Jawara Wauchope Affirming “What’s for you will be for you” & “Injecting” Authentic Beauty Into Today’s Work

For celebrity stylist Jawara Wauchope, hair and fashion are a life-long passion. Growing up Wauchope spent a lot of time around hair and salons, as his aunts owned them. This experience, and the lasting impression it made, would play a major role in the trajectory of his life going forward.

“I would see how people would come in upset and leave happy, and I would always feel like oh wow hairstyles make people feel better” Wauchope said. This ability to transform a person’s day and attitude through hairstyle struck a chord, leaving a profound impact, “As I got older, I realized that you know your hair has a lot to do with how you feel, who you are and how you present yourself and it’s an extension of you.”

In his youth Wauchope had other interests and dreams, including the aspiration to become a teacher. This idea would soon fade into something else altogether as his interest in hair and fashion grew in his pre-teen years.

In high school Wauchope assisted in salons when able, and in senior year of high school, he spent time on Madison Avenue, feeding his interest in fashion. This inspired his goal to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), but by the time that realization came, he knew he wouldn’t be on track to start college after graduating high school.

Wauchope spoke to this relatable dilemma that teens face if they don’t have a clear idea of where they want to go by junior year, “If you’re going to a four-year school right out of high school, a lot of times you have to start applying in junior year. I didn’t have time, but I knew I didn’t want to wait.”

Wauchope also felt torn between choosing to pursue hairstyle, or fashion. In his youth, he was convinced hair and fashion were two separate interests, and was faced with the dilemma of which he would pursue. This decision was further challenged by the idea of corporate work, “I had this fixation about going into the corporate world and I felt like that is going to make me super successful.”

From there, Wauchope began to research his options. He was driven and knew he couldn’t wait. With that, he explored colleges offering fashion programs that he could enter after graduating high school. This is where two-year colleges came in.

“I wanted to go away to school,” he explained, “I felt like you know what? This is the perfect opportunity to go away to school and get that experience. I didn’t want to do four years away though. So I said let me go to an away school for two years, get that experience, then I can come back and pursue fashion.”

Wauchope highlighted the benefits and challenges of attending Herkimer College in the early 2000’s, touching on the local community culture, “At the time in Herkimer, the town was not that welcoming to students, especially students of color.”

Despite this, Wauchope found community and comradery in shared fashion interests, culture connections and, to his surprise at the time, other students he met from New York City that were attending Herkimer as well. “I didn’t feel as isolated as I thought I was going to feel, because there were a lot of people from New York and Syracuse. I did feel I had a community of fashion people I just connected with.”

Wauchope never lost sight of his passion for hair while at Herkimer. His entrepreneurial spirit shined as he continued to do hair during his time attending the College, “I had these flyers I would pass out on the college campus and girls would come to the room and I’d do their hair.”

Of attending Herkimer College, Wauchope spoke to other life lessons he took away from his time at the College, “It taught me a lot and a good amount of self-sufficiency and understanding history in a way that I felt really made me be able to look at the fact I can fuse hair and fashion together. Learning from Miss Cirelli and Miss Jenny was definitely influential in the decisions I made after that.”

Wauchope further highlighted the opportunity Herkimer offered to others, “What I loved about Herkimer was that children that would not have normally gotten the chance to go away to college got the chance to see what going away to college is.” Wauchope spoke to the importance of this in the lives of those around him at that time, “I remember a couple kids in school that were like ‘wow I got the chance to go away’ and it kind of fueled them to go and do more. Because maybe what they were seeing at home or maybe what they were seeing in their city was not really inspiring for them to be successful.”

About life after Herkimer and FIT, Wauchope highlighted a relatable experience, “After I graduated from FIT I did a few internships in fashion buying offices and I realized I hated it.” This sentiment of familiar feelings of transition and realization some have following graduating college and stepping into what they thought they should for a career. But with the realization that fashion buying wasn’t his calling, came another; “I never lost sight of hair.”

Wauchope spoke to this understanding, recalling his drive to explore hair in fashion during his education, “As I was studying, I was still obsessed, I went deep into the fashion world and started looking up people doing hair in fashion. I was like, ‘What if I do hair but work in the fashion industry?’ So I started reaching out to them while I was in school and still reached out to people that I wanted to work for and wanted to assist. And once I graduated from FIT and cosmetology school I started assisting people that do fashion shows and ad campaigns. I realized wow there’s a big business around that.”

Wauchope’s career began as he assisted for five to six years and continued to assist others in Europe. From there, he stretched his wings to explore his work independently, “I started to go on my own and do my own shoots and shows and tests with people and that’s how my career grew. It was basically fusing my two loves together, fashion and hair.”

Emphasis on the power of belief in oneself, self-advocacy, and making it a point to call out and challenge gatekeeping placed a spotlight on the issues of self-confidence and the impact of social media today. On this Wauchope shared, “Social media has such an effect on people feeling like they’re not enough and they don’t have enough because someone else is showing all that they have and all that they’re doing.”

Wauchope spoke to overcoming this effect of social media and self-comparison, “I think its just putting yourself in the mindset of ‘Oh okay that’s something I’d like to achieve, how do I go about getting it?’ As opposed to ‘That’s too big for me, I’ll never make it’. I’ve never subscribed to that specific idea. I had my challenges but there was this support system I had, my family, and honestly just pushing myself to really see myself in that industry.” Further underscoring the importance of determination and belief in yourself through it all Wauchope shared the wise words, “What’s for you will be for you.”

“When I started assisting people in fashion and not seeing anyone that looked like me doing it, that was very deterring to me.” Despite this, Wauchope was not going to shy away from what he knew was for him. He was determined, “I told myself ‘you know what, I don’t see myself in these rooms, that means that I need to be in these rooms’ meaning that ‘I want someone else to see me in this room that can say ‘oh wow he’s doing it, so I can do it too.’ And that kind of pushed me to keep doing and doing. I did deal with a lot, but its definitely one of the things that pushed me.”

This push to make an impact made it clear that though Wauchope may not be a teacher by trade, he is an incredible role model with much to learn from, “I can offer that to young people that work on my team, the shows I work on, the brands that I work with, that would not have been accepted in those rooms maybe 10-15 years ago.”

About this impact and the legacy he seeks to leave behind Wauchope closed with, “I inject a lot of beauty that I saw around me into fashion now. I think I speak to a lot of people who thought those same things were beautiful that never got that representation. I feel like that’s kind of what started my style, and that’s something that I’d love people to remember about me ‘He went in there and changed it’”

By Laura Simonelli