Solange Knowles is always herself, with her authenticity and sincere desire for the celebration of Black culture evidenced by the work she does across art, music and film. She’s even intentional about the way she personally presents, in order to best speak to who she is and also inspire other Black women to be who they are.
Read about how Solange’s Saint Heron is expanding into a multidisciplinary platform here.
After shaving her head in 2010, Knowles rocked a cropped afro that eventually blossomed like a lotus around her face. It was the beginning of a new natural hair movement, one fully documented by early Instagrammers, bloggers and culture hubs. She had an inner knowing about our beauty, too—that we defined it and understood how best to embellish it. We didn’t need external factors looming over us, telling us what was acceptable. We know how to adorn our crowns and physical forms.
One of the singer’s most famous beauty moments is the album art for ‘A Seat at the Table,’ her Grammy-winning project that encapsulated the Black American experience. For the album’s cover, she glanced at the camera, pink and blue-gray-tipped hair clips still present in her deep waves. In a 2017 sit down with her big sister, Beyoncé, for Interview Magazine, Solange talked about the reason why she chose to show her hair in a transitional phase.
“[When Neal, the hair stylist, put the clips in, I remember thinking, Woah, this is the transition, in the same way that I’m speaking about on ‘Cranes [in the Sky],'” the 35-year-old said. It was really important to capture that transition, to show the vulnerability and the imperfection of the transition—those clips signify just that, you know?” The singer’s single, “Cranes in the Sky,” documented getting through difficult life phases and welcoming major changes.
The hair moment was instantly viral, sparking a number of folks to try out the look for themselves. That’s just Solange though—making her life and beauty moments poetic and encouraging the Black women who love her to try it out, too.
Keep scrolling to see her top 10 glam looks throughout the years.
