In a bright pink bus, this Baltimore mobile salon owner helps clients embrace their natural hair through locs

“YOU LOOK GOOD” a welcome mat declares as clients head up the pink stairs of the bus. A fur-draped driver’s seat; a steering wheel decked in rhinestones; a glitzy seating area; pink curtains; a hair wash unit; and a hooded dryer and pink styling chair await clients on their last step up the 1997 Ford wrapped in pink vinyl. 

“It’s a big pink van that definitely draws attention,” said Lauren Kelly, owner of The TrillestDollhouse Mobile Loc Shop, her mobile hair salon. “I’ve had people stop in traffic to take pictures. I’ve had people pull over and stop driving to come knock on my door to ask about my business.”

“I even had a delivery guy who was dropping off one of my packages knock on my door and ask about my services. Now, he’s one of my clients,” she said. 

Kelly, 21 years old and a licensed loctician, is well-versed in creating locs — hair formed into single twists, coils or braids that mature into thick strands over time. She said she sees each strand as unique and a reflection of her clients’ patience and dedication to their locs.

Kelly opened her salon in 2023 after she ditched wigs and pressed hair for locs. Locs were the gateway to her proudly embracing her natural hair, so she decided to help others do the same through her salon.

But the idea for a mobile salon came while driving on the interstate highway. “I’ll never forget it. The exit was 31c. I was driving home, and next to me was this pink company car,” Kelly said. “My favorite color is pink, and obviously it caught my eye. I was like, ‘Oh my God! I love it. I want one.’”

She began searching for a vehicle to house her salon. After browsing Facebook Marketplace and Used Vending for a van and viewing them in person, she purchased a navy blue bus that had previously been a mobile barber shop, gave it a pink makeover, and transformed it into The TrillestDollhouse Mobile Loc Shop. She received funding to purchase and renovate the vehicle from state grants and by participating in a student business pitch competition through Bowie State University, where she is a rising senior.

Mobile hair salons have become ideal spaces for hairstylists, a trend that blossomed during the pandemic to bring a safe salon experience to people’s doorsteps. Since then, the business model has prevailed, with hair service providers making the drive to their clients, who are often homebound, busy or prefer not to make the trip to a traditional salon. 

Though mobile salons are not as widespread as brick-and-mortar salons because various states have restrictions or requirements that need to be met to operate a mobile salon. In Montana, Alabama and New Jersey, mobile hair salons were not legal until recent years. 

Kelly needs to pass a vehicle inspection and fix her lights before getting on the road in August to serve her older clients and even students at her university. For now, her mobile salon is parked in the driveway of her grandmother’s yellow wooden house, and clients flow in daily. 

Between mirrors festooned with gold swirls and a flower wall clumped with roses, Kelly, wrapped in a tribal apron, stood and styled a client’s hair in a pattern similar to a woven basket. “Perfect as usual. Thank you as always,” the client said as she looked in the mirror and patted her hair in admiration of her first ever detailed style. 

Kelly is inclusive of all clients at The TrillestDollhouse Mobile Loc Shop, though she estimates that men make up over 90% of her clientele.

“I would think that with the pink bus, most of my clients would be girls,” Kelly said. 

Various services are laid out for clients based on their needs: Starter locs, retwists, loc repairs and instant locs. Starter locs are created from scratch and later develop into mature strands. Only the roots of the hair are redone for retwists. Loc repairs focus on restoring the health of thinned locs while instant locs achieve the loc look immediately by using a special crochet needle. Each service takes between two-and-a-half hours to four hours. 

During services, clients sing along to worship music or a song of their choice, sleep, chat with Kelly or put prayer requests into a prayer jar, which Kelly prays over. 

“It’s just always good vibes. She’s very warm,” said Francis Wangui, whose locs stop at his neck. 

Wangui, a regular at Kelly’s mobile salon, decided to get locs because he was tired of the amount of time it took to work his way through his afro. “It would be a 12-hour affair,” he said. 

He said he likes the versatility of his locs and being able to document his hair growth. “It’s kind of like a story for me,” Wangui said. “I can look back on where my hair was and tie it back to where I was in life.”

Jacobie Thornton, a client since 2023, said locs make him feel Black. He’s had his locs for over 10 years.

The connection Wangui and Thornton have with their locs is not uncommon. “People basically have locs as a source of strength or a new beginning,” said Nicole Gibson, a loctician and founder of Locs of Honey Salon. “Locs also have a very spiritual meaning. Some people feel like they are antennas to God or to the other world,” she said. 

Kelly did not foresee becoming a loctician who deals with natural hair. Growing up, she was insecure about how her kinky hair stood up in comparison to straightened hair that fell like a waterfall. So, she would straighten her hair or hide behind wigs. She also didn’t like that her peers at her predominantly white high school would question her about her hair.

Black women often straighten or conceal their hair as a need to make it palatable for mainstream U.S. culture, said Tia Tyree, a professor of communications at Howard University and a media scholar who focuses on images of Black women in mainstream media. 

In 2019, the California legislature passed The Crown Act, a law that protects against race-based hair discrimination in public schools and workplaces. A similar bill was introduced at the federal level in 2021 and 2022, but Congress has failed to pass it. 

Since the passage of the California law, several other states have passed similar laws to protect against discrimination related to hairstyle or texture. Among them is Maryland, which passed its own version of The Crown Act in 2020. Still, there remains a deep-rooted problem in the culture surrounding hair, Tyree said.  

She added that “accepting and celebrating your natural beauty is a way to acknowledge who you truly are and disregard the longstanding pressures to change to be accepted by others.”

It wasn’t until Kelly had to cut off her hair in 2021, due to heat damage from straightening irons, that she began to appreciate her natural hair. She began playing with styles on her hair and did her own locs, which she loved instantly.

 “My only regret when it comes to locs is not doing it sooner. I’ve never felt more me,” Kelly said.  

Classmates at her university would ask who did her locs and “I would be like ‘me,’ and they would say, ‘can you do my hair,’” Kelly said. She would do their hair in the library or in the basement of her home. And she would do it effortlessly because she’s always had the knack for hair, she said. She recalled spending hours on YouTube watching hair tutorials and trying out the styles during her teenage years because her mom wasn’t a hair person.

Kelly has blonde curly locs usually pinned into a bun at the back. Twists drop at the front. She named her locs “Lola” because personifying her hair made her care for and love her hair, she said. 

Kelly sees her journey with her hair as a learning experience and why she’s able to properly educate her clients about their locs. She advises them to come once a month for retwists, not get retwists too frequently because it can thin their hair out, wear bonnets at night and spray rose water on their locs in the morning. 

New clients, usually women, are initially hesitant to get locs because they don’t want to go through the “ugly phase,” Kelly said. “There is no ugly phase. It’s really just you accepting what you look like with your natural hair,” she said.

They end up stunned at the forms their natural hair can take when she finishes with their hair, Kelly said. “It’s a fulfilling moment just helping people feel more like themselves and embrace their hair.”

While her mobile salon venture has been a success, she’s also faced challenges. One time, she dropped a clip down her sink’s drain, which clogged up the sink and slowed her work down. Another time, her pipes froze and burst during her first winter operating the salon. “It was kind of rough. I was not prepared,” she said. She’s ready to take on the coming winter and has blankets and a fan that can switch to a heater, she said. 

All around the salon, there’s a sense of community. It’s evident in the signatures on the wall that new clients sign, the pink styling chair her brother gifted her, and the interior of the bus, which she designed with her mom and dad. 

“I just want everyone to feel like a part of this because they are,” Kelly said.