Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month: Curls con Orgullo

Every curl tells a story. This Hispanic Heritage Month, we are celebrating our roots, our beauty, and our confidence through our campaign, Curls con Orgullo – Curls with Pride. At OCOA, our mission has always been to change the narrative that curly hair is "pelo malo" and instead uplift our community to embrace curls as a symbol of power, identity, and joy.

For us, this month is more than a celebration – it’s a reflection of our journey. Growing up, we struggled to find products that truly cared for our curls and spoke to our heritage. That struggle inspired us to create OCOA, a brand rooted in representation, premium care, and cultural pride. Today, we are honored to stand as the first Dominican curly hair care brand to be on shelves at Ulta Beauty nationwide.

This milestone is even more special because we get to celebrate in person with our comunidad. This month, we’re bringing OCOA to Ulta Beauty stores in Pennsylvania, our home state, where it all began. Being able to connect face-to-face with our community and share in the joy of seeing OCOA on Ulta’s shelves is a full-circle moment that fills us with gratitude and pride.

We’re also celebrating online with our Curls con Orgullo Challenge, created to uplift our community and help us all embrace our curls with confidence. Each day, we shared prompts on social that encouraged reflection, pride, and connection:

• Your Curl Story – Every curl has a journey. This day was about opening up, sharing our experiences, and honoring how far we’ve come in embracing our hair.
• Curl Superpower – A celebration of self-love. We asked our community to share one thing they truly love about their curls and how it makes them feel powerful.
• Ancestry & Hair / Hair Care Wisdom – We honored family traditions, cultural connections, and the wisdom passed down about caring for our curls and roots.
• Myth-Busting Moment – We took on the "pelo malo" narrative and replaced it with empowering truths about the beauty and strength of our natural hair.
• Curl Manifesto – To close, we invited our community to declare their curl pride, writing personal affirmations that celebrate curls as a crown of identity and orgullo.

Hispanic Heritage Month is about honoring our past, celebrating our present, and paving the way for future generations. By celebrating our curls con orgullo, both online and in stores, we are rewriting the narrative together – showing that our hair is not a limitation but a crown that carries our culture forward.

Join us in this celebration at Ulta stores nationwide, and through our stories online. Let’s uplift each other, wear our curls with pride, and continue this movement beyond Hispanic Heritage Month. Because our curls deserve to be celebrated, always.