Dark & Lovely has a NEW product line specially formulated for us natural gals and they brought it to NYC in style with a “Curl Power” celebration on February 20th (this post is SUPER late!) hosted by the lovely Curly Nikki! Follow me…
Ok, so the festivities were set to begin at 6:30 pm and my little sister and I arrived at Arena around 5:45 pm. There were maybe… 30-35 chicas on line, not bad. We could clearly see the door from our spot so we were cool! The line started moving pretty quickly with security letting in a few at a time at a regular pace. After signing the waiver about photography/videography etc., we went in and were led to the private karaoke room downstairs to check our coats and wait to go up to the main event at showtime. Some of the curlies did the karaoke thing LOL! It was cool. Everything was well organized and I loved that they didn’t have us waiting in the freezing cold.
The place was HUGEMUNGEOUS! I saw Nikki, as I walked in, speaking with Shanti from Around The Way Curls (who, by the way was SOOOO fun and super sweet!) so I just started making my rounds, figured I’d catch up with her later on. There were huge monitors all over flashing the Dark & Lovely Au Naturale branding and shots of the new line. A few ladies were milling around representing the brand, either rockin’ Dark & Lovely tees or dresses matching the branding, ALL with lovely hair… especially this one gal with an orange mini who had a MASSIVE reddish-toned curly fro. BEAUTIFUL!
There were about four stylist stations where experts were giving the attendees advice on which products to use for their hair and a few actually had demos performed on their own hair. All sorts of media made their way around the crowd conducting interviews and there was even a cute green screen photo booth!
We came in to find Marsha Ambrosius on the stage interviewing with Christina of Love Brown Sugar, then Shelli from Hairscapades and a couple others. As I made my rounds getting great shots of some gorgeous hair, I ran into quite a few of the “regulars” like Natasha of Mane Moves TV, NaturalChocolat‘s Latoya Johnston and 1Girl Boutique founder Sade Pizarro who looked gawjus!
Oh, before I forget: free event, free drinks, free hors d’oeuvres, free coat check. Ok, let’s go on. LOL! I FINALLY found Nikki and just as I did, they needed her on stage for the presentation. I did manage to introduce myself by softly yelling into her ear HAHA (the music was bumpin thanks to DJ Amanda Seales aka Amanda Diva!). She knew right away who I was and hugged me *tear*. We snapped a quick pic and shouted in unison, “we’ll catch up later”. 🙂
Marsha kicked off the presentation with a few words about her own curls and what she thinks about the new Au Naturale line. We then heard from Nikki who encouraged us to mix, mingle and meet as many naturalistas as possible throughout the evening. Mezai Jefferson, director of education for Soft Sheen Carson, spoke candidly about how the company known for relaxers was now listening to the call for hair care for the natural sistas. He directed us to the monitors to watch a brief spot about the line featuring lovely women of varying hair textures- well done. It was then back to pic-taking, dancing, sipping and “I LOVE YOUR HAIR”-ing as we wrapped up the evening.
Here’s a video montage of the night…
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCmIRRQx_oA]So, did ya feel like you were there?! I sure hope so. Make sure you stay tuned to www.curlynikki.com to see when Nikki will be in your neck of the woods! As you would expect, space always goes quickly so ya gotta be ready to click that “rsvp” tab!
Til next time,
xoxo
~Toia
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