Curl Power

By Lisa Arnett
April 2025 View more Discover

Curls de Luxe

3340 Lacrosse Lane, Naperville

So many of Joliet native Phailon Edmon’s childhood memories revolve around hair, from styling her dolls’ hair to mixing up her own experimental hair products. “My mom went to cosmetology school and she would always do my hair, but by the age of 11, I was doing my own—and the hair of neighbors and friends, and even my mother’s friends’ hair,” Edmon says. After high school, she decided she was content to keep her passion for hair a hobby and instead studied computer science in college and started a tax practice. Six years in, she felt a pull to pursue hairstyling professionally—“I couldn’t stay away,” she says—and went back to school to study cosmetology.

Edmon had either straightened or relaxed her own hair as long as she could remember, but while attending Regency Beauty Institute in Darien in 2007, she decided to go natural. “I just always thought, curly hair is unruly; my hair needs to be straight,” she says. “But I decided to stop relaxing my hair while I was in school.” She found that her curly-haired clients shared similar baggage about embracing their natural hair texture. “I’ll have a client come in with the most beautiful curls and say when she was younger, she was teased about her curls.”

While continuing to work in salons on all types of hair, Edmon furthered her curl education through DevaCurl’s professional training program. In 2020, she made the move to focus on curls specifically and opened her salon suite, Curls de Luxe, in Naperville. There, she uses an organic hair care line called Innersense for both color and styling. “One of the things that really drives my passion in the industry is being able to give people the tools and the products and show them how it makes a difference,” she says. “There are a lot of people with some curl to their hair, and they don’t even know the potential of their curls because of the years they’ve spent blowing it out.”
Good to Know: Over the years, Edmon has perfected her own signature dry-cutting technique that she calls the BeCurly Cut. She hopes to eventually offer a professional training program for others in the industry. “There’s a demand for Curls de Luxe that I can’t fulfill, so my goal is to train other stylists to learn my technique,” she says.

Adored Salon

325 S. Main St., Lombard

As a teen, Jennifer Janisch quite literally couldn’t wait to start her career in hairstyling. “I went to hair school when I was 16 years old and I graduated before the second semester of my senior year,” she says. She got her first salon job in 1993, and after years in the industry and training with curl expert Ouidad Stephen Wise in New York City, she decided to open Adored in 2013. “I wanted to do all the things [for my employees] that I wished my past salons did for me—mentoring, team-building, offering time off—all while training them on the ways of curly hair.”

Janisch can relate to her curly clients when it comes to botched haircuts at the hands of untrained stylists. “Being a curly girl my whole life, I know the things that happen to so many of us,” she says. “You go to a salon they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, I know curly hair!’ and then they cut traditional straight layers, and you end up with what looks like shelves on your hair, or earmuffs because the super-fine hair around your face crunches up and goes haywire.” Though Janisch’s team of four stylists do offer traditional cuts for straight hair, the Adored Signature Curly Cut is their specialty. “We cut hair wet, and that’s because we can see the curl in its truest form,” Janisch says. “We don’t just cut the hair; we slide our shears through the hair, like the process of curling a ribbon, and it enhances the curl right away.” All curly cut sessions include a styling tutorial to teach clients how to manage their curls at home. “We will teach them exactly how much product to use—they touch it, they feel it, so they understand what they’re doing,” she says. “They’ll have a mirror in their hand so they can see the whole thing.”
Good to know: Janisch also specializes in curly hair extensions and recently launched her own line called Adored Signature Hand-Tied Hair Extensions.

A Kurly Salon

1909 Meyers Road, Oakbrook Terrace

Andrea Kelly was 20 years into her career as a hairstylist when she stumbled upon a life-changing opportunity. “I had been using a product for years on my own curly hair,” she says. “It was my Holy Grail, and nothing was going to beat this product—and then it was discontinued.” In her search for a new favorite, she tried Ouidad, a product line created by Ouidad Stephen Wise, a New York City salon owner and curl specialist. “I got a ton of compliments from Day 1. People were saying, ‘Why does your hair look so different?’” When Kelly called Ouidad’s headquarters to see if she could buy their products wholesale, she found out that Wise herself was offering a professional training program in NYC. “She was starting to plan for her retirement and she didn’t want the art of her technique to die when she retired,” says Kelly, who was the first Illinois stylist to complete Ouidad’s original program in 2008. (Wise later sold the brand in 2018.)

At her salon suite in Oakbrook Terrace, Kelly offers cuts and styling for clients with curls of all types, from wavy to coily. “Most people who have curly hair walk out of a salon, and their hair looks like a triangle. That’s the regular cut that we all learned in beauty school. The layering looks like steps; they’re very hard lines,” she says. “The technique with Ouidad keeps the layers looking softer and it takes that triangle effect away.” Kelly also teaches her clients how to work with their own natural hair texture at home using “Rake and Shake,” the Ouidad signature method for applying product and styling curls. “I take a lot of pride in the fact that I can teach people how to make their curls look good,” she says. “I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve seen who are like, ‘Well, your hair is pretty; mine isn’t like that.’ Well, wait until I get my hands on you!”
Good to know: While a visit to Staley’s Downers Grove storefront can be a fun outing for owners and pets alike (especially the free samples), Barkery Boxes make it easy to ship a custom selection of Happy Dog’s treats, toys, and seasonal surprises to a lucky pup anywhere in the country.

Holistic Curls & Color

577 Pennsylvania Ave., Glen Ellyn

Devin Kelley first started studying cosmetology as a high school student at Glenbard West, earning her license in 2011. In a full-circle moment, she’s now operating her salon suite catering to wavy- and curly-haired clients just steps from her alma mater in downtown Glen Ellyn.

Kelley’s own unexpected health issues actually shaped her business into what it is today. “I started developing allergic reactions, and it would get worse when I would do color service,” she says. “I started digging into things and learning that a lot of the ingredients in everyday professional styling products can be skin irritants or endocrine disruptors…so for myself and the health of my clients, I had to find another way.”

She discovered a path forward with Innersense, an organic hair care line made without artificial fragrances, sulfates, and preservatives such as parabens. “Around that same time, I was having the most fun working with my clients with curls,” she says. “I noticed a huge need in the community, and there simply weren’t enough stylists trained to work with curly hair. So I went for it and dove into curly hair education.”

Providing a relaxing experience is a priority. “So many curly-haired people have anxiety or trauma around their experience in a salon, and that’s got to change,” Kelley says. “I really want to provide a secluded, safe sanctuary for people to be pampered throughout the journey of falling back in love with their hair.”

She offers hair color with Innersense’s ammonia-free Color Purity line and chats with her clients about their hair habits before starting a cut. “The cut itself is always on dry hair and based on the client’s curl pattern. If they have tight or coily curls, I will be approaching it much differently than a wavy or looser curl pattern,” she says. “The right curly cut can be life-changing—it can change a person’s face. It creates more balance when it comes to curl patterns, and it can make styling and washing faster and easier.”
Good to know: Through a Green Circle Salon certification, Kelley has been able to make her business carbon neutral and divert 95 percent of her salon waste from landfills. Through her own community program called Giving Back Together, she donates 10 percent of her retail sales to a different local organization each quarter. Her April, May, and June sales will benefit Sustain DuPage.

Photos: Luxe; Danielle Hardesty Photography (Adored Salon); Andrea Kelly (A Kurly Salon); Sarah Crost Creative