Hair oiling days have always been a family affair for comedian and actress Lilly Singh.
The entire Singh clan—including her cousins, aunts, and uncles down the street—would gather in the living room, each waiting to have her scalp massaged sternly by her mother or grandmother.
“Yes, it was good for the hair,” she said in a recent interview. “But it was also just—for lack of a better word—a vibe.”
The good vibes persisted until Ms. Singh started high school, where her polished, oiled appearance was seen as decidedly uncool by her peers, a perception she and her cousins internalized. “I don't think I ever did a shiny braid in high school — I'd rather jump off a building,” she deadpanned.
It's a familiar childhood story for many women of color, who remember to wash their hair before the start of the new week to avoid being teased at school or stared at in public.
“My parents are Pakistani, and I've been oiling my hair ever since I had hair,” said Kirin Bhatty, a celebrity makeup artist who grew up in Los Angeles. “I hated it as a kid because when you're a kid, you want to be like everyone else and nobody else put oil in their hair. I just wanted, at that moment, to have one Botanical extracts dot.”
Like Ms. Singh, she gave up her weekly ritual when she went to college.
But recently, in sharp contrast to the hair hygiene practices of the late 1990s and early 2000s—when dry shampoo came off at even the slightest sign of greasiness and near-daily hair washes were inappropriate—the Oiled hair has become a distinct part of the 'It' girl look.
On TikTok, where the hashtag #hairoiling has amassed nearly two billion views, young women are posting videos of themselves heading to the gym the runs wearing the kind of greasy ponytails Ms. Singh would never leave the house with. One influencer, Nicole Mehta, wore one buttered bun at a New York Fashion Week show. Another, Diipa Büller-Khosla, slicked her hair back to get down the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival. In a TikTok video, influencer and model Valeria Lipovetsky shows her followers how to succeedwet hair' look using oils and masks.
“You want the hair to look dirty and greasy and weird,” he jokes in the video.
Celebrities like it Hailey Bieber, Kim Kardashian and Sophia Ritchie — who have a strong influence on the biggest style trends — have shared in recent years that they oil their hair, too. And in February, Beyoncé said Essence Magazine that the hair oil in her new hair care line, Cécredinspired by the anointing practices of her mother, Tina Knowles.
“People always ask me, like, 'Hey, I saw this on TikTok — what oil do you think is good for my hair?'” said Xavier Velasquez, a celebrity hairstylist whose clients include Maria Sharapova and Olivia Wilde. “They kind of want an easy way to style their hair in the wet or after they get out of the pool or the beach.”
The trend is part of a wider shift that some industry experts are calling the “skinification” of hair – a renewed focus on nourishing the scalp and hair through a multi-step routine rather than just styling. Sales of scalp care products rose 24% in the first quarter compared to the same period last year, according to market research firm Circana, compared with a 9% increase in the overall hair segment. And hair oil sales growth, according to the company, has outpaced the overall category by more than 1.5 times so far this year.
Sephora has also seen “a significant shift in consumer preferences” toward products that address scalp and thinning concerns and “increased interest” in hair oils, said Jennifer Lucchese, the company's vice president of merchandising. hair care, in a declaration by email.
With skin care, “people started moving away from color and cosmetics to 'wait, what if my base skin was great?' said Rooshy Roy, founder and CEO of Aavrani, an ayurvedic skin care brand that branched out with a hair care line in collaboration with Ms. Singh. “I think that change is happening with hair care.” Aavrani's hair products — which include an oil and a serum — quickly sold out after appearing on Sephora's Canada website in March.
Consumers are now focused on lifting “that fundamental level of hair,” Ms Roy said.
References to oiling the scalp and hair can be found in millennia-old Ayurvedic texts from the Indian subcontinent, where the term “champi” and its derivatives translates to “massage” and is the origin of the word shampoo.
An Indian businessman, Sake Dean Mahomed, helped spread the practice to the West in 1814 when he opened a bath in Brighton, England, which offered a champi with Indian herbs and oils, presenting it as a cure for all kinds of health problems. He became so popular among the aristocracy that he was appointed “Surgeon Shampoo” for King George IV.
Ms Büller-Khosla, who is also the founder of skin and hair care brand Indē Wild, based her hair oil on a recipe her mother had been making at home for decades. Contains castor oil, sesame oil, hibiscus flowers and native Indian herbs. The United States has become the brand's biggest market since it introduced the oil two years ago, he said. (For the record, at 65, her mother, who stars in Indē Wild's branding, has a full head luxuriant hair reaching down to her ankles.)
Other cultures have long had their own versions of hair oil. In Latina communities, scalp care often includes ingredients such as; maracuja (passion fruit) or acai oil. For black women, moisturizing the scalp with oil is a common place wash dayssaid Taylor Anise, who took to social media to document her journey back to wearing her natural hair.
Some people have mixed feelings about the new appreciation for an old, cherished ritual. Tensions came to a head last year when a rosemary-mint hair oil sold by Mielle Organics, a brand long admired and strongly held among blacks, became so popular on TikTok after being shared by a white influencer that it sold out in stores. across the country. Some black women were shocked and felt protective of the product, which was more than just a trend for them.
Similar sentiments have been brewing lately for some South Asian women. The recent boom in hair oil is an example of the “exoticization of our culture,” said Priya Satiani, a talent manager in Los Angeles who also remembers hair oil as a central part of her childhood. “It's a fine line – on the one hand, it's amazing to be appreciated, but it's also terrible to be appropriated.”
Many South Asians are now reconsidering the cultural practice. Ms. Satiani said she began oiling her 9-month-old niece's hair to pass the tradition. Ms Bhatty, the celebrity makeup artist, introduced the hair oil to her partner and they have since made it a weekly self-care session.
Ms Singh said: “This thing that I've been really insecure about and being teased about is trendy — does that hurt me a bit? Yes, I won't lie.”
“Now when I have oil in my hair, people will come up to me and say, 'Your hair looks so good right now,'” she added. “And I'm like, 'Where were you when I was in high school?'
