Remember our super cool blog post on UK Black owned businesses  written a couple of months ago? Back then we had featured SimplyMoi as one of the hottest website where you could buy natural and organic products. Well we just had a chat with energetic, inspired and delightful Bernadette James. And it goes a bit like this...

  Black women with natural hair are unprofessional. Well, at least that's what you could believe if you submitted a Google search for “unprofessional hairstyles”. The images produced by the search are almost all of black woman with natural hair. As well as Google hitting the headlines earlier this year, the BBC also published an article about a black woman who was asked not to wear her natural hair to work and was encouraged to wear weave.

Whilst we are still waiting to officially launch Afrocks - our brand new website that will connect you with Natural Hair Stylist in Your Area (you can register to get notify when we launch) - and following our blog post on 26 freakin cool UK black owned businesses: here is a new episode! A quick video at the Calabash of Culture in Sydenham.

Back in March when I was right inside the twists and turns of setting up Afrocks and getting the word out, I was already thinking about writing a fantastic blog post about Black-owned businesses. Now is probably the right time: there is a great hashtag going viral on Twitter #UKBlackOwnedBusinesses featuring literally hundreds of dedicated black people doing their thing. Here is a list of the most creative, fun, cool Black-Owned businesses we found through this amazing hashtag! PS: This is has been put together by the Afrocks team based on our own criteria, which are of course subjective. It doesn't mean that other businesses not listed below aren't good...

You missed it! Don't worry, we gathered the best photos of the Fest for you! There are some pretty amazing style that will inspire you for sure!

Amazing pictures of Women and Men Rocking their Grey and Silver Hair with Natural Hair and Locs. It makes us want to grow some grey hair about right now! Especially love the #14 !

A few month ago we wrote a very popular blog post about Locs salon in London. We are now coming up with amazing pictures of Black Men with Locs. Just see for yourself, pictures speak more than a thousand words!

Making changes in your life is never an easy thing to do, especially if it entails incorporating new habits into your already well worn routine. When you decide that it's time to make that change and you begin to transition, be it that you want to become a vegetarian or a gym bunny, you want to learn a new language or you decide to go natural. There are things that you can do to help you reach your goal, here are a few suggestions.

I don't know if you have come across this little story that has been going around the internet lately. It started on Tumblr and then moved over to Twitter and claimed that Google Image Search is racist. The reason for this is that if you do an image search for "unprofessional hairstyles" it only returns images of black women but if you look for "professional hairstyles" it will return only images of white women.

For all our locs people, we know how difficult it can be to find the right place to get your beautiful hair washed and maintained. Here are 5 salons we personally tried recently.

That’s it, we have decided to put the relaxer away. We hardly wear weaves and wigs these days, and when we do, it is a protective method or a way to experiment with new looks or colours without damaging our hair. Yes, we are embracing ourselves, yes we are proud of our heritage and yes, we are beautiful black women… However, this newfound love for our hair needs to be alert and proactive because, I feel that the self-depreciating habits that we have all acquired through our socialisation or the constant exposure to the mainstream canons of beauty, can easily sneak their way on our path to self-validation.

[:en] A few weeks ago we started the pre-launch advertising campaign for our Natural Hair marketplace platform and had a fabulous response from interested clients and stylists. With +500 sign ups and counting, I have to admit that I was genuinely surprised. I also received a decent number of emails from stylists asking about ways to increase their client base and raise their profile.