By Kallie Cox
Artists, creatives, musicians, and performers will flock to Tower Grove Park in droves for one day in September.
Frizz Fest, which is in its seventh year, is a natural beauty festival that emphasizes art and self-expression.
This year the theme for the event is “70’s” playing off of the festival’s anniversary, Frizz Fest’s founder Leslie Hughes said. She hopes it will also be an opportunity to showcase more artists and performers than in previous years.
The headline artist will be Marsha Ambrosius, a singer-songwriter who got her start as one member of R&B duo Floetry. DJ Nico will be “providing the vibes” for the duration of the event and storyteller Tee Parks will host/emcee, Frizz Fest announced on social media.
Additionally, the three artists chosen from a field of talented applicants to create an installation for the festival are ColorTripz Creative, K.K3MP, and Destiney Angelique.
Frizz Fest is partnering with Dream Builders for Equity to build the wooden structures the artists will use to create and display their work, Hughes said. The artists will then have three days to build their installations.
“We’ve been asking artists to do an installation based on a few things, Black beauty, Black hair, and 70’s,” Hughes said.
Last year one of the main installations was an Afro-arch and participants lined up to take photos with it. This will return for the 2024 festival along with the Frizz Fest letters and Frizz lounge, Hughes said.
“It takes so much courage and also creativity for somebody to put their art on display, for 1000s of people to see […] I hope that someone is inspired to do the same,” Hughes said. “Frizz Fest is my heart on display but I also hope that people get inspired to put their heart on display as well because the world needs it.”
Hughes founded Frizz Fest after returning home to St. Louis and coming to terms with the grief of losing all of the matriarchs of her family.
“I needed something to put my love and like energy into,” she explained.
During this time she became involved with the natural hair movement. While traveling to larger cities like Los Angeles, Hughes noticed that these cities had huge festivals and activations within the natural hair community and decided she wanted to create something similar in St. Louis.
For the first festival in 2017, a few hundred people participated at Tower Grove Park. In 2023, that number rose to 5,000 and this year, Hughes expects nearly 10,000 to attend.
“Frizz Fest is a display of St. Louis thriving,” Hughes said. “I truly believe that […] the Black community of St. Louis we deserve to be seen in spaces […] where we are thriving. It is love, it is excellence, it is legacy, it is entrepreneurship it is people going after their dreams and aspirations. It is family, it is laughing, it is joyous, it is beautiful.”
Hughes organizes the festival through her non-profit Fizzy By Nature. The group’s mission started out to “encourage self-love and inspire confidence among women, specifically women of color.” Since then, it has evolved into “more of an organization that just creates spaces that allows our community members to feel safe, seen, and celebrated,” Hughes said.
The festival boasts hair demonstrations, a beauty lounge, and a hair show. It also creates a space for artists and entrepreneurs to share their work with over 70 vendors and food trucks.
The goal is for people to leave the festival better than they came and hopefully return the next year, Hughes said.
Frizz Fest is free to attend and will take place on September 21 in Tower Grove Park from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Kallie Cox is a former staff writer at the Riverfront Times. They began writing freelance content for the StLouisArts.org in June 2024.
Photo credit: Frizz Fest
