by Rob Taylor, Courier Staff Writer
Award-winning licensed cosmetologist Ravin Bean doesn’t describe running her own beauty salon as “easy” or “difficult”—rather, a “work in progress.”
“Every day is a definitely a learning experience,” Bean told the New Pittsburgh Courier. “On days I felt like quitting…some days are (financially) better than others, clients can be challenging, the business can be challenging,” she said.
After all, you’ve got to pay the bills—which includes employees. But after 12 years, Bean’s salon, Shades of Beauty, in Swissvale, continues to keep its doors open, satisfy its customers, all with no signs of slowing down.
It’s that perseverance, that ability to dig deep within oneself to catapult past any and all problems, which had Bean and others in the barber/beauty industry receiving honors at the ninth annual Black History Celebration Heritage Dinner, presented by the organization “Classic Events!”
“In life you’re guaranteed to grow old, but you’re not guaranteed to grow up. And the key to growing up is being able to fulfill your dream, and to turn every problem you have into a promise,” state Rep. Ed Gainey said during the Feb. 23 event at the DoubleTree Hotel in Monroeville. “They can tell everybody in there that when they started off their dream, the problem was, ‘How do I start a business?’” And years later, Rep. Gainey said about the honorees, “they’re still doing wonderful things and they never allowed themselves to grow old; they let themselves grow up and get new knowledge,” and learned how to run their businesses. “That’s powerful all by itself,” Rep. Gainey said. “When times got hard, when the problem got too big, none of them quit. None of them.”
Obviously, Bean never quit. She kept going. And she found that the rewards are more than just financial. “It’s helping people, being there for people,” she told the Courier at the event. “I’m more than a hair stylist; I counsel people, I become people’s friends and relatives. The camaraderie in the salon keeps me going every day.”
As media personality Debbie Norrell said as she emceed the event, the relationship between a woman and her hair stylist is almost like “a marriage.” Others at the podium discussed how, in a city like Pittsburgh where people never want to “cross bridges” to the other side of town, a woman will, in fact, “cross a bridge” to get to her beloved hair stylist.
In addition to Bean, others who garnered awards were: Robyn Greer of Bloom Hair Salon by Trevor James; Stephanie Moye of S. Moye Fashions; Faye Blair of Sola Salons; Steven Noss (also known as “Weaven Steven”); K. Chase Patterson of Society Men’s Grooming Lounge; Vinson Mason of Cut N’ Play Barber Shop; and Nicole Turner-Thomas of Sophisticated Hair Design by Nikki.
Turner-Thomas told the Courier that as a stylist, she wants to understand her client’s mindset before she gets out her tools.
“When I talk to a woman, I ask her, ‘When you lay down at night, what is it that you imagine looking like?’” Turner-Thomas said. “A lot of times, women may have hair issues, or thinning hair, etc., so it doesn’t matter what you’re working with, what is it that you see, and then let me build from there.”
Building an even closer connection, Turner-Thomas also asks her clients the type of profession they’re in. “That’s very important, because somebody that works in a corporate field, you can’t give them blue hair. I have to know what you do. If you’re in a creative career, then we can do different colors, different styles, more spikey, more edgy. But if you’re in a corporate setting, then it has to be a little bit more calm, more tame,” Turner-Thomas said. “And your personality goes a lot with your style, so if you’re more of a calm person, then we’ll give you a calmer style.”
On the flip side, if a woman is “more edgy like I am,” Turner-Thomas said, “then you’ll have something spikey and wild and colorful.”
Keeping with the hair theme, the Black History Celebration Heritage Dinner featured a “Fantasy Hair Show” competition, where local models showcased hair designs from local designers. The winner was Dominique Davis of Strictlyluxuryhair, based in Braddock.
The event showed enormous respect to Madam C.J. Walker, a former Pittsburgh resident who, as an African American woman, blazed the trail in Black haircare products as an entrepreneur, philanthropist and educator.
Ralph P. Watson, founder of Classic Events!, also bestowed the Shirley L. Watson 2020 Political Icon Award to Elizabeth Harris. A retired structural engineer, she’s currently the secretary of the Mon Valley Peoples Action Committee and treasurer of the East Borough NAACP.
One of the Excellence in Education awards went to Phillip K. Woods, Ph.D., principal of Woodland Hills High School. Dr. Woods said that it was ironic he was getting an award at a hair show, as his mother, the first CEO he ever knew, was a professional hair stylist.
Tonya T. Taylor, with KYDZ Nation Early Education, was the recipient of the other Excellence in Education Award.
The Business Vanguard Award went to Donna Baxter-Porcher, the founder and CEO of The Soul Pitt quarterly magazine, which caters to Pittsburgh’s African American community. Ironically, too, she said, her connection to a hair salon went back 10 years, as she launched The Soul Pitt during a press conference in front of a hair salon in East Liberty.
Baxter-Porcher told the crowd that the last 10 years have been “challenging,” as things happen in life that try to “take you out, but you still gotta keep that business going.” She discussed how she took care of both of her parents, who were in hospice at different times. Still, she was “working on my business on my laptop, trying to get things done to keep things together.”
Baxter-Porcher smiled at the thought of so many Pittsburgh stylists and barbers being honored, under one roof, at one singular event. She called it a true showing of “community over competition.”
(ABOUT THE TOP PHOTO: PITTSBURGH HAIR STYLISTS NICOLE TURNER-THOMAS AND RAVIN BEAN were among those honored at the Classic Events! Black History Month Heritage Dinner, Feb. 23. – Photos by J.L. Martello)
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