Tracee Ellis Ross has always treated her hair as an extension of her personal style. From geometric bobs to long, loose waves and bubble ponytails, the actor and entrepreneur approaches her textured strands with the same creativity she brings to her wardrobe. This season, she is expanding her beauty brand Pattern Beauty with three new styling products designed to make heat styling more responsible for curly, coily, and tight textured hair.
Ross tells Vogue that versatility is one of the greatest gifts of textured hair. “One of the beauties of textured hair is that it can do anything,” she says. “Textured hair can be curly, it can be straight, it can be Afro’d, it can be Bantu’d, it can be a roller set, it can be a wash-and-go. There’s versatility. That’s also part of being a human being, being able to choose different things at different times of your life.”
That philosophy is at the core of Pattern Beauty, the brand Ross founded after years of struggling to adequately care for her own hair. She remembers a pivotal phone call to her mother from boarding school. “Mom, my hair is dead,” she lamented. “I know that hair is dead follicles and that’s what hair is, but my hair is dead dead. I don’t think we can revive it.”
That moment sparked a lifelong commitment to nurturing her strands and eventually gave birth to Pattern. “Being able to have tools to support you in doing [heat styling] responsibly and in a way that cares for how your hair actually grows authentically out of your head is something that I’m dedicated to with Pattern,” she explains.
Pattern Beauty’s heat styling lineup began in 2023 with a blow-dryer, followed by a curling iron in 2024. Today, the brand is completing the toolkit with the Vibrating Flat Iron, the Blow Out Primer, and the Detox Shampoo.
The flat iron was developed through direct feedback from the Pattern community. “The flatiron evolved out of this two-way conversation that we have with the Pattern customer and the curly, coily, and tight-textured masses that exist,” Ross says. “We really were trying to think about, What is it that we do with a flatiron on textured hair that causes more damage? It’s when you do multiple passes, when you have to really rip and pull at your hair. It’s often doing the chaser comb. And so the vibration is meant to lessen some of those things we do to think we’re going to get our hair straighter faster.”
The Vibrating Flat Iron features a 1.1 inch ceramic coated plate with 14 adjustable temperature settings reaching up to 450 degrees Fahrenheit in 20 degree increments. It delivers 12,000 vibrations per minute to help the plates glide through hair with reduced friction and tension. A cool tip guard keeps fingers protected during styling, and the tool powers down automatically after 60 minutes.
Proper preparation is essential before any heat application, and that’s where the Detox Shampoo enters the routine. It deeply cleanses the hair and scalp, removing product buildup and impurities without stripping essential moisture. Clinically proven to eliminate hard minerals and chlorine, it leaves hair with a clean, hydrating foundation for heat styling. “People underestimate how important it is to really prepare your hair for whatever style it is you’re about to do,” Ross explains. “The buildup of product often has people using more heat than they need. The Detox Shampoo strips product off your hair without stripping your hair of moisture.”
The Blow Out Primer, a lightweight spray cream, adds further protection by smoothing the hair cuticle and reducing styling time. It offers heat protection up to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. “The same slip that we need for brushing out our hair in the shower, we want that on your hair without silicone,” she says. “That’s going to allow you to protect the hair and create that easy pass.”
With silk press season on the horizon, many natural haired women will be transitioning from protective summer styles to sleek looks. Pattern’s new collection aims to make that shift effortless while keeping curl health front and center.
All in all, the new products go back to the heart of what Pattern Beauty is about: versatility. “Supporting people in choosing whatever they want, not just [for their hair] but in life,” Ross says.
