Hi, I’m aris de la rosa.
Hi, my name is Arisleimy, but you can call me Aris. Dominican born with my soul and home in Kelowna, BC.
My curly hair journey started in 2014 when I moved to the US for an internship in a ski resort in a small town called Lutsen, MN. I decided to leave my hair natural since I knew I wasn’t going to find a hair salon that could feel comfortable working with my hair and that I could afford.
Lucky me, my best friend moved with me so we used to do our hair since we were the only two black girls in town with curly coarse hair. But when I say “do our hair” I mean silk press, store box colors, I even got highlights ( don’t ask me how my hair was after that) haha.
To be honest, 8 years ago you couldn’t find all the options you can find now in terms of products or even information about how to style or treat natural curly hair.
This is how out of the necessity of styling my hair, I started educating myself with what I could find on the internet and afford, to understand my hair, to learn what worked or not, meaning trying all the products that I could find in Walmart.
In January 2016 I came to Canada, specifically Vancouver to study ( Diploma in customer service) and I had the same situation that I had in MN with my hair, with the difference that I was here by myself so I had to learn how to do everything to keep my hair pretty.
After so many tries and errors, I understood that for me to be able to have “pretty hair”, it needed to be healthy. At that point, I knew what products worked for my hair but I didn’t know the “why”, why I had to deep condition my hair, why my hair one day was frizzier than another, etc. and that was when I realized that I needed more than YT videos to understand curly hair.
This is how I started attending workshops from renowned professionals to gain more knowledge not just about my type of curls, but everything from wavy to coily.
Immediately I fell in love with all things curly not only for me, but to work with others who maybe at some point were in the same situation I was. I started to get more education in cutting techniques, styling, and everything I needed to know to offer the best service possible, and still in a nonstop learning process.