Carol Thomas stands outdoors Simply As a result of Salon in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, which she has remodeled right into a sanctuary for girls dwelling in shelters and dealing with troublesome life transitions.
Picture by Tracey Khan
For over 20 years, Carol Thomas has been serving to ladies really feel lovely inside and outside—whether or not they’re longtime purchasers in her salon or ladies dwelling in shelters with nowhere else to show.
The Jamaican-born stylist, who owns Just Because Hair Salon on Carlton Avenue in Fort Greene, has constructed a popularity not only for professional cuts and flawless coloration, however for utilizing magnificence as a type of therapeutic and empowerment.
Since 2017, Thomas has quietly led a private initiative to serve ladies dwelling in transitional housing throughout Brooklyn. By way of month-to-month pop-up styling periods and wellness days, she and her group supply free haircare, facials, and make-up companies to ladies dealing with hardship, together with survivors of home abuse, the unhoused, and moms awaiting everlasting housing.
“It wasn’t a few birthday or a vacation. These ladies simply wanted to be ok with themselves once more,” Thomas stated. “We needed them to stroll out feeling remodeled, inside and outside.”
This system began earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic, with Thomas working with two shelters specifically — one for girls who had skilled abuse and one other for younger moms and their youngsters. The stylist supplied the companies on Sundays, and as much as 10 ladies at a time would obtain full pampering periods on the salon.
“That type of work stays with you,” she stated. “I’ve met ladies who have been lecturers, company staff, and younger individuals who simply had a stroke. You understand shortly how simply life can change for anybody.”
Whereas the extra emotionally intense periods with abuse survivors ultimately grew to become too heavy to proceed recurrently, Thomas nonetheless works intently with a close-by shelter that homes moms and kids, providing seasonal styling occasions and self-care days.
Her dedication to giving again stems from her upbringing in Jamaica. Raised by a schoolteacher mom identified to provide away her youngsters’s garments to needy college students, Thomas says she discovered early the worth of quiet generosity.
“My mom would take our uniforms, even our socks and undies, and provides them to the youngsters who had none. And she or he’d say, ‘Don’t you ever inform anybody,’” Thomas recalled. “That’s how I discovered what it meant to take care of others.”
Past her shelter outreach, Thomas has led a number of neighborhood empowerment packages, together with a six-week Promenade Queen Challenge that helped highschool women put together for commencement. This system included mentorship, etiquette classes, donated attire, and makeovers, funded partly by purchasers who contributed to a donation field within the salon.
She additionally organizes an annual neighborhood hair present, which returns this August. The occasion options women as younger as 3 years previous strolling the runway in customized types and outfits, usually for the primary time.
“A few of these women have by no means been handled like this,” she stated. “Once they get to see themselves all dressed up, it shifts one thing. They carry that confidence with them lengthy after.”
Now, along with her salon and neighborhood initiatives, Thomas has launched an all-natural hair care line, ‘St. Charles Natural Hair Care’, named after her late father, combining her experience in styling together with her ardour for wholesome hair and wellness. It’s one more means she’s extending her attain and affect far past the salon chair.
“Hair is just the start,” she stated. “When somebody sits in my chair, I would like them to go away feeling complete.”
For Thomas, the mission stays easy: use her expertise to uplift ladies in any means she will, simply because it’s the proper factor to do.
