Black Beauty Is Freedom: The London Report

The Black Beauty Club returned to London to celebrate UK Black History Month with our community—one headline across them all: Black Beauty as Cultural Power.

What is Cultural Power

Black beauty isn’t “just looks.” It’s language, lineage, and economy. It sets global style and insists on self-definition. We keep it in real life, homes, studios, salons, the high street, and the timeline, with a simple mandate: recognition should become ownership. In short, Black beauty is freedom.

Dinner with Beauty Players

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Small table, clear spine. We gathered founders, editors, creators, and community builders, Bernicia Boateng, Dija Ayodele, Gary Thompson, Twiggy Jalloh, Deborah Ababio, and more. What landed was simple: community is the engine. Year three felt bigger, steadier, more connected. We also named the local reality: UK influencer rates still trail U.S. baselines, hitting Black creators hardest. The fix is collective, align as a unit, set a floor, and hold it.

In Conversation with Candice Brathwaite

Candice began at home, sharing how beauty shows up differently for her family, especially her children. Plurality starts in the house, then scales to the time. Black women and men try new faces daily, hair, nails, skin, finish, refusing a single aesthetic even as platforms reward an aesthetic calibrated closer to white beauty standards. The pressure to flatten is real. Our counter-move is clear: choose freedom and practice range—on camera and off. Even with documented bias against Black women, people kept arriving as many versions of themselves. That’s cultural power: showing up in full until plurality is baseline. When sameness dulls, as it always does, the industry returns to the source for the next brief: full lips, baby hair, braids, bald fades, press, perm, lace, locs. The copy follows because the source doesn’t shrink.

Showing Up with Sephora

Our first UK collaboration with Sephora looked like presence, not optics. Sephora supported the salon, co-hosted the dinner, and opened Sephora Stratford for custom sessions with Adeola Gboyega.
Adeola taught masterclasses on how to build a flawless, skin-first canvas using the inclusive brands on Sephora’s shelves: shade logic, undertone, application, and wear. Guests left camera-ready and, more importantly, self-matched, with routines mapped to real life.

What We’re Keeping

Black beauty is freedom. Our strength is how differently we show up, across roles, styles, and stories.
Plurality is the standard. We refuse a single aesthetic, especially one calibrated toward white norms.
Collaboration is presence. Be in the room, host the table, open the floor, and keep showing up.
Community is leverage. United across creators, editors, and founders, we set terms, not just trends.

Three years in London and it’s still joyful. We’ll keep building until visibility reads as structure, and structure reads as equity.