Tracee Ellis Ross Opens Up About the Inspiration Behind Her New Haircare Line Pattern Beauty

Tracee Ellis Ross is on the cover of Glamour UK‘s October 2019 digital issue, out now.

Here’s what the 46-year-old Black-ish actress had to say…

On her new venture, Pattern Beauty, a haircare line, and how it is very much inspired by her own personal relationship with beauty: “I went through those teenage years when everybody is searching to figure out who they are and all of a sudden become so aware of how they look, how they are seen, what’s cool, what’s in…sadly, there were not a ton of images, outside of my family, of people who looked like me.”

On her realization that women of color have subliminally been told that their hair type was undesirable: “Oh, there was no ‘eureka’ moment. When I was going through all of that I didn’t have an understanding of the larger cultural context; I didn’t understand that the culture of beauty and the industry of beauty was actually specifically leaving me out and not celebrating me.”

On how her brand has been 10 years in the making and the journey it’s taken her on: “That has been fraught with many disappointments, me running up against many of the things that were exactly what made me feel bad about myself. People saying to me: ‘You don’t have the credibility to do this, you need to partner with a professional,’ and me attempting to explain that I, like many women of color and people with curly hair, have become our best experts because the industry has not supported us.”

For more from Tracee, head to glamour.co.uk.