'We just happen to do hair': Algonquin salon offers empowerment workshops for girls, helps parents care for Afro-textured hair

Tucked away in a strip mall off Randall Road, many people might drive right past the Donna Lowe Salon, but for Claudia Harris, a client who has been taking her two daughters there for years, the unassuming storefront provides a sense of community.

The Algonquin-based salon is a place where Harris’ daughters can go to have their hair styled, and celebrated, by other Black women, she said.

“I can’t explain to you how much this little salon in the middle of Algonquin can make a huge difference for a young person when, you know, ... no one’s really telling them their hair is beautiful at school,” she said. “To go to [the salon] and hear ‘Your hair is so pretty’ or ‘We could try this or that,’ it’s just – it’s a safe place.”

In a predominately white area, that kind of experience can be hard to come by, and, being Guatemalan, Harris said she struggled to keep up with her daughters’ hair care as they got older.

Harris, a resident of Gilberts, said she was walking through the grocery store with her two girls in tow when Donna Armstrong-Lowe, the salon’s owner and founder, approached her and offered her hair care services.

“I remember thinking ‘Dear God, please let this place stay open’ because you don’t see many of them, and then when they are around, they don’t seem to last very long,” Harris said. “It was such a godsend for my girls. Honestly, it really was.”

This small interaction is emblematic of how Armstrong-Lowe said she began to build her business back in 2016 – by constantly looking for little opportunities to serve her community in a big way.

“You don’t live in a world and just take,” Armstrong-Lowe said in an interview Monday. “You have to find your gifts and figure out how you can help benefit your community.”

Armstrong-Lowe worked as a hair stylist for a few years after graduating high school before going on to work in social services and, ultimately, in the corporate world, she said.

After leaving her job as an executive with Aldi to deal with some medical issues, Armstrong-Lowe went back to working as a hair stylist part time. She had moved from Chicago to Lake in the Hills with her family and she said she felt a calling to do something new that kept getting stronger and stronger.

“It baffled me how the communities are so very separated here, and there was nothing here for people with Afro-textured hair to get their hair done,” Armstrong-Lowe said. “So I kept saying, ‘We need a salon, we need a salon,’ so when I left my job, I kind of just knew that’s what I was going to be doing.”

After nearly two years of preparations, Armstrong-Lowe opened the Donna Lowe Salon in March 2016. From the beginning, she said she wanted the salon to be a place where local youth who might look different from the majority of the community could feel confident in being who they are.

“We have a lot of people out here that is fostering children of color or adopting or, you know, biracial families and the kids get bullied a lot at school and your self-image, your identity, is tied into how you present yourself,” she said.

The Donna Lowe Salon has stretched beyond the world of hair to organize regular female empowerment workshops led by local mentors and experts brought in to coach young women and girls on anything from college applications to handling microaggressions with grace, Armstrong-Lowe said.

These workshops bring girls of all ages into a room together, which Armstrong-Lowe said is designed to give younger girls someone to mentor them and to answer questions about what it’s like to go through the local school system as a person of color.

“What we say is we just happen to do hair,” she said. “But what we really do is we make an impact on people’s lives. We are here to help encourage and to mold and to empower the people that walk into our world, and it’s not just a Black thing … it’s a multicultural salon.”

In a world that still is socially segregated, Armstrong-Lowe said she hopes the salon can be one place where people of different races can come together to get some positive exposure to each other’s cultures and lived experiences.

This mission was intensified after the killing of George Floyd sparked a national reckoning with race and racism at the end of May, she said.

“I hear people saying we don’t have a problem in McHenry County,” Armstrong-Lowe said. “My son is 21 and my other child is 14 and both of them was called the n-word in the school system in the exact same school … so you cannot tell me that we have made progress.”

“And until McHenry County start really dealing with those systemic issues, we’re going to continue to see it,” she added.

One way to address issues of racism and racial bias in the community is through education and empowerment and, as one of very few Black business owners in the county, Armstrong-Lowe said that is where she comes in.

Beyond the programs offered by the salon, Armstrong-Lowe said she serves as a community connector. People, whether they are her clients or not, can come to her with questions and, even if she may not know the answer, she will find someone who does.

This hard work was recognized last year when the Donna Lowe Salon was awarded the Community Champion Award by the Algonquin Lake in the Hills Chamber of Commerce, Armstrong-Lowe said.

Now, as the COVID-19 pandemic stretches on, she said she is relying on the community to show her the same level of support so that the salon’s doors can remain open.

“I’m supporting six other families so every business decision I make is not just about [me], it’s about those families eating and it’s about all of the kids,” she said. “But, you know, we’re still going and our community has been behind us.”