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Brooklyn’s Curlfest celebrates natural hair during 4th annual beauty festival

It was a steaming hot Saturday in Prospect Park, but the #BlackGirlMagic was even hotter as thousands of women ascended on the fourth annual Curlfest, the largest natural beauty festival in the U.S. From waist-length braids to decorative butterflies nestled in afros, the women stunned from their crowns to their sandaled toes.

The yearly event is produced by the five women of Curly Girl Collective, an experiential marketing group that specializes in multicultural beauty. The event’s mission is to create a space of celebration for women of color to celebrate their locs, afros and twist-outs. “Curlfest was founded on the idea of you all needing to be celebrated,” Tracey Coleman, director of events, said at the press conference as she pointed to the crowd. “If you look around, and you see images of beauty, they don’t necessarily look like us.”