best hair magazines we loved in the early 2000s

Best Hair Magazines We Loved in The Early 2000’s

For The 99 and Especially The 2000’s

From crinkled cuts to deep side swept bangs, we had every area covered when it came down to hair styling in the early 2000’s. And we think that it is safe to say that magazines catered to hair were the inspiration for that. Yes, for anyone under 18 reading this there were actually a plethora of magazines to choose from when it came time for you to want your next style. Now inspiration for these styles did not just come from our favorite R&B and Pop artists. But they came from those colorful hair magazines that we spotted on our way to the checkout line or in the magazine basket of your beautician. Our favorite musical artists most likely graced some of these covers too, like Aaliyah, Beyoncé and so many more. Hair was all the rage and then some in the early 2000’s and to talk about the process now is straight nostalgia. You were able to be creative, set trends, be set apart and honestly become a source of inspiration today for our 18 and under crew! To say that we get some of our inspiration from that period is nothing short of an understatement and is vastly different from where we get our inspiration for hairstyles now. Did you have a favorite hair magazine from the early 2000’s that you just could not live without? If so, maybe we will mention it below!

Magazines We Loved in The Early 2000’s

Being a young black girl in the early 2000’s was probably one of the most freeing and creative times to be alive when it came to hair and style! This was the time of Aaliyah bangs, and Left Eye inspired ponytails and of course, Cleopatra braids. I think it is safe to say that nothing was off limits. Hair heightened, straightened, fried, dyed and laid to the side with no apologies. You saw the busiest of weaves in the office place and the most colorful hair in the grocery store. Talk about black girl magic! The way we changed our hair then, may not be the same way that we turn our hair now, but it will always serve as “vintaged” redo’s of what hair was in the 2000's. Even in today’s hair magazines, we can point out a few styles that resemble some favorite moments from the early 2000’s. However, if you are missing the early 2000’s and all of the creative culture that came with it, we have you covered. Let’s get started with some of our favorite reads!

Hype Hair Magazine

With its first publication produced in 1992, editor in chief, Belinda Trotter saw a need for women of color to have styles for them in what many of us know as Word Up! Magazine. Before producing Hype Hair, she had a brief fanzine called 2 Hype. With her growing popularity and need for the publication, those in the Word Up! Publication house decided to push her idea and produce Hype Hair magazine. Over the years some of our favorite celebrities have graced this cover like Destiny’s Child, TLC, Tyra Banks, Mary J. Blige and so many more! Did you use to have this as your go-to magazine? If so, what was your favorite issue? Regardless of your favorite cover, we know that picking this magazine was not a hard decision back then and is probably still a natural choice now.

Sophisticate’s Black Hair Magazine

Similar to the trend of hair magazines in the early 2000’s, Sophisticate’s Black hair magazine aimed at black women and how we could continuously transform our hair to be our best accessory. It was as if each issue offered something vastly different from the last and that whenever you found something special you held on to it until you could actually try it. This magazine also offered multiple celebrity profiles, the celebrities current hair trends and how you could achieve it. Some of the most memorable covers are those with Eve, Alicia Keys, Left Eye, Aaliyah and Halle Berry. There were so many black women in different areas of entertainment that it made it feel like, if you wanted to you would be there too. Their cover styles and selection were all inclusive to different black celebrity women, and they even made sure that each issue was different from the last regarding color, theme, and trends. This publication is still in circulation today, so when you have time go and browse the magazine aisle at your local grocery store to see who is gracing their July issue today!

Allure

While Allure is not a magazine specific to hair, there were many of us who browsed the pages when a new issue dropped. Allure, like many fashion magazines, offers a variety of different hair tips, tricks, and trends to keep you up on the latest style and beauty tips. There were not many young women who missed a beat when they made their annual grocery run and made it a priority to grab their copy before they were all gone. Sitting under the publishing house of Condé Nast some of our favorite cover girls in the early 2000’s include the powerhouse singer Christina Aguilera, Jessica Alba and Beyoncé. One signature thing that allure was known for in the early 2000’s was their up close and personal, semi-profile shot of our favorite celebs. Take a trip down memory lane by searching for some of your favorite covers!

Seventeen

Similar to Allure, Seventeen is not a hair magazine but offers the pre-teen and teenage girl tips and advice on what to do for your hair. Seventeen provides more ways to accessorize your hair rather than style it but hey, we all need variety after we’ve gotten our style down right? In the early 2000’s however, Seventeen was what teens girls sought after when trends were on key and when there was something you needed to try before the next trend came along. From Jennifer Lopez and her days portraying the Maid in Manhattan and the Wedding Planner to Mandy Moore transforming from America’s Sweetheart to her own identity in front of our eyes, it was all there. There was even a special edition catered to nailing the perfect makeover called ‘Seventeen Makeover’ with Mandy gracing the cover, and if you were a junior or senior in high school, the prom edition was everything! Does anyone else miss the 2000’s?

Sister to Sister

Okay 18 and under crew, this one if for you. So up until 2014, there was Sister 2 Sister where again, black women would find solace in knowing they would find something they could relate to. In the early 2000’s starts such as Kelly Price, Mary J. Blige, Eve and so many more people of your early 2000’s playlist to make a brief home on the covers. Similar to many magazines at this time, it was not a hair magazine but offered some inspiration and advice on how to style your hair for different occasions. When you look at these covers, it is so hard to not feel like a piece of you is stuck in the early 2000’s with it. Even as a little girl, I knew how important this magazine was to black women and those who loved the creativity that is within the break of the pages.

Elle Girl

Here is another variation of a magazine that had limited shelf time but timeless beauty and fashion tips for young women. With a targeted age of at least 16, Elle magazine launched Elle Girl in 2001 with the hopes of giving high fashion tips but in a young person's way. Though the magazine was only in circulation for a brief moment, the tips had lasting effects on things like giving your hair bouncy curls and how to get the style to match.

The Early 2000’s Gives Us Hair Goals

We would not be giving proper credit to our hairstyles today if we did not account for the numerous trends that emerged in the 2000’s. I mean honestly, the early 2000’s are hair goals if we ever needed them! We literally had some of the best inspiration and definitely loved these hair magazines beyond our own belief. Sometimes we do not realize how much inspiration has tagged along throughout the years, especially today in 2018. We are now seeing the remerging of those 2000’s styles like deep side bangs, jet black hair, copper colored hair, scrunchies, butterfly clips and the bobby pin trend as accessories for styling your hair! We saw these trends on television as well as on shows like Sister, Sister, Smart Guy, Lizzie McGuire, All That, The Real World and so many more primetime shows. If you were not wearing, you were mainly watching and hoping that one day soon your mom would let you have a piece of the fashion to take with you. Seriously, who remembers going to Claire’s or Hot Topic and buying out the rack of butterfly clips, neon clip ins and glittery hairpins and headbands? And if you were not at Claire’s, you were raiding your big sisters or big cousins hair stash hoping that she would not notice that you “borrowed” some of her collection to use as your own. Yeah, we have all been there and loved the risk of living life in the early 2000’s.

We Still Use Magazines for Our Hair Today

Even though most of these magazines have been discontinued or have navigated to the online sector, we are still using hair magazines today whether we realize it or not. Are you a Pinterest user or Instagrammer? If you said yes to one or both of those options, then you are outsourcing the hair magazine industry more than you know! Many times when we search for hairstyles and inspired looks we end up back to where our nostalgia takes us and d often times, published links of the hair magazines we used to love! How amazing is that? Nonetheless, hair magazines will always be apart of what we know to be our hair history. It is somewhat timeless but triggers a memory of what hair fashion was like in the early 2000’s. Whether it jogs your memory or whether it creates a new one, you understand that this meant something to someone once upon a time. If you have never picked up a hair magazine, I encourage you to because there is always something that you can use if you ever get bored with your hair. Thinking of chopping it? There is a special section for that with a grid of maybe 30 to 40 hairstyles. Wanting to go natural? Many hair magazines and fashion magazines offer unique editorial pieces on how to start and what products to use. Contemplating on getting a sew in? Please believe that the makeup of the magazine is a majority of ways to understand, style and preserve a sew in. Convinced yet? I think that you should be! You can never go wrong with shelling out a few dollars for a hair magazine that will take you months on end. When choosing a magazine, just ensure that it is appealing to you and your current hair needs because sure, trends are fun, but they do not serve everyone.

Will You Be Doing It for The 2000’s?

Regardless of if you invest in a few hair magazines or not, understand the importance of them! They were there to fulfill a need, especially for black women. There were not many spaces for us to quickly find tips and tricks on how to love our hair but since the emergence of the hair magazines, we have seen that theory to be no more. It is because of magazines like Hype Hair and Sister 2 Sister that we are more open to more of our own trends and have even impacted the market so much that we infiltrate magazines and publications outside of those geared toward black women. Do you see how those dots connect sis? It is such a fantastic thought! In the early 2000’s, what were some of your favorite hairstyles? Did you seek after magazines while sitting in the shop for what you knew would be a long morning or afternoon? Think about those hair grids sitting above the sink or across from the dryers are probably jogging your memory now. If so, embrace that memory and the next time you step into a shop try picking up the latest issue.
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