Profile 005: Clara Jeon, Founder, Chapter 2 Agency

Clara Jeon is the Founder of Chapter 2 Agency, a dynamic public relations firm based in New York that has launched the careers of some of the coolest brands in fashion — from Pyer Moss and Rhude to Saintwoods and Reese Cooper. Raised in New Jersey, Clara has been a fashion enthusiast since an early age. Here is her story, exclusively for SCENE.

What do you do professionally?

I am the co-founder of Chapter 2. We’re a communications company focused mostly in fashion, art, and social impact and sustainability. 

So the full scope of what you do - what does your day to day look like?

[laughs] I mean, I can't even begin to tell you my day to day because it changes so much. There are some months where I'm constantly traveling for work, on multiple flights a week, then there are some weeks where I really do spend the bulk of my time doing traditional PR things like pitching, press appointments, press events, fashion shows, and things like that. But more and more, my day is definitely a lot of running the operations of a business and making sure my clients and team are being taken care of and we’re doing the best we can for each other. I think it's shifted from being a publicist 100% of the time and doing publicist things, to now probably 30% publicist and 70% of business owner.

Wow. So how do you balance that? I mean, what do you do?

I don’t know when time began to feel like such a scarcity that needs to be rationed. It’s a constant battle to remind myself there are only 24 hours in a day and ask myself what I want to budget time for each day, knowing that not everything is going to make it in and that’s okay. I think the first step is meditating on how you want to prioritize things. 

How you prioritize is a choice. Taking time to get to know yourself and what’s important to you, what brings you peace, what brings you a feeling of success, what keeps you well, what makes you a better version of yourself, all of that makes the process of prioritizing easier. But still, it’s a process! And no one’s going to tell you how to do it for yourself. But figure out what those guidelines are for yourself, your life, and how you want to live it, and clearly communicate them internally and externally. 

For me, above even myself, always comes my family. I know that if they’re good, I’m good. Being with them brings me a lot of joy and perspective. And because of that, I know that I have to carve out a certain amount of, not just time, but really space for them. There have been months I’m traveling nonstop for weeks and I’ll still make it a priority to spend even a day at home in between trips or fly back for a birthday. My whole company knows that certain holidays are black out days for me because I’ll be with my family and that’s important to me and not really up for negotiation. But with that time I make for them, I also have to ask myself, am I listening to the things that they're saying? Am I really engaging in what's happening in their lives? Am I being present even if I’m physically there? I think balance is knowing that it’s about more than just dedicating time to something, it’s the space it holds in your life and the energy you give it. So spending time with my family is one thing I do. 

Wellness and taking better, more consistent care of myself is another part of it. There was definitely a time in my life where that was not prioritized at all, like I didn’t even take an hour out of the day to work out consistently or go see a doctor when I was really sick. I learned the lesson of having to prioritize wellness the very, very hard way. I think it’s still a lesson I’m learning, to be honest. But it’s another example of if you don’t prioritize it for yourself, no one else will either. There was one time where I got so sick and no one at my workplace was really telling me to slow down, and so I just showed up to work every single day and didn’t take a day to just go to the doctor. I did all these events, I kept pushing through, and I just got worse and worse and worse, and then I ended up in the ER and was basically told what happened could’ve been easily preventable if I had just taken the time to get better in the beginning. Instead I just spun myself out and was out of commission for weeks. It was the first time I really felt like I had failed my body, not my body failed me, and since then it’s become important for me to try very consciously to make space in my life for the things that are just good for my overall wellbeing. People are going to respect it when you start to, too. No one’s ever going to tell you not to go to the doctor, to make time to work out, to have healthy sleep habits, to speak up when you need a break -- the only person whose permission you really need is your own. 

When was this?

It was a few years ago. I just felt the responsibility of so many things, personally and professionally. I never felt like there was enough time for everyone and everything, and so the first thing I would sacrifice was time for myself. But all of that was my own construction. After that experience, I made changes. Turns out, I do need to take an extra hour in the day if I'm not feeling well or go see a doctor, [laughs], to just take care of myself. 

But in all seriousness, sometimes self-care feels self-indulgent. I think that's something this city misleads you into believing -- that it's self indulgent to take time for yourself to go workout, get a massage, spend a night in instead of going to events. This place can make you think that you're not hustling hard enough, when that's not true at all. I wouldn’t have the same bandwidth for productivity, patience, focus, and all the things that I need to get through a workday and to do my job well without taking those like little pockets of space for myself. So I think balance just always comes down to taking that time to prioritize the things in your life that are important and really figuring out, “What I can give to this today? What are the things that really do make you feel fulfilled and happy and complete?” And you'd be surprised at how short that list is. You at least owe that short list to yourself.

I thought about that recently. Thinking about what I would actually take from a house if it was burning and could only name four things..

When you really ask yourself, “What are the essentials for me feeling happy and content?” the answer is surprisingly small. Especially when you live a life or work in an industry that has so much excess all the time. You start to think that you need all of these things, or you have to be at all these places, or you have to know or be friends with all of these people and you don't, you really don’t.

I do this thing where I write a running list of reminders to myself throughout the year to make the next one easier. Like tips for myself.  So in 2017, I started writing a bunch of little things to make my 2018 easier. And throughout 2018, I wrote little things to make my 2019 easier, and so on. So it's basically just a track record of all the lessons I learned throughout the year and don’t want to forget. In 2018, I remember I wrote down “you can't give yourself to everyone and everything that asks for it because there would be nothing left.” And I always try to remember that. It’s impossible to take it upon yourself to do every single thing for everyone who asks, so figure out what the pieces are that will make you feel whole and pick those. You don't owe clients or partners or anyone anything other than your very best, but you don’t owe them your everything. It’s funny how far you come in a year or how much things can change. In 2020, one of the reminders I wrote for myself is not to mistake comfort for happiness. 

And so you've had the business now for how many years? 

Four years. That can sound long or insanely short depending on the day. 

Congratulations! How have you evolved over the course of your work, especially from your time working for others? How have you evolved as far as how you see things now, but then also, it sounds like you have created a lifestyle that is conducive to what you need.

I think part of it was just getting older and going through a maturation process where things -- how I saw my life, how I wanted to live it, what I wanted from it, what I saw as healthy, what I recognized as being a sustainable way of living and working -- all started changing. If you’re not changing, you’re not growing. To me, one of the best things about getting older is clarity. You really see the people who are important to you, the things you want to invest in, and ways you can change for the better. Getting older means you’re putting in the time to learn some hard and soft lessons, so use them. 

I think the biggest difference between working for myself and working for other people is I don't operate out of a place of fear. I don't operate out of a place of, “I could be fired at any moment and replaced with a sea of other people who would kill for my job.” First of all, that’s false. But I don't operate out of fearing the “million other girls who would love to have my job” anymore. I don’t operate out of the fear that comes from having to navigate through extremely toxic dynamics that are typical of working in fashion, that at the end of the day aren't necessary or make any sense. Things like being told how many people want my job, how “lucky” I am as a way to perpetuate unhealthy work habits, being made to feel like I need to stay late for the sake of saying that I’m there late. If I stay late now, it’s because something genuinely has to get done and I will personally feel better leaving the office with it ready to go the next day, versus me staying late because of optics or office politics, or because I'm scared of not knowing what someone else’s reaction or temperament about it is going to be the next day.

And when you cut out the fear, it really does open you up to getting a whole different type of satisfaction and feeling successful. You have a more macro view to the results of what you’re putting in, and it makes you want to work harder and smarter to really make sure everything is perfect. And you want to do it for a long time. So you find more sustainable ways of keeping up productivity and feeling good while doing your job, which can be tough at times. You just want to do your best work for the people that believe in you and are committed to you. Your clients are committed to you. Your employees are committed to you. They made a commitment to be here every day and do their best work with you. And that is something that I never take lightly or for granted. I don't think it's ever a simple exchange of, “I'm paying you X amount of money so you need to give me this output.” Especially in a city like New York where you come to put in the work, to build something for yourself and others. I feel more responsibility now than I did being an employee somewhere. I feel a huge amount of responsibility to my clients, my employees, my business partner, my family who all believed in me so much and didn't say a word when I just told them one day I was quitting my job and would “figure it out.” I feel much more responsibility day to day, but I feel so much more free. My decisions are my own, my reasons more pure. Fear is the worst reason to do anything. 

And so how did you get over the fear? 

Fear is the worst. I have a saying even now to never make decisions feeling like your back is up against the wall because it always ends up being your worst decision. And it could be the smallest thing, it could be the biggest thing. My business partner Ken and I, we still say that to each other all the time if we feel like we're making a decision because we feel pressed versus because we want to do it. Through some tough lessons, I noticed a pattern. Every time I felt like my back was up against the wall and I made a decision, it usually turned out to be a decision I had to go back and fix. But fear...you kind of stop feeling it if you stay brave enough to keep putting yourself out there and letting yourself fail. You get perspective, you go through so much shit that everything else seems so irrelevant. That perspective is important, especially in an industry like fashion, where everything's made to seem like a huge deal. Like, this is the biggest client, this is the biggest event, this is the biggest collaboration, this is the biggest fuckup, or whatever it is, everything is made out to be the biggest, and it never is. It literally never is. 

There's a 15 to 30 day shelf life on anything in this industry - the relevancy of a collection down to a mistake you made. There's a 15 to 30 day expiration date on that. So knowing that, you kind of just realize that you will all move on, and it's not the end of the world. Life goes on and you stop fearing the worst possible outcome because you've already lived it, you will continue to live it, and you’ll be fine. And to be perfectly honest, there will come a time when life is going to put into perspective what a real emergency is, what real pain feels like, what’s worth stressing over. The silver lining of going through tough life shit is that it makes you stop fearing a lot of the inconsequential things. And dealing with anxiety over things like workplace politics and constructions and projections of somebody else's insecurities just won’t seem worth it anymore because it’s not. 

So part of these questions are about how this personal growth has impacted the way you've navigated around the industry, which obviously we just talked about. But I'm kind of interested in how you got here. Did you know about fashion publicity growing up?

No! I had no idea how this stuff worked. I grew up in the suburbs of suburbs in New Jersey. You know what though, I always say it's such a blessing that I just knew so early on that I just loved fashion and it stuck. I don’t know why. So many interests and passions in your life change as you grow older and discover new things, but one thing that I always knew I loved was fashion and I never grew out of it. 

How did you know? Did you used to watch shows, or...

I just love getting dressed up. I loved putting outfits together. You can literally talk to friends I have that knew me in the first, second, third grade, who will tell you about an agenda book I had that my dad bought me to write down tasks and chores I should be doing around the house every day. I filled that agenda with outfits that I would wear to school instead. [laughs] It’s like he bought it as a chore schedule, and instead I wrote what outfits I would wear to school in it! [laughs]

And then it just kept graduating into a more meaningful interest. As you get older, you have the capacity to educate yourself more in an interest, so I would start reading more about it, watching anything I could about it, looking at magazines, then I got really deep into Cathy Horyn, and runway reviews. I remember being so enamored with Style.com when it first started coming up and they started putting runway shows up online. 

I also do think it's very lucky, timing wise, to grow up in the age of the internet. That I could have that kind of access to fashion. If that hadn’t been the case, maybe my trajectory would have changed. I don’t know. But I do think it is a good amount of luck that I was growing up when the internet started really giving people access to fashion and runway shows. That and reading Cathy Horyn’s reviews in the New York Times. And then it was just, like, obsessing over runway shows on Style.com. Still to this day, those are my favorite collections, the early 2000s - I have such a soft spot for them. At this point, I don't even know if they were genuinely great collections, but I just have such a rose colored lens on them now because I just loved them so much back then. 

Did you have specific designers? 

Oh my god, Phoebe Philo at Chloe. Her Spring/Summer 2006 show - actually anything between 2006 and 2009 I just loved. I could tell you, in look order, the models that walked that show. I just absolutely loved it. Alexander McQueen - to this day, he's one of my absolute, most revered designers that I looked at, still look at, and still reference all the time. Just in terms of sheer talent and energy and the audacity to do something outside of the system. I think that amount of confidence in your art is so hard pressed to find these days where everything looks the same. 

Very many things...

A lot of things. And so anyways, for a long time I would just start looking at things on Style.com and the runway shows, and I would take notes on the shows and looks I liked every season, things like that. And as soon as I could, I was applying for internships and willing to do whatever to get a glimpse of how any of this even happened. I would take the train into the city, three, four times a week, between everything else I had going on, and I would just intern wherever I could find it. If I had a break of two months for the holidays, I would be interning in the city every day. I just wanted to work. 

And I worked in a celebrity PR agency. And then I worked at a really high end beauty company in their PR department. And that's where I met this incredible publicist who I still keep in touch with and she was one that really first trusted me with real responsibilities, like helping with putting events together asking for my recommendations on how to launch something, and I mean, I was probably 20 at the time. And she was a VP at that company. She empowered me at the office and made me feel like I had a voice, while also teaching me even the most basic things like, “Don't show up to work in jeans,, even if they’re black. We're a corporate office.” Even things down to, “When you present me with something, show me how it makes some sort of sense and reason.” And I just remember, the more I learned about PR, the more I realized it was about storytelling. There’s a cohesive way of sharing so much more of a story that goes beyond the product itself. Whether it was the events, or the stories that we would place, or the partnerships that we would have, everything really shared something specific that was so much bigger than just a product. And I loved that about PR. I love the challenge of not being able to buy your way into something. You could buy an advertisement, and you can make it whatever you want to, put it in a magazine. But with PR you really gotta hustle for that credit, for that story, and you have to be the one making it compelling enough for someone to want to tell it to millions of people. And I loved that part of PR. I just naturally wanted to combine it with the other thing I love - fashion. And that's when I was like, “This is it. This is what I’m meant to do.” 

And the other thing that pushed me into it was knowing that I love people. I'm so wholly and definitely an extrovert. I love meeting new people, being around people, talking to people; I don't have beef with anyone, I just genuinely love people. So I knew this was it. In college I double majored, and then I was like, “You know what? I know what I want to be doing, I want to get out of here and start working.” So I graduated in three years, and I moved to the city and I just -

Oh my god!

And I didn't even have a job at the time. But I told my mom, “I'm going to get an apartment with my friend, the two of us are going to live in a one bedroom, it's fine, I'm going to find a job, and I'm going to start just working.” And she was like, “Okay.”

Really?

I told her this even when I was in college, I was like, “Listen, you gave me such a happy childhood, you and dad, and you guys paid for college. I got it from here. I’ll figure it out.” And I will say that - that's an advantage that a lot of people do not have. 

You don't have those loans?

Yeah, there's a lot of things you don't worry about when you walk out of college without loans. But I was like, “You and dad gave me a beautiful childhood and paid for an amazing education my entire life. If I can't make myself successful with those tools that you gave me, that's on me. And I will have no one to blame but myself. If I can't make something work with what you gave me, then I can't make it work at all.” And that's what I kind of moved into the city with. I knew I already had such a leg up in all of this. So I had no excuses, I just had to make it work and figure it out. 

That's a word.

And that's how it all started. I started working in fashion, I kind of went through PR boot camp, and really learned the importance of things like reports, proper client interfacing, and things like that. It was at more corporate companies and I can’t say I was finding complete fulfillment in what I was doing, but I was learning. 

And at the same time, I was just living my life in New York City. There's no city like New York. I love this city, I've lived here for 10 years. There’s no city like this place where you can just go out and meet so many people and then have those turn into real friendships, connections, and relationships that you have for the rest of your life. And that's how I started meeting all these incredible designers who were also really young at the time. And they were all friends or friends of friends, and we would just meet up, go to shows, go to parties, just you know, crash dinners, be another person’s plus one to things and you build your circle that way. And I met so many incredibly talented young designers back then from just living my life.

And when it clicked for me, I had a full time job working for the corporate, luxury brands, but I would be spending all my free time doing free PR for these guys and getting them crazy press. I really enjoyed working with these kids who were like me, and honestly, I was just really good at working with them. I was getting them even better press than I was getting for clients that were paying like 8, 10 $12,000 dollars a month. And I was so much happier doing it for them because every small win, every milestone is a huge celebration, because you're made to feel like you don't even belong in this industry. You're made to feel like this is just a trend, this is the passing thing, this is a joke on luxury fashion. That you won’t last. And so because you're always made to feel like you don't belong, you work that much harder and celebrate the underdog wins.

Yes, like every little milestone. 

And I still have that with my clients now. There are still brands that need people to believe in them early to really help them grow into what they could become, and really tap into the potential of what it could all evolve into. And the amount of trust that you build when you really have that relationship with young designers, or designers who are your actual friends, is so different from the formal, distant corporate relationships that you have in more traditional agencies. 

And that's when I kind of made that connection: even if I'm not getting paid anything and I'm trafficking their samples out of my apartment, I love the hits that I bring for these guys. It's more rewarding than anything I've done professionally elsewhere. I hit a quarterlife crisis around 25, and I was really reevaluating what I wanted to do. I was burnt out; I was working so much between my actual full time job and the things that I was doing on the side. And in this city, things are really expensive, and I was consulting and freelancing so that I could keep doing the type of work I wanted to be doing and still pay the bills. I was just so burnt out, and I was like, “I don't even know if I want to work in fashion anymore.” So I quit my full time job. 

I had designers be the first ones to hit me and be like, “Hey, I'll give you the little bit that I can each month if you just continue to at least be my sounding board or work on this show or this project for me.” That’s how I started freelance relationships with a lot of these designers as I was figuring things out. While I was asking myself if I even wanted to be in fashion anymore, I hit a point where I was just like, “I would be so sad every day if I didn't get to talk to these guys. And I would be so sad every fashion week if I didn't get to see seats filled with all of my friends, all my editors who I came up with, love, and go on vacations with. I would be so sad if I was taken out of this industry and I didn't get to be with them all the time.” And that's when I was like, “I can't leave. I just have to figure this out. I have to. I have to make a shift. I have to make this into something that I want and that will make me happy, but can be a sustainable business and sustainable to my happiness.”

I think I've always known in my head that I wanted to eventually have my own company. I don't think I've ever thought it would be that early, at 26. 

When did you think it would be?

I think like 30s 40s, when I had some money in the bank and a little bit more experience. But now I look back at it and I think if I hadn't been 26 and extremely naive to the realities of owning a business, especially one with the potential to grow this quickly, I don't know if I would have done it. And that's not to say looking back I wouldn't have done it if I had known, but there are things I definitely would have thought much harder about than I actually did. [laughs]. For me, it was just like, “I want to do this. I think I can do it. I'm gonna just go for it.” And I think it also helped that I didn't put the pressure on myself to make it something other than a way for me to be happy. And maybe this is why I'm a relatively happy person. I never put the pressure on myself being like, “I want to be the biggest agency, and super rich, and I want all this power”or anything like that. I really was just like, “I need this to be an exercise in my happiness. Fashion makes me happy. PR makes me happy. Working with these designers makes me happy. Being around really wonderful people in this industry that I met makes me happy. So if I can't be happy from all of these ingredients that I have, then what the hell am I doing?” 

So for me starting a company really was an exercise in my happiness. Like, let me do things the way that I believe in. Let me work with the people that I really want to work with. Let me only really work with the editors and writers who care enough to tell a story the right way. Be with people who believe in me and give me a shot, my clients a shot, and that I genuinely have a very respectful and amazing relationship with. I don't need to kiss ass for anybody.

And that shift completely just changed the way that I was working. And it really is the ethos of how I built this company. There are so many ways to get rich, much easier ways with better probabilities, than fashion. If you end up being rich in this game, amazing, but you don't actually come into fashion and be like, “I'm gonna make a ton of money.” You come into it because you love it, there's something about it that makes you feel whole. Everyone's experience with fashion is different, but if you’re in this, there's something that happened at some point that just made you love it so much that you wanted to commit and dedicate your life to it. And if that's the case, then you should feel fulfilled and happy doing it. You shouldn't feel - and you don’t have to feel - all of these things that some people do in this industry. Really unfortunate things like burnt out, never feeling good enough, taken advantage of, stressed, overworked, and all of these things. Like, there are certain industries people go into knowing that that's going to be the trade off for making a ton of money. Like finance [laughs]. But fashion’s not one of them. 

Music isn't either. 

Yeah. And actually, I really don't know if I'm ever going to be like the biggest agency in the world, or I'm ever going to be a self made multimillionaire many times over, or whatever it may be. But if I could be the happiest person in this industry, that's all I want.

What role does vulnerability play with you in the way that you exist within the industry, and the way that you run your business?

That’s something that’s changed for sure over the past couple of years. I think especially in this industry, being vulnerable is really tough because it's always smoke and mirrors. And the truth is, everyone is struggling. You can have a brand that looks like it's doing super well and it’s in every retailer, and you showboat that you have this fabulous life, and you could be the most lost, broken person inside, or your business could really be suffering and nobody really knows until one day there's a sample sale and then you're gone. And that's real. 

I think because nobody talks about the difficulties of this business, not only financially but emotionally and the toll that take on you, people want to put up the best and shiniest projection of their lives in front of other people because that's how you feel like you're relevant, or that's how you feel like you can compete. And for me, I operated the same way for a long time. Not necessarily that I was ever showing things off, but in that I didn’t talk about the bad sides of things. It’s easier to make things look easy. To make it look like this just came to you and that you don't spend nights wide awake worrying about a million different things or that things don't get to you. But to be honest, when you start a business with your friends and people that you really trust and that trust you and that believe in you, it just changes the dynamic of the working relationship from the get go. It’s personal. And I had to learn to be vulnerable with people to survive. You just can't unless you are. 

I’ve had to be really vulnerable with my business partner, Ken. I’m probably more vulnerable with him than I am with anyone in my life. When you go into business with somebody, you’ve got to be really open about how you work, how you do things, what's important to you, your finances, relationships, the complications in your life, baggage that you have. All of that just comes to the table with that person because you are now in this together and responsible for each other’s lives. It forces you to grow with them. Another great example is with some of our first clients. I will never ever for one day take for granted my founding group of clients with this company. 

Who were they?

Kerby at Pyer Moss. He’s still the person I credit the most with starting this company because he was basically the one who told me to do it. He would let me work out of his office or do whatever I needed to get it off the ground. And my close friend Curtains. Still to this day someone who brings me brands and business whenever he’s got something cooking. Those people were and are still my biggest champions. They were here for me through everything. And there were periods of running this business where I didn't make the best decisions, and I really needed help whether it was advice, someone to talk me down, keep me from going off on the wrong person, or even if I needed them to pay early, or whatever it might be. They would always come through, every single time if I just asked. But if I never asked, they wouldn't have known. 

I think it's almost such a shame that people don't talk enough about the realities of how difficult running a business is, especially in the beginning. And honestly, especially being 26, and not really knowing a lot of the logistical functions of running a business operation, there were times I had to do things like call up a client and be like, I really need you to pay this early because I need to pay my rent, or I'm behind in my rent. And just being really vulnerable about that. I would have loved to have never been in a position to even have that conversation, but at the end of the day, for survival, surrounding yourself with people that you trust is so important. It doesn't matter what stage in your life or your business that you're in, whether it's day one or year ten, having those people around you that you trust that you could pick up the phone and be like, “I need help,” is the only lifeline that you're ever going to have that will see you through another day of making it.  It's not always going to be your parents or boyfriend. It’s just not always going to be the people that you think are the easiest phone calls. Sometimes those end up being the toughest phone calls. So surround yourself with a network of people that really do support you as much as you support them. And I think being vulnerable is still hard. Being someone with a lot of pride,it's just fundamentally hard. And I'm an eternal optimist, and most of the time, talking about the hard things is just not what I want to be doing. But I've seen and lived through cases where if I had not been vulnerable, I probably would not have made it through that. 

Interesting. I personally think that there's a relationship between vulnerability and feeling seen. So it's a two part question. What does feeling seen mean to you? And when was the first time you felt seen in this industry?

That's an interesting question. For me, when I first felt really seen was when designers started acknowledging me and the work I was doing. When we would be in a room and they were the ones saying “This girl is helping my business and I need her to be a part of what we're doing at a very core, fundamental level to grow this.” I would never have started this company had it not been designers being the first ones to be like, “You need to do this. And if you do this, we're going to be your first clients.” Or you know, “If you need an office, you come work in my office until you can afford your own,” and all of these things. They were the ones that were really pushing me and encouraging me to do that. Because yes, while they love me on a friendship level, they also told me straight out, “My business cannot afford to not have you.” And when they start budgeting you into the limited resources that they have to prioritize having you there, those are the moments that I feel seen. 

Because you don't go into PR to be seen; you're always behind the scenes. You're always the one plugging, making connections, planting things here and there, and doing what you need to do in the background to make it look easy, make it look organic. You are never the person in the spotlight. The reason that you do it is to be seen by the people you work with and that you respect. And that's why it always comes down to the way that the designers respond to me, and look at me and the work that I'm doing. That counts to me more than anything.

And who in this, it sounds like the designers inspire you.

So, so much.

So they're your biggest inspiration, would you say?

I think anybody with real conviction in their art, their creativity, with what they're doing with their lives is someone who inspires me. People who have the conviction to move forward the way they want to, regardless of what convention says, what people expect, what's polite, or what's easy or comfortable. If you look at the designers I tend to work with, they're blurring boundaries and they're pushing beyond what people expect of them. Or they go out there and just create new spaces for themselves. They’re going to make what they want to make, regardless of what box people try to put them into. And those are the creatives that inspire me the most. My designers don't really fit into a conventional, boxed-in description of what a luxury designer or skate brand or streetwear brand or retailer is, and to me, those are the most interesting stories to tell. 

So final few questions. You're obviously a woman of color. How do you see this energy evolving for creators of color?

This is one of the things that I love about vulnerability and being open. Because when you discuss what the challenges are, what the struggles have been, people become more open to embracing stories that aren’t a fairytale and want to come in to help better the reality versus live out the fantasy. 

When you discuss people of color operating in this industry, I think the most important thing is to take away the fear and take away the embarrassment, or maybe empower yourself to act while still carrying those feelings, about being open about the ways your experience doesn’t look like the glamorized, white-washed version of what is perpetuated. For myself, it took me a minute to acknowledge, even to myself, things that happened to me because of my race or because I’m a woman in a very male dominated part of the industry. You aren’t conditioned to think that anyone will care and because of that, I just believed it doesn’t matter. Or I was scared of being met with the response that I’m being dramatic or naive or a cry baby or whatever other characterizations women get thrown their whole lives to discredit their experiences. But being a woman of color is not a shared universal experience, and if you don't talk about it, and you don't share the reality of that, then how can you expect to be met with empathy? And if you can’t be met with empathy, how can you push responsibility on an industry or culture to fix things that are broken and create solutions? How can you expect us as a whole to work towards something? Work towards changing? There’s a difference between asking for sympathy and empathy. 

I think one of the beautiful things about the past couple years, as tough as they've been, is that it’s almost like a great enlightenment with people really finding beautiful, loud, subtle, brutally honest, sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, layered ways of shouting their stories, making sure they’re heard, and refusing to let themselves be diminished and their convictions forgotten by history. 

I can speak on my experiences, but I also think it’s important to talk about how much I've learned from having conversations with people like you and so many people with experiences that are different than mine. I would never have been able to look at situations, my industry, my city, my country, my world through a different lens had people not been vulnerable and open with me in sharing all the ways the world has met them. That’s changed the way I see my role in all of this, the way I run my business, the opportunities I pass onto others, the things that I take into consideration day to day, the responsibility I feel, because I run a business that essentially amplifies voices. I have a role and responsibility in this great enlightenment era. The more you know, the more you can put your own resources and your own effort into leaving things changed and leveling the playing field for people to achieve success.

The median black household typically holds 10% of the wealth of a median white household. There’s a study that for every dollar of wealth owned by a median white family, the median black family owns just 5 cents. Lower-income Asians experience the lowest gains in income compared to their counterparts in other groups. I could go on, but the takeaway is that wealth begets more wealth. That’s the reality. And you can root conversations about disparities in education, financial mobility, political influence, healthcare, criminal convictions, and employment opportunities from that. But for me, when I become aware of these realities, it shapes the way I operate in the industry I’m in. It becomes my responsibility to say I’m going to consciously open that door for people, give them that shot. Both in the way I hire and in the clients I take on, I factor in how I’m helping to shape a more diverse, inclusive industry of people. I want to put my effort and resources and network into growing careers and dreams and give opportunities to people who might not otherwise have gotten that kind of access. Because in any creative industry like fashion, art, or music, for every successful person, there are so many who just didn't even come close because they just weren't in the right rooms, getting the guidance, talking to the right people, getting access to the right opportunities. And it's not for lack of talent or anything other than opportunity. So once you’ve made it through to a certain point, you can become the person to give other people those same opportunities that you got. 

My showrooms represent brands from creatives who are black, white, Asian, gay, straight, trans, American citizens, immigrants, uncategorizable by choice because fuck labels. And honestly, in any other era, I don't know if they would have been met with the same empathy, the same openness, reached the level of success, had there not been these conversations over the past decade and other people who were vulnerable and paved the way to make access and success in this industry more within reach than ever before. 

So my final question is what is the legacy that you're trying to build? And what do you hope to leave behind with your work?

A friend of mine and brilliant human, Antwaun Sargent, said this thing to me once that I felt so humbled by -- he called me the publicist for the culture. And if that’s the legacy I leave behind, I feel like I’m doing something right in this life. 

I just hope that I leave this industry more inclusive and operating with more humility than it was before I came in. I hope that I set a new standard for how people are treated and how they can feel through this experience. I hope I help lead to the success of some incredible, talented, thoughtful humans and their teams. I hope people get rich from what we put in. I hope lives are made better and I leave the industry a little bit happier and healthier than when I came in. Give people a chance who otherwise wouldn't have had it and watch the type of genius and expansive creativity that’s born from that and how it changes the world. See how opportunities I make for others change the trajectory of a life, of a family. I think that part of how I see things came from having immigrant parents who came to this country with absolutely nothing. I grew up seeing how even the smallest breaks can’t be taken for granted. The people who opened up their homes when my parents had nowhere to go for Thanksgiving, the people who babysat me and my brother while they worked day and night, the coworkers who helped them build their careers and made them feel less alone, the people who invited them in instead of shut them out. You can’t take those opportunities for granted. And I hope I can give those little breaks and opportunities to other people who need it, that's the greatest thing I think I can give.

Brilliant.