GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A Grand Rapids salon focused on offering a space for members of the LGBTQ+ community is expanding.
Lilith’s Lair, located at 25 Division Ave. off of Fulton Street, is a collective of independent stylists with booth rentals. Offering a variety of hair services and known for bright, vivid hair color, the business bills itself as a queer safe space salon.
“All of us here have pretty much (share) the likemindedness of wanting to help the queer community, wanting to create a really safe, creative environment for all of our guests,” owner Laura Signore-Zeiders told News 8.
Many customers stop in for gender-neutral or gender-affirming haircuts, she said. But she saw a need for safe space salon that offers more than hair services.
“A lot of our clients were asking for other services that were in a safe space,” she said. “So I figured, yeah, we need to expand and offer all those services for everybody that needs them.”
Lilith’s Lair is adding a massage therapist, estheticians and a tattoo artist. There’s already one nail tech on staff, and the team is adding another.
The expansion is within the same building and connected to the current space. Crews knocked down a wall and are working on building it out. There have been some construction and city delays, which kept the expansion from opening on time. Signore-Zeider hopes to have it open this summer and invited people to stop in to support the new specialists.
Signore-Zeider opened the salon three years ago. She grew up in Cassopolis, a small town in Southwest Michigan with one stoplight and a graduating class of around 50 people, she said.
“I was always a little weirdo,” she said. “Probably anybody from my hometown would agree.”
She said she it was hard as a member of the LGBTQ+ community.
“I have always known that I was queer,” she said. “It was very hard at first to feel like I could be myself. And I was bullied relentlessly for it. It was rough.”
She was happy to move to the Grand Rapids area as a Grand Valley State University student, pursing an art degree. After two years, she dropped out. She then tried beauty school, and dropped out of that, too.
Signore-Zeider got a job at a makeup store, working as a manager. It was a “stagnant place in my life,” she said, but she loved the job and she loved her staff.
When the pandemic hit, the makeup store went bankrupt and she lost her job. She ended up returning to beauty school full-time.
“In a weird way, COVID was one of the best things to ever happen to me, which is ironic,” she said. “It was terrible, but if I didn’t have that abrupt like, ‘Oh, you’re fired. We’re all fired. What are you going to do now?’ … I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d probably still be chilling at the makeup store with my friends that worked there.”
She thrived in beauty school.
“I fell back in love with doing hair,” she recalled. “While I was in beauty school, I really advertised myself a lot and I had tons of people in my chair, and every day that I was in beauty school, I was booked. And so I had this realization of like, ‘Oh my God, I’m actually really good at this.’”
After graduating, she decided to jump to opening her own salon. The stylists that first signed on were apprehensive at first, but agreed to join — Signore-Zeider joked they were “freaking nuts” to trust her.
“Because they believed in me, and because I had so many clients that believed in me as well, this place is what it is,” she said. “Just looking back five years ago … there’s no way that I would have predicted this happening. So I’m really grateful for it.”
The business owner offered a word of encouragement for those who don’t know what they want to do.
“I’m a dual dropout — twice. So you can drop out over and over and apparently still be successful,” she said with a laugh. “If anyone doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing in their life right now: I didn’t either.”
Lilith’s Lair has now grown into a successful salon. People drive all the way from Detroit or Cadillac to get their hair done there, Signore-Zeider said, and musicians and influencers have also stopped in to check it out.
“We’re starting to become like a bigger, well-known place that people will drive to, which I think is really, really, really cool,” she said.
The salon has a maximalist design, with bright, rainbow colors and a spooky aesthetic. Its playlist has everything from metal to pop and the hairdressers are encouraged to cover their stations with stickers. It’s eccentric and “openly and authentically queer,” the business owner said, adding that even customers that are not part of the LGBTQ+ enjoy how different it is.
The goal is to create a space where everyone feels welcome, where those who are bullied like Signore-Zeider was feel safe.
“Now that I’m older and I have the ability to create a space like this, it’s just really important to me that other people, especially younger people … who are like me being bullied for … who they are, I can provide this space for them to just feel like they can be themselves and not be ridiculed for it,” she said.
As the community celebrates Pride Month, she said that’s what it’s all about: being yourself.
“There are people that feel like they cannot be proud of who they are and that leads to really sad, awful things for people,” she said. “They just don’t deserve that treatment. And we’re here to help with whatever it means, if you’re transitioning, or if you’re closeted and your family doesn’t accept you, like we do, and we’re here to help.”
Hair can be revolutionary, she said, and a lot of people start on the journey of chopping their hair, growing it out or getting a gender-neutral cut during Pride Month.
Lilith’s Lair will be at the Grand Rapids Pride Festival as a sponsor Saturday, offering glitter, braids and festival hair. It also hosted an all-ages drag show earlier this month, and will be offering an 18+ drag show in October.
Signore-Zeiders invited people to check the salon out.
“We’re here, we’re queer,” she said. “We’re doing tattoos, we’re doing hair, we’re waxing, we’re doing nails. We got all the stuff. So come on down.”
