Madam C.J. Walker's Hair Products Are Still Around, and Available at Sephora
In Netflix's Self-Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker, Octavia Spencer stars as America's first self-made female millionaire—a woman who built a haircare empire from scratch.
The real Madam C.J. Walker did indeed make a fortune from selling—and teaching thousands of others to sell—her hair system, which called for scalp massage, Walker's proprietary sulfur-based ointment, and hot combs. The entrepreneur died in 1919 at the height of her fame and success, but her titular company slowly foundered thereafter, as the Great Depression and other events took their toll.
But that doesn't mean that anyone hoping to purchase Walker's remedies is out of luck. In recent years, her haircare legacy has been continued with Madam C.J. Walker Beauty Culture (MCJW for short), a line of hair products manufactured by Sundial Brands exclusively for Sephora.
Although they're not the same formulas that Walker herself once manufactured—and it's probably not a good idea to use century-old ointments anyways—this new line retains a strong connection to the trailblazing hair maven.
A post shared by MCJW Beauty (@mcjwbeauty) on Jun 7, 2019 at 3:16pm PDT
Walker's great-great-granddaughter A'Lelia Bundles (who also wrote On Her Own Ground, the biography that Netflix's Self-Made is based on) is the brand historian for MCJW. And Sundial Brands's founder, Richelieu Dennis, is a Liberian refugee and who got his start as an entrepreneur by selling products on the street in Harlem. Since finding success, he's launched a $100 million fund for investing in businesses owned by black women, and even purchased Villa Lewaro—the landmark mansion Walker constructed in Irvington, New York—with the hope of continuing her vision for the place.
As he said in 2018, per the Journal News, "The idea is we would create a think tank where we would have some of the some of the best minds in the country thinking about entrepreneurs and the challenges of entrepreneurship for women and women of color."
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