Before Beyoncé Knowles-Carter became Beyoncé, she was a young Texas girl sweeping hair in her mother Tina Knowles’s hair salon in Houston. And now she’s returning to her, yes, roots with her latest business venture: her very own hair-care line, Cécred (pronounced sacred).
“In a world where so much of our lives become available to so many people, the word sacred means more and more to me,” Beyoncé tells the Cut. “I believe the things we love the deepest are to be protected. Those moments of taking the time to feed yourself, water yourself, ignite your soul with the things that are real. That’s the energy of this brand.” Back in May 2023, Beyoncé posted a photo to Instagram hinting at this latest project, and for months social media has spectated on what’s coming. The internet, of course, also tried side-eyeing it. But this isn’t just a bunch of products with Beyoncé’s name on it. The science-backed brand has a team including Neal Farinah, Beyoncé’s longtime hairstylist, as lead global stylist; trichologist Dr. Kari Williams as head of education; and former CEO of Milani Cosmetics and Living Proof Grace Ray as CEO. Her mother, Knowles, is vice-chairwoman of the brand.
Beyoncé’s hair has seen it all: bleaching, cutting, heat damage, and more. We’ve seen her don an array of hairstyles and watched her cut all of her hair off and grow it back — an experience she talked about recently in an Essence magazine interview. “It was a very big emotional transformation and metamorphosis that I was going through,” she told the magazine. “So much of my identity as a performer has been connected to flowing hair. Cutting my hair off was me rebelling against being this woman that society thinks I’m supposed to be. I was a new mother, and something about the liberation of becoming a mother made me want to just shed all of that. It was a physical representation of me shedding the expectations put upon me.” Now, with her hair strong, healthy, and lustrous and after years of testing, she’s giving us the tools to do the same, and she wants to provide a product for everyone.
Cécred is launching with eight products: a clarifying shampoo and scalp scrub, a hydrating shampoo, a moisturizing deep conditioner, a reconstructing treatment mask, a fermented rice-and-rose-protein ritual, a moisture-sealing lotion, and a nourishing hair oil. The prices range from $20 to $50 and are made with a patent-pending technology bioactive keratin ferment that restores shine, makes hair two times more resistant to breakage, repairs chemical damage, and makes hair two times smoother. With ingredients including shea butter, honey (of course), squalane, rose, and more, the blend of rich ingredients deeply nourishes the hair and brings hair back to life. The signature scent of the products, temple oud, is rich but not overpowering with notes of oud, warm musk, and night-blooming jasmine — I could lightly smell the scent on my hair as the days passed.
A few weeks ago, I spent the day with Knowles, Farinah, and the Cécred team to not only learn about the products but try them myself. After doing a scalp assessment, I learned I had significant buildup of oils and sweat. With one use of the clarifying shampoo, my scalp not only felt refreshed but also looked significantly different, having been cleansed of all residue that was there. I had a full weave with minimal leave out that is severely broken and damaged, and one use of the reconstructing-treatment mask returned the luster of my hair and left it silky and smooth. My hair was visibly repaired and looked healthier after one treatment — it left me shocked. My weave was also shiny and felt immensely lightweight and full of body after the cleanse and conditioner. “I love to see the hair dance,” Farinah kept saying to me. It’s one of his rules when he does Beyoncé’s hair, and he had the same rule when doing my own. While I loved the products and the results I got that day, I’m most excited to try the two-step rice-and-rose-protein ritual, a powder made to be shaken up in a vessel with warm water before applying to the hair and followed by a smooth silk rinse. I predict it will be the brand’s hero product because of how innovative the ritual is and how effective the results already are.
Fermented rice water has been used in Asian beauty cultures for its length-retention and strengthening properties. Knowles told us about a time she tried to do the long fermentation process herself, and while she loved the results, the time spent was something she didn’t look forward to doing ever again, so Cécred cut down the processing time and bottled up the ritual into two steps. Like the rice water, ancient and global traditions are at the core of the brand. The white sculptural bottles are textured like actual ancient sculptures — ones that will live on beauty lovers’ shelves with ritualistic hair traditions bottled up to serve their hair needs.
Beyoncé considers this brand a “legacy project … rooted in my ancestry,” she said in the Essence interview. Hair has become a generational connection in her family, from growing up in her mom’s salon to now teaching her own daughters about hair care. Hair has always been a treasured part of a Black woman’s life especially. “Cécred mixes the wisdom of generational hair-care traditions with cutting-edge technology,” Beyoncé tells the Cut. “It was important that the products really worked across all hair types and could create visibly healthy hair so you can show up any way you want.”
“Once a hairstylist, always a hairstylist,” Knowles said while making sure editors’ conditioners were being sealed under the dryer. Knowles recollected on her salon days in the early aughts mixing shea butters and oils to bring moisture to textured hair, but whenever she needed science-backed products, she’d go to the store to buy products that weren’t necessarily made with textured hair in mind. She and Beyoncé had always talked about wanting to blend both worlds — the traditional ingredients and the science-backed formulas to bring moisture, strength, and shine — with one brand. “In a world where the needs of textured hair aren’t usually prioritized, by actually centering our needs, we created a better solution for all,” Beyoncé tells the Cut. “We raised the bar.” Textured hair has been a second thought for decades in the hair industry, despite needing more moisture and being more susceptible to environmental changes. But Beyoncé wanted to create something that was for everyone, using textured hair’s needs as a starting place. “I focused on solving the needs of textured hair and found through our testing that other hair types and textures that shared the same needs for moisture, strength, and shine also benefited,” she says.
Cécred is available today on cecred.com, and if you’re unsure which items to try, there’s a hair quiz that’ll direct you to the best products for your personal hair needs. Finally we’ll all get hair that dances like Beyoncé’s — we may not have the same 24 hours as her, but maybe, just maybe, we’ll have the same luster, length, and moisture as Bey. For me, that’s close enough.
