LANSING, Ill. — Shortly after 1 p.m. on a Friday in mid-May, Gabrielle Cooper arrived at Naturally Nappy Locs by Benji, the salon run by her mother in this small town. She walked through the storefront door, about 25 miles south of Chicago, and looked around.

The building is nondescript. Inside, there’s no scent of fresh products, no loud music — just a TV in the back of the room and some chit-chat. A few barbers and stylists were occupied with customers. Minutes after her arrival, Cooper, a junior guard for the Syracuse women’s basketball team, walked over to a window. Then she put on her black apron and went to work.

“Good energy,” she said, opening the blinds to let sunlight in. She began to twist the dreadlocks of a woman in front of her, who happened to be her grandmother, Deborah Smith.

Save for activities on the basketball court, Cooper’s idea of the perfect Saturday is spent here, twisting hair. She has been one of Syracuse’s key players over the past two seasons, but her off-court passion is styling hair — specifically, the dreadlocks of men and women. The art is central to her life.

Matthew Gutierrez | Senior Staff Writer

Cooper learned the trade from her mother, Benji Hardaway, and the pair come together whenever Cooper is home from Syracuse during the summer and on breaks. Taking care of hairdos is Cooper’s side hustle — and her backup plan if her WNBA dreams don’t work out or end sooner than she’d like.

An important part of many of her clients’ lives is maintaining Afrocentric hair, Cooper said. “Locs,” short for dreadlocks, is a hairstyle where the hair that would be combed or shed locks on itself, creating ropelike strands.

Cooper said hair can send a message about one’s personality or self-image, and it’s a way to channel beauty. Her three-step process is wash, twist then dry, with the end goal of twisting natural hairstyles “into something beautiful,” Cooper said. She treats each hairdo differently, giving each the sort of attention, care and respect that she learned from her mom.

Integral to the process is tight twisting. As she twists the hair, she wants to make it tight so it stays locked and lasts a bit longer.

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, getting older, trying to figure out what I want to do with my life,” Cooper said. “I have the talent for this, and there’s always going to be a market for it.”

Paul Schlesinger | Staff Photographer

During the school year, Cooper has less time to work at her craft. Off-days are her best opportunities to open up shop out of her South Campus apartment. Her mother’s clients have included NFL star Brandon Marshall, but Cooper rivals that with a list of her most loyal customers: Syracuse football players.

One day two years ago, SU junior defensive back Scoop Bradshaw was walking in Manley Field House. His hair was frizzy, and his locks were tangled. At least it appeared that way to Cooper, who stopped him in his tracks to call him out.

“She was like, ‘You need your hair done ASAP,’” Bradshaw recalled.

Cooper mentioned she could take care of his hair herself. Bradshaw was skeptical — he said his hair says a lot about who he is, and he doesn’t mess around with who styles it. But Cooper gained his trust when she said her mother had taught her the craft. That Cooper has dreads, too, solidified her as reliable, Bradshaw said.

Bradshaw came over to her apartment the next Friday, and she spent five hours twisting his hair, Cooper said, because he hadn’t been to a stylist in over a year. When he looked in the mirror later that day, Bradshaw liked what he saw. The result has been a two-year business-like relationship between Cooper and Bradshaw.

“She’s the only one I let touch my hair,” Bradshaw said in August, when he scheduled an appointment with Cooper so his hair “looked good for the first day of class.”

Alexandra Moreo | Senior Staff Photographer

Word spread. In fall 2016, Bradshaw’s teammates asked who was doing his hair. He told them it was a women’s basketball player, Gabrielle Cooper. They hit her up via text, and soon she was doing their hair, too. She charges about $60 per appointment, which usually takes between one and two hours.

Last fall, Cooper found herself doing several other football players’ hair, including junior fullback Chris Elmore, also a native of the Chicago area. He now tries to meet with Cooper as frequently as every three weeks, because he has a saying he shares with teammates: If you want to play in the NFL, he tells them, you’ve got to start acting like it.

“You look at those guys, they’re well-groomed, always,” Elmore said. “So we have to try to keep ourselves that way too.”

Back in Lansing, Illinois, in May, Cooper was working in tandem with her mother, who doubles as her inspiration for hairstyling and personal hero. As the soundtrack changed to a local radio station, which was playing Frank Sinatra’s “High Hopes” — “He’s got high hopes” — Cooper spun around the chair to reach the other side of her client’s hair.

Cooper said she has been styling hair since she was about 11 years old, mimicking her mother, who taught herself how to style hair by studying YouTube videos. As a little girl, Cooper began helping her out when needed. But one day, Cooper’s mother, Benji, was overbooked. That’s when Cooper took her first client. She’s been hooked to the craft ever since.

“Pass the spray, mom,” Cooper said at her mother’s shop.

Her mother smiled back and tossed her the bottle.

“This is home,” Cooper said, and then she went back to work, twisting one dreadlock after the other.

Published on October 18, 2018 at 12:44 am

Contact Matthew: [email protected] | @MatthewGut21