Sometimes the best things in life come from making slight detours. Take Karl Jackson, otherwise known as Karl J, who 17 years ago enrolled in the now defunct Gordon Phillips Beauty Academy to become a barber, and from there charted a different course.
“When I was in high school I was cutting the guys hair in my neighbourhood and I earned money from it so I enrolled in beauty school to become a barber,” Karl said.
“In New Jersey they don’t have a separate programme for a barber or hairdresser, it’s a cosmetology programme so you have to do everything.”
Shifting gears to study hairdressing wasn’t something he planned on doing, and even readily embraced.
“I just gravitated to the women’s cosmetology side of it and from that point on I never cut another guy’s hair. Like any guy I fought it based on people’s perceptions, ‘will they think ‘I gay’ because I was a typical young man?’,” he said.
“When I got there I realized it was just the opposite. I could get paid good money for being around beautiful women all day. I had an untapped talent which just seemed to come naturally.”
Karl thrived in school and even racked up a number of awards.
“I would go home from beauty school to the kitchen of my parent’s house running up the electricity bill,” he said. “They used to be upset that I had women coming in and out of the house. But afterwards everyone wanted me to do their hair and from that time I never looked back.”
Now Karl J runs an exclusive hair salon, Karl J Salon, out of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, with a star-studded clientele that includes Vivica Fox, Meagan Good, Lil Kim, Foxy Brown and a slew of other big names. He has expanded from just doing hair to working on movie sets, working with Jay Z on video shoots and tyling for celebrities.
Over the past 17 years Karl has seen black hair care change drastically with more women going from focusing on their own hair to a heavy reliance on weaves, extensions and braids. He is also putting on a celebrity hair show at the Garfield Sobers Complex later this month.
“As someone who makes a majority of my money off of weaving I would say that it’s changed tremendously. Weaving has done wonders for the hair industry and it has also done a disservice,” he said.
“Now when people wear weaves they have gotten away from maintaining the integrity and health of the hair because you can’t see it. A lot of time you take these beautiful weaves out and the women have no hairline or the hair is breaking. I think we’ve taken our eye off of actual hair care in styling. It has also changed because a lot of stylists are aspiring to do greater and bigger things. A lot of people don’t understand the integrity of the business anymore and it compromises their work as a stylist.”
Karl admits that weaves have become very popular and there has been a complete shift in women’s attitudes towards them.
“When I first started in the business women were self-concious and didn’t want you to know that they had a weave, but now that’s totally changed,” he said. “Now a weave is an accessory that’s no different than a bracelet or a watch. Women will tell you what kind of weave they’re wearing, it’s embraced now.”
Karl thinks that the people in the profession need to see it as such, the way that doctors and lawyers do, and not just as a way to make quick money, although he admits that the hair business has been very lucrative for him and he has made a name for himself.
“My parents knew I would achieve great things with me being stubborn and hard-headed,” Karl says of his years in the business.
“I don’t quit, I’m not afraid of failure and I can’t live with regrets.”
