is beau­ti­ful’ and then the brave ones would always ask the inevitable ‘how do you do it?’

Friends Join the Wrap Party

And as open as I can be, I’ve often thought to say come over in this cor­ner, let me show you how easy, how sim­ple. I have unwrapped my head on occa­sion, when­ever I felt that instant karma of connection.

I’ve worn my head­wrap on inter­views, on dates, to church, in the heat of sum­mer and the dead of win­ter. There is no invi­ta­tion for which it does not do jus­tice, no sea­son for which it is off-trend. It is never polit­i­cal, though it can be polit­i­cal poet(ry), and it never enters a room before I do.

These days there is noth­ing to hide. My head­wraps mul­ti­task and move from waist, to chest, to neck, to head. It is haute acces­sory, cool armor and inspired homage, which ulti­mately makes me feel divine.

So, what are our feel­ings about the head­wrap? And if you don’t mind, how do you wrap it up?

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