Blanche Womack-Ross had been searching for a stylist for more than five years who could come to Simpson County her home and service her. She remembers the days when she could walk into a hair salon and come out a new woman after a shampoo, conditioner and silk press. Now, in her elder years, she’s in a wheelchair and homebound, missing the salon experience.
In 2022, her cousin, LeWanda, put her in touch with Eva Garner, owner of Cowworld Hair Salon in Magee, Miss. To accommodate Womack-Ross’ needs, Garner offered over the phone to travel to her home to service her hair. That following week, Garner arrived at Womack-Ross’ residence, hair tools and supplies in hand. The kitchen serving as their designated styling station, Garner backed her wheelchair to the sink before using a black trash bag to cover her clothes to keep them dry.
That day, Garner gave Womack-Ross a shampoo and color treatment. After one wash, Garner applied chocolate brown hair dye to the customer’s greying hair. Garner placed her under a dryer to let the color set before beginning another round of shampooing. Next, Garner runs conditioner through Womack-Ross’ hair and rinses it before applying a leave-in conditioner. After a blow-dry, Garner silk presses her client’s hair and curls it.
After putting the finishing touches on her client’s hair, making sure every curl is in place, Garner presents Womack-Ross with a mirror. Excitedly, the elder woman inspected the results. Her hair, which reaches midway down her back, appeared the healthiest it’s looked in years. Feeling an irrepressible stinging behind her eyes, she began to cry with joy and gratitude.
“This feels so good,” Womack-Ross gushed as she ran her fingers through her hair. “I can’t believe I’ve been missing this. I’ve been looking for someone for years,” she told Garner through tears of elation.
Womack-Ross had not been to a professional stylist in two years. Most shops she called wouldn’t do house visits or weren’t wheelchair accessible. And with her hands giving her problems, she wasn’t adept at doing her own hair. In that time, her hair had thinned out, and she had some dead ends that needed to be trimmed.
“When she came and did it and I saw it, it was like, ‘Oh, I got it. I got it back.’ It took me back to the woman I used to be because I always kept my hair up and I kept my nails up,” Womack-Ross told the Mississippi Free Press.
Over the last two years that the 67-year-old has been Garner’s client, she has seen significant growth in her hair, and it’s gotten thicker in the process.
“If I call her within a week, she’d be here if she’s not out of town. And then the beauty of it, sometimes she’ll call me, and she’ll ask me, ‘How’s it holding up? How you doing?’” she added.
‘Pin Curls, French Rolls and Wraps’
Eva Garner grew up in Simpson County, Miss., spending her summer days working on her grandfather’s farm until she turned 16 years old when she went from field work to working behind a register at McDonald’s through her high-school years.
Around this time, Garner’s interest in the hairstyling industry began to develop. She grew up watching her mother do hair out of their kitchen, and she learned everything she knows from her observations. Eventually, she started shampooing her sister, aunt and mother’s hair, using them as her proverbial guinea pigs.
“When I was in high school, my form of expression was updos like pin curls, french rolls and the wrap. The wrap was my signature look. So I had like a couple of things going on,” Garner told the Mississippi Free Press.
Even though her interest lied with hair, a lack of support and encouragement from members of her family left her with doubts. Still, people would tell her that while she wouldn’t make much money in the business, her talent was too good to let dwindle.
“I started looking at some schools and school tuitions to see if I could get some scholarships,” Garner said. “I found a school (the Academy of Hair Design in Pearl, Miss.) that was at a reasonable price and that took financial aid, and it was enough in budget where I could pay the rest of my financial aid if I had to. So I took them up on that offer.”
She attended the school in 1998, graduating a year later and opening her salon in June 1999. Her grandfather wanted to make her dreams come true, so he gave her a section of his garage to turn into a salon, which became Cowworld Hair Salon in Magee, Miss.
Her family pitched in to help furnish the place, and her mentor Rose Nelson provided her with some secondhand salon equipment. Once her salon opened, her biggest challenges were advertisement and attracting new customers, but she rectified that by assembling a promotion team of young girls to pass out fliers in exchange for getting their hair done for free.
After five years in the industry, Garner returned to the Academy of Hair Design to receive her instructor’s license because she enjoyed being able to encourage and to instill values into other hairstylists.
“One thing I did learn from my mother was great customer service and to treat people like you want to be treated,” Garner said. “It’s very important to have great communication and to understand what your guest is looking for and what your guest is trying to achieve in the long haul.”
‘Leave Out a 100’
In 1999, Garner attended a Bronner Brothers hair show in Atlanta, Ga., where she met a hairstylist who suggested an alternative path during a time when she was struggling to pass a test that was important to receiving her instructor’s license, one she had failed three times already by this point.
“If you can’t pass the test, why don’t you just be an educator?” the stylist suggested.
“Huh?” Garner questioned, perplexed.
“You come to the shows all the time. Why don’t you just become an educator? That way, you can work when you want to and you get to travel with it,” she reiterated to Garner.
The idea led her to an opportunity greater than she had imagined. Garner walked around the hair show, stopping at a booth for Ashtae, a Black-owned hair brand. She had been using the company’s products at her salon, as she wanted to support another Black-owned business. Once she approached Ashtae’s booth, she saw what she called “hypeness.”
“I saw how this man was telling us how to save money. He wasn’t being stealthy and keeping all the information to himself,” she recalled. “How he got rich—he was trying to tell us to do the same thing. So I’m like, ‘Let me talk to these people.’”
She approached one of the owners, Ramona Woods, expressing interest in becoming a hairstylist affiliated with the company. Woods questioned whether Garner had what it took, challenging her to go sell their curl wax displayed on the table. Never one to back down from a challenge, the Magee native did just that.
Approaching a customer lingering around the table, Garner sold her on the benefits of the shampoo and high-gloss curl wax. As they talked, the sale shifted from one of two products to a bundle deal.
“I’m like, ‘It’s no good to buy this when you need this,’” she recalled. “Baby I probably sold about $100 worth of products.”
Garner left enough of an impression to eventually participate in a boot camp with the hair company and eventually joined as one of its stylists and educators, affording her opportunities to travel around the world. Now an international hairstylist who has been to Jamaica; Cancun, Mexico; Dubai; South Africa; France; and Rome, Italy, she teaches seminars when she travels. She also teaches online classes and does some hands-on hairstyling with Ashtae.
“When I saw that these people had a lot to offer, I took advantage of it,” she said.
Since joining Ashtae, Garner has been able to participate in New York Fashion Week, putting together several productions for the show with her company Team Experience. It’s a collaboration between her and four other individuals where they give 10 future designers and 50 models the opportunity to experience Fashion Week in New York and Miami. She’s also done fashion shows in North Carolina, Mississippi and other states.
Her advice to the upcoming generation of hairstylists would be to go to school because education never stops and because a stylist should always be abreast of the latest in hair health. Secondly, she would recommend that they listen to and give great consultations to their clientele.
Eva Garner’s motto as a stylist is to take a woman from the ordinary to the extraordinary, she said.
“I would like for my guests to all walk away with full confidence within themselves. I build that up as we’re going along the hair. I give a lot of encouraging words because I want you to come in as a three and leave out as a hundred,” Garner said.
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