By Kimberly Wilson ·Updated May 10, 2026 < /> Getting your Trinity Audio player ready… For years, many of us had heard, or even experienced the same trauma: the dreaded itchy scalp that came from wearing our hair in protective >Diann Valentine was, and many of our scalps have a lot to thank her for.
Valentine spent the better part of her career making other people’s big moments look flawless. She spent years as an internationally acclaimed wedding and event designer, producing events for celebrities and Fortune 500 companies around the globe, and built a parallel career as a two-time author and television personality. She was the it girl, and in 2019 opened Glow + Flow Beauty in Inglewood, California. After that came what usually happens when you spend intimate time with Black women when they let their hair down (literally) — you hear what is and isn’t working for them. From hair, to relationships, to whatever they’re looking to get off their chest. But as far as scalp health specifically, the same complaint kept coming up, and eventually she stopped being able to ignore it.
What she kept hearing from her customers confirmed what she already suspected: the discomfort was universal, and the industry had spent decades doing nothing about it. “And honestly, I found that deeply troubling,” she says. “It made me realize how normalized discomfort had become in our beauty routines.” She also learned something that complicated her approach. Braiders had grown accustomed to working with coarser fibers because it gave them more control during the install. It had to work equally well for the woman wearing the >SLAYYY Hair officially launched July 1, 2023.
Three months later it was in TJ Maxx and Marshalls, and within the first year Target came calling. The brand is now in more than 200 Target stores, with nearly 500 more locations planned, and it is projecting $2 million in sales this year, up 150 percent from 2024. Those numbers matter to Valentine, and she is equally clear-eyed about what it costs to move that fast. Tariffs on Chinese manufacturing, economic headwinds in retail, and the fallout of the Target boycott have all tested the brand in ways a projection chart can’t fully capture.
None of this business would work without Riann, her daughter and co-founder, who brings something to the brand that Valentine is the first to admit she couldn’t have manufactured on her own. Riann grew up inside the culture SLAYYY is speaking to, and Valentine built the business infrastructure around it. And right now, with bigger brands scrambling to catch up on scalp health, it matters more than it ever has.
Since SLAYYY launched, major brands have started rolling out “silky” versions and “apple cider vinegar washed” options, and Valentine isn’t fooled.
In early 2025, Consumer Reports published a first-of-its-kind investigation into synthetic braiding hair, testing ten of the most popular products on the market and finding toxic heavy metals and carcinogens in nearly all of them. The chemicals found included lead, benzene, and methylene chloride, each linked to serious long-term health consequences including cancer and reproductive harm. Nearly 72 percent of Black women wear some type of hair extension at least once a year, and protective >published in February 2026 tested 30 products and found heavy metals in 29 of them. The FDA has still not established federal limits on lead in synthetic braiding hair.
Long before federal regulators or major beauty brands started paying attention, Valentine was already having these conversations inside Glow + Flow.
“If brands had decades of loyalty and never prioritized your comfort, health, or concerns before, it’s important to ask why they are doing it now,” she says. “At SLAYYY, scalp health and comfort were never a trend or marketing strategy. They were the foundation of why we created the brand in the first place.”
What keeps her grounded is the feedback from women who have actually worn the hair. She hears from women who spent years assuming that itching and irritation were just the price of wearing a protective style, and from women for whom SLAYYY was the first install that didn’t send them home itching within hours. “Those stories constantly remind us that what we created is bigger than hair,” she says. “It’s about confidence, comfort, and care.”
Scalp care is where the brand is headed next, with a full product system, new styling tools, and more color options already in development. The thing Valentine seems most interested in, though, is something harder to put on a shelf. “SLAYYY represents a shift in how Black women deserve to be considered within the beauty industry,” she says.
“Not as an afterthought, but as the standard.”
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