How Paige Lewin is changing the way Black women understand and care for their Afro hair

Paige Lewin is building a platform that provides Black women with the tools to understand and care for their hair.

Paige Lewin’s approach to hair is rooted in lived experience. After years of navigating wigs, hair damage, and confusion around her natural hair texture, she began to question what she was doing to her hair. That curiosity evolved into a deeper mission to make afro hair care more accessible, practical, and rooted in real understanding rather than trends or perceptions. Her book, “How to Love Your Afro”, reflects that journey. It is designed as a companion to the natural hair woman, covering everything from scalp health to cultivating a positive mindset. She is giving women the tools to actually understand and respond to their hair rather than guess their way through it. Paige Lewin recently taught a masterclass for L’Oréal Professionnel at a launch event for their new Absolut Repair Molecular Bi-Phase Oil in Lagos, where she shared both the science and the reality of caring for natural hair. 

In this exclusive interview, Paige shares her journey to embracing and caring for her natural hair. She discusses building tailored digital tools for Afro hair and creating content online that fosters positive language and a stronger sense of community around Black hair. For the future, her focus remains unwavering; she is pushing for a shift from one-size-fits-all advice to personalised, informed care for our hair. She is also challenging the beauty standards and misinformation that have shaped how many Black women see and approach their hair.

How did your journey into natural hair come about?

I was a wig babe for about seven or eight years, and during that time, there were many moments when I didn’t feel comfortable wearing one — or didn’t want to.  It wasn’t every day — I loved my wigs — but there would be some times where maybe I didn’t feel well, or I was going on a date, and for whatever reason I just thought, I can’t be bothered to lay this lace today. Or it was hot, and for some reason, there was just never an occasion where I felt like I could just leave with my afro.

 This was when I started to really unpack the problem, and it was a slow journey. This is why I don’t appreciate it when people try to rush Black women into their natural hair; it’s a slow process. It took me years of thinking, maybe I’ll wear the wig, maybe I’ll do braids, maybe I’ll do natural hair, and then end up relaxing it. So it’s a bit of an up-and-down situation where once you have that feeling of “I think I want to wear my natural hair,” it could take another five years for you to actually end up wearing it.

But it was when I damaged my hair again that I realised it wasn’t just an issue of I didn’t like my natural hair — it was that I also didn’t know how to care for it. Because every time I had my hand on my scalp, I ended up at a trichologist clinic a few weeks later. So clearly there was a problem. But every time I went on social media t, the influencers just seemed to be doing everything perfectly, and I thought there must be other Black women struggling like me. It can’t just be me; there’s no way Jesus would put me on this struggle list alone.

That’s when I thought, okay, let me try content creation. That’s all it was, just a couple of podcast episodes to try to talk about it honestly, because no one else seemed to be. And I suppose the rest is history. 

How has that journey been for you — from where you started to where you are now, and what does it feel like for you today? 

It feels really exciting. At the beginning, it was a little bit stressful because when you start learning anything, especially as an adult, when you’ve got other things going on. And then on top of that, when you’re learning something new, you feel overwhelmed because you think, my gosh, there’s so much. I actually don’t know if I want to do this.

At the beginning, I thought there was so much to learn, and I just felt like I wished I’d learned it when I was younger — because at least then, I wouldn’t have had all these other things going on. It felt tough. But then, when I started to unpack how many hours I spent on my wigs and how I customised them, I realised I would take a whole weekend out. I would cancel plans. And it was the same with braids — it would be a whole event. I’d have snacks, I’d cook food, I’d have films ready to go, because I knew that from Friday night, when I’d be taking out the old braids, to Sunday evening, when the new ones were being dipped in hot water, I wasn’t leaving the house.

Then I started to think, why did that not feel like a lot? Why was I not overwhelmed by that? But then, when it came to me simply learning to cleanse and condition my scalp every week, suddenly it’s too much. And that’s when I got into the crux of how I felt about my hair; I realised I didn’t like it. In the same way, I don’t like going to the gym right now. I don’t want to go. So it means if I step into a gym, I’ll step right out because I don’t want to be there. And it’s whether you like the thing you’re doing that will truly determine whether you’ll take the time to do it.

Because I love my wigs, it takes me five hours to style them, and it was light work. It didn’t matter. So that’s where I’m so excited about everything that I do with my hair, everything I learn about my hair, because I’ve realised if you get that part down, if you change the mindset of how you feel about your hair, nothing feels like hard work. You get excited; you plan. Wash day is an event. I have my face masks, my candles ready; I’ve got playlists.

I also have about five playlists, all of which I’ve put in “How to Love Your Afro” for the girlies out there who enjoy playlists. I’ve also put it in the book. So that’s why now I’m like, “Okay, how can I get this revelation to spread as far as possible?” Even if you don’t wear your afro every day, when you do take time with it, you actually enjoy it. You don’t rush through it.

Read also: Tried & Tested: My 4C hair wash day routine and the products that work for my sensitive scalp 

In recent years, we’ve seen a growing embrace of natural hair across Africa and the diaspora. What cultural shifts do you think have helped redefine Afro hair from something to manage into something to celebrate?

I think the natural hair community at the start helped us get to this place. What it looked like was a bunch of natural hair girls learning together, having fun, swapping secrets and tips on YouTube. And it felt exciting. I think for the first time I was like, nobody seems to be stressed, sweating or cussing. Everyone’s having a good time over here. I want a piece of this. And that’s where we started to see self-care rituals and people’s wash day routines, and it became trendy.

I’d say the issue, however, is that as the community has evolved since around 2011 — when it really began to gain traction on YouTube — it has increasingly become something of a popularity contest, where longer hair is often equated with status. If your hair is long, you can feel like part of the community — and if you have a looser curl pattern or a more defined curl, you will receive more praise from within the community and beyond it, as well as from the algorithm. But in my opinion, that is not the direction it was supposed to move in. We were supposed to take that excitement and use it to embrace every hair type.

I have a little afro. My hair is not loosely coiled at all, and I have short hair right now as I’m focusing on my scalp health. So then, where do I fit into that? Do I feel welcome into the community even if it’s not afro hair down my back, or it’s not a wavy curl, or it’s not got five greases and gels on it to make it pop? The question now is how can we progress the natural hair community forward while still having that excitement and focusing on self-care, but without making anybody feel like they’re doing it wrong, or they have the wrong hair type, or they need to do curl definition, or need to be focused on length for them to feel like they’re a part of that community.

You’re a part of it simply because you have coils or curls in your hair. That’s how you become part of it. And that, I think, is where Eurocentric beauty standards still manage to slip in — often without us even realising it. 

For many people, their hair journey is also an emotional one, unlearning beauty standards and reconnecting with heritage. Why is it important to encourage wearing our natural hair as self-acceptance and cultural pride?

If you think about the concept of wearing makeup every day, you can’t leave the house without a full face of makeup. The conversation around that seems easier for people to digest because it’s not based on race, on culture. All women, and now men, can have a weighted opinion on that. And generally, I think we’re all very comfortable with the idea that we don’t have to wear it every day.

Thinking about the health of our skin, letting our skin breathe and being able to manage how we look without a full face of makeup to feel beautiful. That’s a comfortable conversation for us to have. So what, then, is the difference when we have that same conversation in relation to hair? 

Having confidence in your natural hair as it is — without extensions, relaxers, or perms — isn’t to say you should never use them. I’ll still put on a full face of makeup when I want to show up and show out — the same way I’d put on a wig if that’s what I felt like wearing. But it’s understanding who you are, how you feel about yourself, and where your self-worth lies if you do not have it on.

And I think what we need to do as Black women is just disconnect our beauty and our popularity and our status with what we put on our head, knowing that we are beautiful, we are what makes us sparkle. It’s not that 400-pound lace front. That is an extra, and you look great. But if we take it off, you’re still fabulous.

And that’s all I want my advocacy to do for us.

Tell me how your book “How to Love Your Afro” came about? 

At the point at which I thought I could write this book, I had posted, I’d say, over 1,500 videos online. And I remember thinking, if somebody found me tomorrow and the video they needed was 800 videos back, how would they find what they need? It became a question of how I could turn this into a repository — something that makes it easier for people to find and digest exactly what they need, because there was so much content.

The other question is who has actually written it down. Because if you look at the progression of Afro hair knowledge, it’s all online. And even when I was doing my research, there were textbooks and journals, but they were very outdated. The textbooks and journals I was reading on Afro hair were very meticulous and detailed, and they held real importance at the time they were written. But they were focused on things like hot combs and the “bump out,” and I thought: it’s not 1996 — this doesn’t really translate anymore. So how do we, as a community, move forward with all these innovations, technologies, and understandings if so much of the knowledge is still stuck in outdated frameworks, even when so much of it now lives online? 

I thought, okay, maybe I could write a book that captures current, updated knowledge about our hair. Maybe I could help fill that gap — and create something lasting — a keepsake that can be passed down and actually reflect where we are now. It’s timeless, so it will always be relevant. There will never be a time when you won’t need to look at your scalp health. There will never be a time when you won’t need to make sure that people aren’t talking down to you because of your natural hair, or you won’t need a little bit of assistance when you go for Christmas with grandma, and she’s asking you if you’re going to straighten your hair anytime soon. These situations will keep happening, and they will continue happening wherever we are in the world.

So the reason I wanted to make it, and the reason that I wrote “How to Love Your Afro” and actually called it your natural hair companion, is because I want it to basically be me, because I can’t be with everybody all the time. And trichologists and dermatologists can’t be with you all the time. And the internet is a flurry of misinformation. So then you’ve got the book. If there’s ever a situation, you’re in a new season, your hormones change, you’re noticing shedding, you don’t know why, maybe you’ve done one too many tight hairstyles, you have alopecia, you need somewhere to go that’s safe, that is fact-checked and has been co-signed by professionals. Regardless of how old you are, where you live, you can always revert back to it and say, okay, let me check my little book and make sure that I’m on the right path.

And that’s what I want “How to Love Your Afro” to be.

Read also: High tension hairstyles can damage your edges so we asked hair care experts how to keep your strands healthy — these are their recommendations 

What are your go-to tips for maintaining healthy hair that every natural woman should know?

Everybody needs heat on their hair — but most of us don’t realise it. Think about what happens when you go to a salon for a treatment. They almost always steam your hair. The problem is, as consumers, we rarely stop to ask why. I certainly didn’t. You get your treatment, your hair feels incredible, and you leave without ever questioning what the professionals are actually doing — or what it could mean for your hair if you did the same thing at home every wash day.

It wasn’t until I severely damaged my hair — years of harsh chemicals and permanent dyes — that I finally learned the science behind it. My trichologist told me I needed to apply heat every single week when I conditioned, and that completely changed how I understood hair care. Heat lifts the outer layer of your hair strand, called the cuticle. Think of it like scales on a fish, or roof tiles on a house — those layers need to be lifted so that moisture and the ingredients from your conditioning products can actually get inside the hair. Without that, everything you apply is likely just sitting on the surface, vulnerable to evaporating quickly. And the truth is, hair needs to be repaired from the inside out.

The only way to lift the cuticle without causing damage is through heat. Chemicals can do it too, but at a cost we all know too well. That realisation became the foundation of everything — it’s actually one of the core reasons I launched Steam Texture.

Our hero product is a heat hat — the TT Heat — designed specifically for this purpose. You wear it every wash day for 20 to 30 minutes. It delivers indirect, gentle electric warmth that lifts the cuticle without damaging the hair, allowing your conditioning products to penetrate deeper into the strand. Then you rinse with cool water to seal everything in. That’s not just routine — that’s actually the science of moisture retention.

Because here’s the thing, so many people miss: all those beautiful products you’re layering on? If your hair is dry on the inside on wash day, you’re essentially sealing in that dryness with your oils. The products are only as effective as your hair’s ability to receive them.

From a professional standpoint, what are some of the most common myths about Afro hair that you’d like to debunk?

Afro hair is not tough. It is actually the most fragile hair type that exists. If you are too aggressive with it — if you keep ripping and pulling at it — you risk permanent damage at the root. That is called scarring alopecia. I had traction alopecia myself, and thankfully, only a small number of my follicles scarred over. But the misconception that afro hair is strong enough to handle rough handling is genuinely dangerous. If you keep treating it that way, it may never grow back.

The second thing I want to address is the kitchen concoction trend. Mixing ingredients from your fridge and applying them to your hair is not the same as repairing it. Unless you have a digestive system on your head capable of breaking down those molecules and driving them into the hair shaft, that avocado mask is not doing what you think it is. For actual repair, professional formulas like L’Oréal Professionnel’s Absolut Repair Molecular Bi-Phase Oil are designed to target the hair fibre, helping restore structure, shine, and manageability from within. That way, you’re not just coating your hair — you’re truly repairing it.

Third — and this one is non-negotiable — if you are wearing protective styles, you must keep your scalp clean. I understand life gets busy and styles stay in longer than planned, but please, wash your scalp. Whether that means actually shampooing it in the shower or using a targeted solution, do something. Salicylic acid pads, for example — the same ones many people use on their faces — work really well on the scalp too. They break down the buildup between your braids or cornrows and keep things clean and balanced.

If you neglect your scalp, your follicles will become blocked with product residue, dead skin cells, sweat, dirt, and debris. And a blocked follicle cannot produce healthy hair growth. The very opening your hair needs to grow through becomes congested — and that will slow your growth down significantly, no matter how many products you apply on top.

Many people only start seeking expert guidance after experiencing breakage or hair loss. Why is expert-backed advice so important in Afro hair care, and how can people better recognise when they need professional help?

I actually cover this in How to Love Your Afro — there’s a whole section dedicated to auditing and troubleshooting your hair. It’s something most of us were never taught; we don’t truly understand how our hair looks, behaves, or what it’s trying to tell us when something is off.

Take shrinkage, for example. A lot of people celebrate their hair’s length by stretching it out, but if your hair’s shrinkage is loosening, that’s actually a sign your hair is becoming unhealthy. Understanding what your hair does when it’s thriving is the only way to recognise when something has changed — and that knowledge has to start somewhere.

The best place to start is with a professional. It might only take one session. One hour with a trichologist or natural hair specialist can tell you more than years of trial and error. They can assess your density, identify scalp conditions like seborrheic dermatitis, flag scarring, or note that your strands look dehydrated — things you simply cannot diagnose on your own. Think of it the way you’d think of any other audit: your car gets one, your health gets one. Yet when it comes to our hair, we turn to YouTube. It makes no sense.

The other piece of this is understanding what’s happening internally. When I finally saw a dermatologist, one of the first things they did was order a blood test. It turned out I was deficient in four things — iron, B12, zinc, and vitamin D — all of which directly affect hair growth. Once I started addressing those specific deficiencies, my hair began to flourish, regardless of the products I was using.

That’s the part so many of us miss. It doesn’t matter how much you spend on leave-ins and treatments if there’s an underlying hormonal imbalance, nutritional deficiency, or medical condition working against you. Without professional guidance, it will always be trial and error. And honestly? None of us has the time or money for that.

Looking ahead, what do you hope the future of Afro hair care looks like in terms of representation, education, and access to expert-led solutions for African and diaspora consumers? 

That’s actually something I’m actively working on right now. Before this interview, I spent today developing a website where visitors answer a few questions about their hair journey, and from there, I can help build a tailored routine specific to their needs. They get added to a mailing list, I can support them with their particular concerns, point them toward the right products, connect them with the right professionals, or simply sit with them and work through their routine one-on-one.

This matters to me because the internet is full of blanket statements — and blanket statements don’t help anyone. It’s actually why I don’t use the term 4C. It’s too broad. It flattens the very real differences between Black women’s hair into a handful of categories, and as a result, people aren’t getting the specific support they actually need.

The future of this space has to be about taking the individual seriously. Afro-haired women are not a monolith. There are psychological and physical differences between us — even between women who appear to have the same hair type. Brands need to start segmenting accordingly.

I also want to see more genuine innovation. A great example of what that can look like is L’Oréal Professionnel’s Bi-Phase Oil — I was actually in Lagos recently, where I attended the launch of the product. What makes it remarkable is that most oils function purely as sealants, sitting on the outside of the hair strand. With the L’Oréal Professionnel new product, the oil penetrates the hair — which, scientifically, should not be possible — and it also seals and wraps around the strand. For Black women dealing with damaged hair, that is a level of innovation we have never seen before. I used it myself, alongside other stylists in Lagos, and the reaction was unanimous. It was a game-changer.

The fact that a brand like L’Oréal Professionnel has invested the time and resources to develop something specifically engineered for Afro hair tells me we are moving in the right direction. But we still have a long way to go.

I hope to help accelerate that — through “How to Love Your Afro”, through my podcast Texture Talks, and through my brand, Steam Texture. I want to fill the gap while the wider industry catches up. What Fenty Beauty did with its expansive shade range — and then suddenly every brand followed — that’s the standard I want to set with Steam Texture. Build something that truly serves the Black consumer, do it so well that the rest of the industry feels the pressure to catch up.

Read more: Vintage hairstyles we are excited to see make a comeback this year 

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