Tracee Ellis Ross Launches Haircare Brand for Curly Hair

The brand has been 10 years in the making and will aim to address the needs of a community that continues to be overlooked. "Beauty can be an aesthetics conversation, but the truth is for people of colour... beauty and how we express it and our hair and how it defies gravity can be political as well," Ross told WWD. "The culture of beauty has been so steeped in patriarchy, racism, and sexism for so long."

In an Instagram post announcing the debut, Ross mentioned she spent two years working with a chemist and sampled 74 different formulas on both herself and a range of women with 3b to 4c hair textures.

Pattern "is for those of us who need more than a quarter size of product," she wrote. "Large conditioner sizes that actually fulfill the unmet needs of our community. Accessible pricing because everyone should have access to their most beautiful hair in their own shower, and gorgeous packaging that conjures the legacy of our history and makes us all feel like the royalty that we are."

The 'phase one' part of the launch includes three conditioners, a leave-in conditioner and two hair serums. Accessibility is another major component of the launch and it's also why the products are priced between $9 and $42.

This isn't the first time Ross has addressed the lack of inclusivity within beauty. Under a slideshow of images from her childhood, posted recently on Instagram, she wrote: "Growing up, society told me there was a right way to wear my hair and a right way to look. Those ideals didn't match what I saw in the mirror, so I tried to beat my curls into submission - putting body lotion in my hair, sleeping in rollers, blowouts, relaxers, texturizers, ponytails so tight they gave me a headache; and I even whipped out an iron (the kind you use for clothes) in an attempt to straighten it that was."

Pattern launches September 9 and will be first available for purchase on PatternBeauty.com. The products will also retail across Ulta stores in the US, two weeks after the initial launch.

Photo via Instagram