Love Island‘s seventh series came to an end in August, and one of our favourite couples, Kaz Kamwi and Tyler Cruickshank, are unsurprisingly still going strong. The pair recently appeared on an episode of Spotify’s Who We Be Talks podcast with presenter Henrie Kwushue to talk about their experience on the show. And whilst we were excited to hear how the couple are getting on, we were also glad that Kamwi was finally given the opportunity to open up about her experience as this series’s “OG Black girl” and the challenges she faced on the show, particularly around caring for her Afro hair.
The most challenging part of the Love Island experience for Kamwi was her hair, particularly because Afro hair textures aren’t something that’s often taken into consideration on the show. She said that “in the villa, you’re getting into the pool and doing challenges, so my hair went through a lot. You have no time to really do it and have half an hour to get ready. You have to think, ‘Am I prioritising hair or makeup, let alone [prioritising] my outfit.’ I was always the last one ready. With a lot of the challenges, they’re not really set up for Afro hair, let alone wigs.” Kamwi also explained that with some of the challenges that involved paint, two of her wigs just had to go in the bin.
Kamwi also talked about her decision to wear her bonnet from the get-go, explaining, “There were only two nights that I didn’t wear [my bonnet], the first night and the hideaway. After that first night, I was like, ‘I’m sorry, there is no way I’m not wearing my wig,’ because that morning was a nightmare. I just thought, ‘It’s going to have to be a bonnet.’ I think the main thing for me was to start as you mean to go on, and I just felt like I’d be more comfortable putting it on straight away [rather] than, you know, trying to do it two weeks in because then I would have probably been more self-conscious. In the villa, the bonnet was not a thing, there were head scarfs, but head scarfs fall off my head, whereas bonnets don’t.”
Listen to the episode in full on Spotify now.
