A Black TikToker was almost in tears when fashion show stylists didn't understand her hair. Now she's calling for events to hire more people of color.

Heather Moradeyo said she was holding back tears and felt like a "burden" while waiting for the one Black hairstylist.

• Heather Moradeyo said she was holding back tears and felt like a "burden" at a recent fashion show.
• Moradeyo was assigned two white hair stylists at first who didn't understand her hair.
• She's now calling for for events to hire more people of color.

A Black TikTok creator said she was almost in tears when the stylists booked at London Queer Fashion Show, which takes place during London Fashion Week, were unable to properly work on her hair. Heather Moradeyo, who has over 230,000 followers on TikTok, posted a short video from backstage at the event on September 17 where she explained she had been assigned two white hairstylists who did not have the ability to give her hair the same kind of exciting, intricate styles that she was seeing around the room.

Moradeyo said she was holding in tears in the video, which was watched over 713,000 times, because she felt like the "odd one out" and "like a burden" in a room full of models and stylists.

"I'm really trying not to cry because I don't think my hair is that difficult," she said in the video. "But, like, there's a room full of stylists and no one can do my hair."

Moradeyo told Insider she had been invited to the event through the lesbian dating app Her. She said she was nervous, but also excited and agreed to it with an open mind, because she likes to be involved in anything that celebrates the queer community. Moradeyo uses her platform like "an open diary" to talk about being a queer person of color, and also openly documents the "most vulnerable moments" of her mental health journey, talking about her experience with schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder.

"That's what even brought me to the fashion show in the first place, because I'm not a model, I have never walked a catwalk in my life," she said. "If there's a way to show that you can be Nigerian and queer and have mental health and be on a catwalk, then by all means I wanted to take that opportunity."

The atmosphere was incredible, but Moradeyo started to feel like a burden

When Moradeyo walked in, the atmosphere was "incredible," she said — the "creativity, freedom, just being, unapologetically who you want to be."

Moradeyo said she was assigned two white hairstylists. She assumed since they had been assigned to her, they would understand how to style her Afro hair. She noticed they were being "a bit gentle, and a bit hesitant" with her hair, but gave them the benefit of the doubt and decided to "trust the process."

But when the stylists said they were finished, Moradeyo said she did not feel confident and beautiful at all. She looked around the room to see so many models being styled with "beautiful up-dos, long curls, and feathers," while hers felt nowhere near as special. She approached the designer whose clothes she would be wearing to ask if they were happy with the hairstyle, to which they said they were not (they did not respond to Insider's request for comment).

Moradeyo then had to ask the person who had organized the hair styling to get the one Black stylist that she had seen, in a room with dozens of stylists and a hundred models, to work on her hair.

"I felt very out of place," Moradeyo said. "I felt like a burden because I was sitting there waiting for the Black stylist to come do my hair."

In a subsequent video with over 2.1 million views, Moradeyo showed the process of the Black stylist fixing her hair.

"A black hairdresser stepped in and she was incredible," the caption in the video states. "The first two women were amazing, I think they were just unfamiliar with my hair. No shade at all."

Moradeyo told Insider once her hair was done properly, her excitement came back. If she hadn't spoken up, she said, she might not have had the confidence to go on the catwalk at all. It took a lot longer, because the previous stylists had used products that Moradeyo's hair doesn't respond well to, she said, and so it had to be detangled, washed, blow dried, and straightened all over again.

"It was frustrating because I had come in there at the beginning with freshly washed, blow dried hair," Moradeyo said. "So if we had gone to a stylist at the beginning who knew how to do my hair, it wouldn't have needed to take that long."

Moradeyo's experience highlights a broader fashion industry issue

Moradeyo doesn't think London Queer Fashion Show was to blame for what happened, because the salon that was hired advertised itself as having experts in Afro hair.

Moradeyo doesn't know if the company does have more Black stylists than the one she saw at the show — this was just her experience that day. But it does highlight a wider issue. Alongside thanking the event organizers, the stylist who worked on her hair, and the designers, Moradeyo also called for more inclusion of Black stylists and makeup artists in the fashion industry.

People were quite annoyed in the comments they were posting on Moradeyo's TikTok, she said, because more inclusivity and diversity in fashion and beauty has been an ongoing conversation for so many years. Moradeyo said she'd love to see a variety of stylists — the same way predominantly white hair dressers are hired to do Black and white hair, they can hire Black hairdressers to do the same. 

"I would love it to walk into a place and look at all the stylists and just see Black stylists," she said. "Because by doing that, you are thinking my hair has so much potential. Now I can walk out of here with a new hairstyle that I'll be so proud of."

People have been speaking up about these issues for decades, Moradeyo said, so she wants to see some action.

"It's one thing to support them online and have a black screen for Black Lives Matter," she said. "It's another thing to physically include them in spaces that they can thrive off and share their talent."

London Queer Fashion Show didn't respond to Insider's request for comment.