Today we’d like to introduce you to Darian Gavin.
Hi Darian, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself
Well, I stepped onto the path of Hair back in 2010. Found myself depressed, and in NYC visiting my chosen sister a year or so after losing my corporate America job during a recession. Although, at that time in my life, depression wasn’t a word I identified with, let alone accepted for myself. Sure enough, that’s what it was.
My chosen sister actually suggested hair during a brainstorming session, which was most of the point for my NY visit, well, and to clear my head. She told me things like the color and texture of yarn, rope, and hair are the same. At the time, I had deep practice with yarn via knitting and crocheting, as well as rope via rope bondage. Although, I didn’t take to the idea immediately and my initial reaction/resistance then, was rooted in internalized homophobia I didn’t yet see.
Not without a bit more encouragement, appealing to my creative nature and inner iconoclast was I a yes. So I found myself in cosmetology school which was its own layered experience chock full of so many more lessons than mere hair, skin, and nails. To those paying attention, the presence of my own anti-Blackness was visible, yet it served as a chandelier made of rose-colored glass, just outside of my conscious purview, nestled into internalized oppression. It shattered much later on December 13th, 2018.
Upon completing Cosmetology school (textbooks, education, industry all heavily swayed toward whiteness and the beauty standards it’s defined), I passed the requisite state board exams, began and cut my teeth at an Aveda concept salon in Canton; while voraciously taking continuing education courses deepening my practice with cutting, coloring, and styling. It wasn’t easy, there was a lot of robbing Peter to pay Paul. I put up with treatment I didn’t need to, that was illegal, and was subjected to racist comments from the owner. All of this was framed as what I thought I needed to swallow for the level of success and skill I craved.
I was so wrong (I’ve been wrong about so much this lifetime) and it wasn’t until the safety of the next salon (5 years later) that I realized how deep aspects of my former employ truly hurt. It’s interesting the things a sense of safety and security in the workplace, in life can have on an earthling. And yet, so many folx go without these every day on Piscataway Land (i.e. the occupied space so-called Baltimore) and beyond. So salon #2 was a well-known studio in Hampden. I felt valued, supported, my creativity was embraced, I was encouraged in ways that felt good, surrounded by a group of hairdressers and curl wizards who often sparked feelings of awe and inspiration. I honestly had to catch my dropped jaw before something flew into it.
All the while acquiring advanced education/certifications. Shout out to Caroline Curtis, my Wella Master Color Expert mentor, and Jon Reyman, whom I fell in love with in the first of many sessions as a result of his methodology to approach hair with intention and awareness, plus helping me to bring online, a sight that extends past that of my eyes and into my fingertips. You see, hair wasn’t merely a job, it was my passion, one of my life bridges.
In hair, I have access to flow, a sacred space that offers room for prayer and meditation. My heart flutters and fills with warmth and gratitude as I respond right now. At this point, while also working behind the chair; I’d been educating well-known industry brands teaching other stylists how to use their products. You could find me in various salons and conference halls within the North and Southeast regions of Turtle Island with attendance ranging from 7 to 150 folx. I got to ride in a propeller plane for the first time thanks to that work.
Q3 2019, I went independent and began Ramble Hair. It was terrifying, I wasn’t sure I was ready, yet it felt necessary. While navigating my second of two notable influxes of shame and guilt of the sort that has the potential for total destruction, recalibration, and deep healing. Shoutouts to Margaret Roth (Yet Analytics founding member and regular guest of my chair for nearly all of this career) who urged, and facilitated creative engagement and development, especially when I was deeply depressed. She was a coach and sounding board with Ramble.
This ultimately lead to meeting Becca Dyer (Lenore Hair Studio within which Ramble Hair resides) who was and continues to be a professional relationship of extreme value, mutual respect, trust, and collaboration. I believe our relationship is intended to help us heal intergenerational trauma. At this point in my career, hair is an excuse, shiny wrapping paper, albeit lubricant for ideas and deep conversation around decolonizing our minds & systems of oppression, ideas of radical self-love, radical vulnerability, radical empathy, compassionate care for oneself that is on pare (at minimum) with what we provide our closest heart folx.
I’m so full of gratitude for all of this.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Nope! While spiritually focused ordeal and shadow work are things I began exploring and practicing over a decade ago. I thought I knew myself, that I knew love, who I was; I had no idea what I was in for. 2017-2020 were steeped in difficult to palate life lessons and the healing of wounds I didn’t even know existed. Each lesson, compounding onto the previous, as snow, balled, becomes an avalanche.
Whether that be an addiction, anti-Blackness, sexism, ableism, and so on. It’s said, hurt people, hurt people; truer words… I’ve interacted with my privileges in ways that hurt them I care for, I’ve been complicit in upholding and participating in the ladder of bodily hierarchy. I’ve found doing good and trying to be “good” (quotes to delineate a binary concept of many that have no value in my world or the one I desire to reimagine) doesn’t remove one from participating in harm. Consciously, or even subconsciously.
There’s something inside the practice of healing oneself that for me, supports removing webbing from my eyes. Actions, thought processes, choices that’d been subconsciously driven, made conscious. But not all at once… as I heal my own trauma, the trauma I contribute to and participate in, lessens. As I integrate my parts, lashing out as a result of a desire to love, be loved, known, validated, cared for. I engage with more love, more compassion, less hidden tricks, and veiled rationalizations.
With the participation of plant medicines, medicine folx, therapy, dear ones, coping skill development, community, programming facilitated by groups such as BRJA, CIIS, HopeWorks, Wild Gather, Noir Labs, BCAN, BlackStar. I deepen healing and right relationship with myself, they around me, plants, the land.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
It’s really not about the hair and if you google curly hair stylist Baltimore, I’m told you’ll find me recommended on several platforms. Here I am, Darian (pronouns: they/he) a Black Indigenous neurodivergent gender-nonconforming kinky autonomous and sovereign being. I love shapes and color. It’s my pleasure to walk with many within their curl journey, providing occasional whispers to curls.
Whether that be the unrepresented kinky to the slight wave, you’re met where you are, goals are determined, and we work together to achieve results in the salon and at home. Information and explanation of thought processes, movements, the whys, and hows of it all support us in this. I often remind folx who express gratitude for “making them look beautiful”, that I didn’t make, rather participated in the development of a more visual expression of what’s been there all along.
Glamour magick through clipper and scissors cuts, dimensional hair color, smoothing, and reparative treatments. I’m interested in identifying the habits, behaviors, emotions, approaches many don’t think about when interacting with their hair on a day-to-day basis. While exploring contributions to our goals as well as possible alternatives.
I’m fortunate to observe personalities expand and take up space while progressively embracing the curls that adorn their exterior. I’m curious about the intersection of nurture, creativity, what it means fully to see oneself, hair, the practice of identifying and letting go of the things that no longer serve us.
Check out the “in my head” section of our website. An update with hella resources is in the queue for publishing.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
Oops, I don’t remember a lot of my childhood, I’ve gained access to more of it over the last few years. Also, my memory is differently suited when it comes to recalling. I can share that my mom had me while attending Howard University. Riding the bus back and forth from Baltimore to DC in order to complete her degree program and progress our lineage, while caring for a tiny human (me). Gratitude for the matriarchal familial support she had.
I was raised in a blended home located in so-called Northeast Baltimore. Oldest of 4 brothers, two of whom I lived with, the other two, I saw along with my father and stepmother, on intermittent weekend visits to PG county. Each of my childhood parents loved me as they were able, based on what they were taught, with conscious desires to avoid passing on some of the ways they experienced hurt as kids. Regardless of whether or not that’s what it felt like to me, or always what I needed or wanted, they did their best. It’s taken me about 40 years to find and internalize this truth.
Secular music was discouraged and I could always count on my dad to play oldies but goodies while driving. Although, I didn’t appreciate the music back then. I can remember being 12, skillfully and sneakily listening to one of his CDs, Doggystyle by Snoop Dogg (as if I needed any more toxically masculine programming). I found myself intrigued by the cover art, and was far too young and sheltered to process the visual and auditory contents in a thoughtful way.
I did well enough in school, skipping a grade in elementary which didn’t help my difficulty understanding folx motivations. Overall, I was an inquisitive, extremely literal, and logical kid who liked patterns, drawing, skateboarding, Nintendo, liturgical dance, Tae Kwon Do, Kung Fu Theater and disappeared into books as a way to process stimuli. I was often teased for not being Black enough, for being an oreo. I was misunderstood a lot and learned to code-switch long before knowing what it was.
So many masks, by high school, there were at least three versions of me. Variably expressed dependent on moment, location, and masking tools needed. Raised in a Black Christian church, non-denominational is what they called it. Twas the kinda place that believes in speaking in tongues, being filled with the holy spirit, shouting, dancing, laying hands, covenants with god to avoid sex till marriage (signed that contract at least a few times, it didn’t stick tho). Don’t even get me started on ideas of abstinence, purity, and the necessity of affirming sexual education for children and adults alike.
I’m grateful for a sense of community and a foundational relationship to spirit, ritual, reverence. My step-father as he would be referred to in simple language was my father from 3 y.o. to around 16 when he passed. That was hard, the last words I said to him were unkind. His was maybe the 5th masc familial death I’d encountered (mostly uncles, a grandfather). I was in what the older folx would call the smellin’ myself phase.
I wasn’t kind to my mom afterward and it took leaving for college to regain a sense of appreciation and respect she deserved. I’m still deepening my appreciation for her. It’s interesting how unpacking me enables me to see her more clearly and thus my appreciation.
Contact Info:
- Email: contact@ramblehair.com
- Website: https://www.ramblehair.com/
- Instagram: @dariangavin and @ramblehair
Image Credits
Marty Moore
