Female Founded: Silke

What did you want your brand to feel like before you knew what it would look like?

Before I knew what SILKE would look like, I knew exactly how I wanted women to feel: relieved, confident and at ease with themselves.

As a child of mixed heritage, I became aware very young that my hair was seen as “different.” I remember being around eight years old, watching other girls with smooth, shiny hair that seemed effortless, while mine felt misunderstood and difficult. Hairdressers often didn’t know what to do with it, and those experiences left a lasting emotional impact on me.

That feeling never really left. Even after becoming a hairstylist and spending 37 years working with women, I saw how deeply connected hair is to confidence, identity, and self-worth. I realised women carry so much emotional “noise” around their hair: stress, worry, maintenance, and self-consciousness.

What kind of consumer do you feel most in dialogue with?

The customer I feel most in dialogue with is a woman who understands that hair is not just aesthetic, it is emotional.

She is often thoughtful, self-aware, and busy, and while she cares about how she looks, she cares even more about how she feels within herself. She wants ease rather than complexity, and support that quietly works in the background rather than something that demands attention.

I also never forget the women who have never had to worry about their hair in a conscious way, because life has a way of changing that. Ageing, hormonal shifts, postpartum changes, stress, or health can all introduce new relationships with hair at different stages. Nobody is completely exempt from those transitions over time.

I feel in dialogue with women who are seeking relief as much as results, women who want to reduce the “hair noise,” feel more at ease in their reflection, and move through their day without that constant background awareness of their hair.

What reference – visual, emotional, or cultural – has stayed with you the longest?

The reference that has stayed with me the longest is not one single image, but a feeling I first understood as a child.

Visually, I still remember the contrast between women whose hair seemed effortless, smooth, shiny, and accepted, and my own experience of hair that felt “different” and constantly needing explanation or correction. That early awareness shaped me deeply.

Emotionally, what has stayed with me is that feeling of sitting in a salon chair as a young girl and sensing, even without words, that my hair didn’t quite belong in the same category as everyone else’s. That moment created a lifelong sensitivity to how much hair can affect confidence, identity, and belonging.

Culturally, I’ve always been influenced by the way hair carries meaning far beyond beauty, especially within mixed-heritage identity, where it can sit between worlds and expectations. That duality never really leaves you.

So rather than a single reference point, it is this ongoing memory and emotional truth that has stayed with me the longest: that hair is never just hair — it is how we are seen, and how we learn to see ourselves.

What have you unlearned about the industry since starting out?

What I’ve unlearned most about the industry is that more is always better.

Early on, there’s a tendency in beauty to believe in complexity, more steps, more products, more intervention. Over time, and through 37 years of working directly with women, I’ve realised that real impact often comes from the opposite: clarity, simplicity, and understanding what the hair needs rather than overwhelming it.

I’ve also unlearned the idea that hair problems are purely technical. Of course, technique matters, but so much of what women experience around their hair is emotional, confidence, identity, memory, and how they feel in themselves. Once you understand that, the conversation shifts completely.

And perhaps most importantly, I’ve unlearned the pressure to follow industry noise. Trends move quickly, but the lived experience of women doesn’t change at the same pace. Staying close to that truth has been far more valuable than chasing what’s current.

What do you value more now than you did five years ago?

What I value more now than I did five years ago is simplicity, but not simplicity in a superficial sense, simplicity in its most disciplined form.

I have come to really value clarity of intention. Knowing exactly why something exists and being brave enough to remove what doesn’t serve that purpose, has become far more important to me than adding more. In both product and communication, I now understand that restraint is a strength.

I also value truth in experience more than external validation. After 37 years working with women, I’ve learned that what works for them in real life matters far more than trends, noise, or industry opinion.

And on a personal level, I value emotional integrity more than ever, staying connected to purpose, and ensuring everything I create remains honest, useful, and grounded in real women’s needs.

Who or what is influencing how you think right now?

Right now, I’m influenced first and foremost by real women and their lived experience with hair, not by trends or the speed of social media. Especially now we see an older demographic of women finding their place in the beauty industry.

When I moved from working hairstylist into the brand and industry space, I initially felt out of place, as if decades of hands-on experience didn’t carry the same weight. I experienced self-doubt, but over time I’ve come to see that my perspective is my strength. 

I’m also influenced by science-led thinking, because it helps cut through a lot of noise and unnecessary complexity in the industry. Today, so much viral hair advice is repeated and reshaped without real understanding of different hair types, often based on people with naturally easy-to-manage hair that doesn’t reflect the wider reality.

That has made me more certain of the importance of my own voice. I don’t believe in trend-led advice culture. My focus is on what genuinely works for real women, across different textures and experiences, grounded in both lived expertise and evidence.

What’s something you’ve changed your mind about recently?

Something I’ve changed my mind on recently is the role of science-backed products and how they truly align with what we are building at SILKE.

For a long time, the industry has leaned heavily into layering, more steps, more products, more complexity, but I’ve come to really question what is necessary versus what noise is simply. This explosion of products often leaves women more confused, not more supported, and it can waste both time and money without solving the root of the issue.

What I’ve become very clear on is that when you align truly effective, science-backed formulations with the protective function of SILKE hair products, the results can be incredibly powerful. The silk itself plays a real protective role, reducing friction, helping to minimise breakage, and supporting the hair in its most vulnerable state, especially overnight.

In that sense, our products are tools that help science-backed products perform better for longer, protecting the hair so the benefits of what you apply during the day are not immediately compromised overnight through friction, dryness, or breakage.

I’ve been doing my own physical trials and testing, and it has reinforced something important for me: simplicity grounded in evidence is far more powerful than complexity driven by marketing. It allows women to cut through the noise and actually move forward with their hair, rather than stay stuck in cycles of trial and error.

For me, that alignment, between real science and the protective function of SILKE, feels like where the most meaningful innovation sits.

You create products to help hair grow and maintenance - if you could expand into another category what would it be?

If I were to expand into another category, it would still sit very closely within hair, because my obsession has always been both emotional and functional, not expansion for its own sake.

I am deeply interested in brushes and combs, not as simple accessories, but as tools that are often completely underestimated. The ergonomics, the design, the material, and most importantly the function of each tool in relation to different hair types is something I feel has been overlooked for a long time.

Different textures and conditions of hair require completely different handling, yet this is rarely explained in a meaningful way. I don’t see that as just a product gap, I see it as a knowledge gap.

So, for me, any expansion would not be about launching “more things,” but about improving understanding. Helping women know what to use, why they are using it, and how it genuinely impacts the health and behaviour of their hair.

That idea, education as much as product, is where I feel the most potential still exists.

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