Taiba Taiba is making waves with her braids: just don’t call her a hairdresser.
The London scenester, of Nigerian heritage, has garnered a cult-following; first with a braiding business, before she flipped to crafting bespoke objects with hair during lockdown. Think plaited neon mirrors, brown, wrapped rocking chairs, and two-toned woven stools.
An exhibition of these works, entitled ‘We Need Some More Black In Hair’, took place in East London hotspot restaurant Bistrotheque back in 2021, and changed her game as both artist and activist. “On the same night the exhibition opened, Rihanna messaged me,” she says. “I didn’t see it until the next day, when I was hungover and looking at my DMs. I saw her name and screamed. I was like - that can’t be real!”
She freaked out: “I started typing really frantically, and my friend said you just need to calm down. Be a bit cool. So I took a step back and thought, no: actually I’m amazing. I shouldn’t be so shocked by this,” she says. This is typical Taiba: her success, in part, can be put down to confidence in character and an incredible sense of self. “I took a moment, then I responded calmly.” The exchange resulted in the singer commissioning a bespoke, Louis Vuitton-style bag, constructed in Taiba’s signature braid style. Since, her star has ascended.
Earlier this year, her output expanded into fashion with a tropically-saturated clothing collection, named ‘Bundles of Paradise’. “I don’t want it to be seen as a collection of clothing that I’m going to churn out. I want it to be seen more as a concept,” she says, of looks that departed from the braids that defined her previous work. Instead, whimsical pieces appear billowing and wig-like; artfuly constructed into everything from vests, gowns, and mini skirts, to stilettos and spellbinding, wide-brimmed hats.
“I was researching birds of paradise, and was really inspired by the colours and eccentricity,” she explains. “So I went to the hair shop, and started looking at the available colours of hair to start recreating it.” There is a message in each, too: “I think it’s an expression of how black people use hair extensions, with colours, with patterns,” she says.
Most upcoming creatives putting out their first designs pray for an email from the Dazeds and i-Ds of the subcultural publishing world to borrow a look. Not Taiba. In fact, she has declined any requests, unless it is to shoot full looks on people that fit her narrative.
“The reaction was really good, but I’ve basically turned down people asking me to use it and magazines because I don’t want it to be mixed in with loads of different things, and dilute what it is,” she says. “It all stems from my culture, and expression through hair. Hair has such a key part to play in identity in the black community, and for me it’s really important to make sure that it’s being taken in properly. Not someone thinking, ‘Oh my God, this looks so cool. I want to wear that.’”
“I’m not trying to say I don’t want people to wear it. But it does have to be specific people, who understand the meaning behind it,” she says. There was one special person she had in mind.
“After Bundles of Paradise, my team contacted Tems [the Nigerian mega-star singer]. I wanted my first commission to be with someone who made sense with my work,” she says. The moment came when Tems wore her slinky, hairy black and red gown to the Met Gala after party this May, having become the joint first Nigerian - alongside singer Burna Boy - to grace the Met steps. “To see her wearing this at the afters made me so proud,” she wrote on Instagram afterwards. “It’s so important that us black people support each other. We still have to work a lot harder to prove ourselves.”
And that is what she is set to do. With new comissions (she can’t elaborate on those, just yet) and plans for a levelled-up exhibition later this year, Taiba is committed to putting her message out there. “Black hair is so often seen as a difficult thing,” she says. “I’m making it so practical through my art.”
