{"id":302474,"date":"2025-10-14T11:18:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T11:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/302474\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T11:18:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T11:18:19","slug":"tower-28-dedcool-and-rizos-curls-on-confronting-crises-in-los-angeles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/302474\/","title":{"rendered":"Tower 28, DedCool and Rizos Curls on Confronting Crises in Los Angeles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cLos Angeles<\/a> runs through our brands. It\u2019s the heartbeat of the company,\u201d said Carina Chaz, founder and chief executive officer of fragrance brand DedCool<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\n\tIn a room full of fellow Angelenos at the annual Los Angeles Beauty Forum<\/a>, Chaz took the stage alongside Tower 28 <\/a>founder Amy Liu and Rizos Curls founder Julissa Prado to discuss how they\u2019ve leveraged their influence and empowered each other to address major crises such as the devastating wildfires and ongoing ICE raids that\u2019ve plagued the city in the last year.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe panel, hosted by WWD senior reporter Ryma Chikhoune, kicked off with each founder sharing a brief description of their brand mission and how it feels to be a Los Angeles<\/a>-based business now. \u201cI was born and raised there, and it\u2019s the city that even inspired my entrepreneurial spirit,\u201d Prado said. Liu then chimed in: \u201cIt\u2019s emblematic of our mission, which is to create a safe space for sensitive skin. Being part of L.A. and the community has been such a natural part of the brand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJulissa Prado and Amy Liu<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen ravaging wildfires swept across neighborhoods throughout the city in January, leaving hundreds of thousands of people displaced, Chaz, who was living in Malibu at the time, took it upon herself to aid fire fighting and relief efforts, while Liu, who left her house in the Palisades after discovering asbestos and lead, mobilized more than 150 brands to donate 70,000 items for 1,500 families, all while managing their own business teams. Prado has subsequently helped raise $250,000 for immigrant families in the wake of the ICE raids. <\/p>\n

\n\tAsked to pinpoint the moment when they knew they had to take action, Liu said the response was always either going to be \u201cfight or flight,\u201d and she chose to fight and didn\u2019t concern herself with the logistics, financial or otherwise. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think we all have the ability to give back during the journey, especially if you have some influence to do that,\u201d she continued. \u201cI think there\u2019s a really big loss of agency sometimes, especially right now in the world, when there\u2019s so much that\u2019s happening. I don\u2019t feel like I can control or I can help. But then I try to think about the things that I can control and influence, whether that\u2019s within my team, my community and my brand.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tPrado piggybacked off that sentiment, emphasizing the responsibility of leaders within the beauty<\/a> industry to set the standard and show up for their communities. Indeed, the plight of being a leader during crises isn\u2019t easy, Liu pointed out, but having a supportive team makes it easier.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat said, Chaz remembered feeling \u201csurvivor\u2019s guilt\u201d amid the fires, having had multiple people on her team lose their homes. \u201cThe city is burning and emotions are wild, and it\u2019s showing up for those people and having these hard and uncomfortable conversations of like, \u2018Hey, X, Y and Z are dealing with this. How can we be a team? How can we look at this with empathy and figure out the next best way to help rebuild,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s ultimately all you can do.\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tCarina Chaz and Amy Liu <\/p>\n

\n\tTower 28, DedCool and Rizos Curls are just three entrants in a growing network of Los-Angeles based beauty<\/a> brands, founders and organizations. The tone of the city, Prado noted, was and continues to be set by the immigrant communities within it. \u201cWhat you see in common in a lot of these immigrant communities are these network hubs that people create not only for survival, but also to preserve culture, to connect with each other,\u201d she continued. \u201cGrowing up in L.A., it was normal for me, even in such a big city, to see activists or community leaders or whatever it may be. I saw how these networks supported each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cL.A. is this place where everybody comes to dream,\u201d Liu added. \u201cIt still is, to me, emblematic of the American Dream, which I think we\u2019ve lost a little bit, especially when you think about ICE and all these things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn what she\u2019s learned since facing such disaster, Chaz said it\u2019s how to stay dynamic and flexible, while being empathetic and empowering those around her. \u201cThe beauty world is very small. We all know each other. We\u2019re all here to empower each other. A lot of DedCool\u2019s efforts were rooted in Tower 28\u2019s efforts to support the firefighters and the community that had lost everything,\u201d Chaz went on to say. \u201cWithout that collaboration, there wouldn\u2019t be much of anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPartnership and the power of united community are concepts not lost on Prado, who\u2019s worked to do just that through a series of in-person activations at local coffee shops across the U.S. in honor of Latino Heritage Month. Liu followed Prado\u2019s mention of Rizos\u2019 caf\u00e9 tour by saying initiatives like such drive her as a founder. \u201cThe money at some point is not the thing that gets you up in the morning and gets you excited to do what you do,\u201d Liu said.<\/p>\n

\n\tLooking forward, the three founders reflected on their brands\u2019 roles in supporting long-term community resilience. Chaz said DedCool will continue to focus on \u201ccreating product that has meaning and a bigger purpose that touches people.\u201d Liu followed up with Tower 28\u2019s renewed plans to invest in the greater community, as well as her team and sub-communities. Finally, Prado said Rizos Curls will work to bring joy and celebration to the city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cLos Angeles runs through our brands. It\u2019s the heartbeat of the company,\u201d said Carina Chaz, founder and chief…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":302475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[19534,1582,276,2961,224,5337],"class_list":{"0":"post-302474","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-beauty","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"tag-losangeles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115372249126746533","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}