Why was she a trailblazer?

Jenkins’ pioneering hair technique gave women, especially African-American women, the freedom to choose from a multitude of hairstyles. Happily, she formalised her invention for posterity – Jenkins next appears in the records on 4 May 1951, filing patent number 2,621,663 for the ‘Permanently attaching commercial hair to live hair’ technique she called, according to the registration documents, the ‘Hair-Weeve’.

The patent describes her method as ‘interweaving strands of live hair and strands of commercial hair, with cord-like material to permanently join the strands thereto…’ Jenkins was granted the patent in 1952, though litigation saw it challenged and overturned in 1965.

Patent in hand, Jenkins and her husband moved to Ohio where Christina began to teach her Hair-Weeve technique to other cosmetologists and stylists, travelling across Europe teaching her innovative method. She opened her very own Christina’s HairWeeve Penthouse Salon in Cleveland, which she ran until 1993.

When Christina Jenkins died at the age of 82 in 2003, the late Ohio US Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones commended Jenkins for her invention, calling her “a pioneer in the field of cosmetology” and her invention of the hair weave a “revolutionary contribution” that has “helped to boost the self-esteem of men and women across the world”.

The Forgotten Women series is part of Stylist’s Visible Women campaign, dedicated to raising the profiles of brilliant women past and present. See more Visible Women stories here.

Remembering Christina Jenkins, the woman who invented the weave