There is not a time or a place I will ever wear a du-rag outside of my bedroom. The last time I wore one outside of the comfort of my bed was during a 104-degree flu which had me wandering around, slightly hallucinating in the common areas of my house, desperately searching for clementines. No, the only place I welcome a du-rag is in a hip-hop video, but that being said? Nothing made me more content when Aaliyah hung up her own leather du-rag and our favorite thugs started rockin' more free Afros. So, you could see how incredibly confusing it was when I stumbled upon Nasty Gal's leather du-rag and its claim that sometimes "you just have to du you," bringing sexiness to black hair maintenance. For a whopping $50, of course.
"Nightwalker's Vegan Leather Du-Rag" is not all the rage. In fact, the models locks on Nasty Gal's website has fine, straight blonde hair and, although I am making an enormous assumption, I think it's safe to say that this girl has never needed to wear a du-rag in her life. I assume that if she did wear one, it would probably make her hair very flat and matted for no reason except fashion. This, of course, warrants the question: Who is this du-rag made for, and why?
No, it's not for us kinky-haired babes that are secretly dying to wear our satin bonnets and du-rags out in public. No, it's not for my cousins that innocently play ball in their du-rags with their braids tightly protected underneath. Nasty Gal's vegan leather du-rag is attempting to make a profit off the new natural hair craze...and they aren't the only ones. The Huffington Post has put the price tag on the black hair business of approximately $500 billion — read: insanely high. I'm not about to prevent anyone from making some cash just because of their hair texture and I will say that Nightwalker (not even going to address the annoying name) does have some serious appeal.
For one thing, I definitely am trying to phase out the amount of leather products in my life so the fact that it's vegan is great. Although, if you don't know, vegan fashion can often use synthetic products that are very destructive to the environment. Secondly, I have fallen asleep with my hair out while sleeping on leather couches before, and just like some of my natural gal's have promised, my hair looked SO dope the next day. The thing is, I'm pretty sure that if my hair was tucked under a bonnet of any fabric, it wouldn't have held it's form at all. Hmmm... I guess there is only thing I would change about this vegan leather du-rag and that's the fact that it is STILL a du-rag. Oh, and that it's modeled on a girl who's never needed to use one in her life. Personally, I'm ready to transfer Aaliyah's title of Queen of the Damned to the Queen of the Du-Rag.
Even if you put a giant pentagram on a du-rag or it was a magical du-rag that gave me telekinesis ONLY while I was wearing it, I still wouldn't include it in my outfit. Fortunately, Nasty Gal has retired this gem from its site, but if the du-rag catches on and IF you catch me wearing one? Please, check my temperature because I clearly have a very high fever. One thing I can say, however, is that Nasty Gal's leather du-rag has inspired me to look into purchasing a vegan leather pillow for those blow-out days.
Image: Giphy
