Homecoming at an HBCU has never simply been about coming home. It is the hair appointment booked weeks in advance, the outfit that has already lived through three different group chats, the fresh cut, the nails, the fragrance and the final mirror check before stepping onto the Yard. Beauty has always been woven into the Black college experience, even when brands and larger cultural conversations failed to recognize just how influential that experience was.
This fall, as North Carolina A&T State University celebrates its 100th homecoming, that relationship between beauty, style and HBCU culture is getting its own destination.
WOC Worldwide and Love the Hair You Wear are joining forces for The Reset powered by Sprite, a first-of-its-kind pop-up beauty experience arriving in Greensboro during the university’s Greatest Homecoming on Earth weekend. Taking place October 30, the event is designed as the stop between daytime Homecoming festivities and whatever comes next: a place to touch up, link with friends, discover products, create content and, quite literally, reset before the night begins.
For WOC Worldwide founder Brittany Hicks, the idea came from recognizing a ritual that was already happening.
“There’s this natural transition during Homecoming where everyone is getting ready, linking with friends, moving through the city, and preparing for the night—but there hasn’t been a central experience intentionally built around that energy,” Hicks said. “We wanted to create something that felt elevated, familiar, and genuinely reflective of the audience it’s designed for.”
That familiarity matters. Homecoming has become increasingly visible beyond HBCU campuses, evolving into a major cultural destination for brands, celebrities and people who may have little connection to the institutions themselves. Hicks describes The Reset as a nod to “the original Homecoming experience, before GHOE became a moment for cultural consumption.”
And the scale of this particular Homecoming makes the distinction especially important. Greensboro is anticipating more than 200,000 students, alumni and visitors for GHOE, making the celebration the city’s largest annual visitation weekend.
But if you have ever attended an HBCU Homecoming or watched your timeline turn into one giant fashion show during one, you already understand why beauty deserves its own space. Before the fit check comes the getting ready. Hair is laid. Beards are lined. Makeup bags are emptied across hotel counters. Fragrance gets sprayed a little more generously than usual. Friends pile into rooms to get dressed together. Beauty isn’t adjacent to the Homecoming experience. It is part of the ritual.
“There are no beauty-focused experiences, and we all know that’s a huge part of the Black college experience, Black culture,” Hicks told EBONY. “The fit checks, the hair, the beauty, the makeup before you hit the Yard like all of those different things.”
The Reset plans to tap directly into that energy through beauty and grooming experiences, interactive product discovery, music and social lounges, content-creation moments and VIP hospitality. Sprite joins the event as title sponsor, while additional beauty partners will help bring the experience to life.
More importantly, the people behind the activation aren’t parachuting into Greensboro for Homecoming weekend. Both Hicks and Love the Hair You Wear founder Vecoya Banks are North Carolina A&T alumni, and their connection to the university stretches beyond a branded activation. Hicks has worked within the university community, while Banks has spent the past five years growing Love the Hair You Wear’s programming on campus.
Founded in 2015, Love the Hair You Wear began as a natural-hair-focused community and has expanded into something much broader: connecting beauty with wellness, education, professional development and access. Banks told EBONY that while women make up much of its community, the organization’s mission extends beyond gender, helping people embrace their natural hair while supporting a larger journey of self-care.
That mission has translated into tangible results.
More than 1,000 students registered for Love the Hair You Wear’s 2025 North Carolina A&T event. This year, the organization will reach another milestone when its cumulative scholarships for A&T students hit $10,000. Its work has also extended beyond product giveaways and beauty conversations into career pipelines: in 2026, a former Love the Hair You Wear intern accepted a full-time position with Circana after a relationship initially established through the organization’s programming.
“Returning to A&T for the fifth time is about so much more than providing products,” Banks said. “It is about continuing to build a space where students feel seen, celebrated and connected to opportunities.”
That distinction is what makes The Reset particularly interesting. Beauty brands have spent years chasing Gen Z consumers, Black consumers and cultural relevance, sometimes treating each like a separate marketing category. HBCUs sit at the intersection of all three, while also producing generations of creatives, executives, entrepreneurs and tastemakers who go on to shape the industries attempting to reach them.
“For Love the Hair You Wear, this collaboration feels like a natural extension of the community we’ve been building at A&T for the past five years,” Banks said. “Our work has always been about creating spaces where our community can show up fully as themselves while connecting beauty and culture to opportunity.”
The history won’t only live in the crowd. During a conversation with EBONY, Hicks and Banks revealed that they are working with university archives to incorporate imagery and materials exploring hair and style throughout A&T’s history into the experience. Against the backdrop of the school’s centennial Homecoming, it creates an opportunity to connect what Aggies are wearing now with generations of Black self-expression that came before them.
That story will continue after Homecoming weekend.
Two weeks after The Reset, Love the Hair You Wear will return to A&T on November 13 for its fifth annual campus experience in collaboration with the university’s Family and Consumer Science Department. Students will be able to explore beauty products, participate in interactive programming, learn about career pathways and connect with professionals and organizations across the industry.
For Banks, the scholarship component remains among the most meaningful pieces of that work.
“Reaching $10,000 in scholarships is especially meaningful because it shows the lasting impact we want this experience to have,” she said. “We are proud of what has grown on this campus and excited about what is still ahead.”
Because a hundred years of Homecoming deserves more than nostalgia. It deserves acknowledgment of the culture HBCUs have created and continue to create, from what we wear and how we style our hair to the music we play while getting ready. The rest of the world may finally understand that Homecoming is a fashion moment, a beauty moment and an economic force. Aggies have known it all along.
The Reset powered by Sprite takes place October 30 from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. in downtown Greensboro. Love the Hair You Wear returns to North Carolina A&T on November 13 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Student Center’s Deese Ballroom.