Zariyah Harris Wants to Encourage Black Women to Wear Their Bonnets

Dove Bennett
4 min readJul 25, 2020

Hats, caps, veils, scarfs, and bandanas. With the various head coverings that are often seen, there are two in particular that have garnished up a bad reputation when it comes to be being seen out in public. I hadn’t thought too much about it until a few months ago when I started back wearing a bonnet myself.

I stopped covering my hair with a bonnet for two years and my hair completely stopped growing. It was breaking off faster than it could grow. As I began to understand the benefits of wearing a bonnet, I also began to wonder why there is such a taboo about women wearing bonnets out in public; it’s often seen as unprofessional, ghetto, or unbecoming. As an item that covers our hair not for fashion, but for protection, I can’t help but wonder about this narrative that says wearing a protective cover on my hair in public is frowned upon. I took this opportunity to sit down with Zariyah Harris, founder and owner of Bourgeois Essentials, which sells luxury high quality bonnets and durags at an affordable price.

Dove: Zariyah tell me more about Bourgeois Essentials and how you got started.

Zariyah: I started Bourgeois Essentials while I was working a full time job as a long term temp administrative assistant. I knew I wanted to start a business that provided a unique product that

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Dove Bennett

Author 💙 Publicist 💙 Producer 💙 Serial Entrepreneur. I mainly write about business and mental health. Be sure to follow me! www.dovebennett.com