Latest / Locatora Radio [A Radiophonic Novela] / Capítulo 032: Drag Me - The Belladona Interview

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Capítulo 032: Drag Me - The Belladona Interview · Locatora Radio [A Radiophonic Novela]

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Radio radio radio commies, a myth and bullshit, A radiophonic
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: novella Look at Radio hosted by Malamn. Welcome back to
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: look at that our radio. This is Diosa and this
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: is Mala. Thank you once again for tuning in to
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: get another radio. We are so excited to be recording
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  Speaker 1: thirty two today. And today we're not recording at Radio
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Espasio like we usually do. We're on location. Yeah, and
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: just to remind our listeners and any new listeners what
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: local radio is all about. We are a radiophonic novella.
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  Speaker 1: Are having the brilliance and legacies of women in films
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  Speaker 1: of color. And today we are actually recording straight out
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  Speaker 1: of the Belladonna headquarters. We have here Natalia and Lalla
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  Speaker 1: rom Marrow, the co founders and creative directors of Belladonna,
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  Speaker 1: everybody's favorite lifestyle brand rooted in culture, nostalgic of nineties
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  Speaker 1: l a for around the way girls did the most.
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  Speaker 1: But what up, guys, So thank you so much for
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  Speaker 1: having us and for having us over your your space
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  Speaker 1: is so cute. By the way, the Belladonna headquarters, which
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  Speaker 1: you're moving, Yes, it's our final final days here turning
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  Speaker 1: down the day, so we gotta make usage of the space.
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  Speaker 1: Came through. I love the space, it's so cute. So
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  Speaker 1: we wanted to, you know, have you one of course
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  Speaker 1: number one because we love Belladonna. Um Yosa and I
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  Speaker 1: have both been like Belladonna like customers and fan girls
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  Speaker 1: for a few years. Actually we were before we started recording.
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  Speaker 1: We pulled up an old picture from two thousands fifteen
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  Speaker 1: of um one of my favorite Belladonna pieces, which is
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  Speaker 1: the black tank with the eha um script and the
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  Speaker 1: crop tank, the cropt tank, and my favorite I had.
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  Speaker 1: I had the miha shirt and I had the Muneka shirt,
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  Speaker 1: the munka crop um from a couple of years ago.
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  Speaker 1: So that's where I first saw Belladonna. When I saw
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  Speaker 1: those shirts, I was like, I need them, I need
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  Speaker 1: to follow I need to know what this brand is
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  Speaker 1: all about, because this is I don't think I had
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  Speaker 1: seen really like a lot of other shirts like that
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  Speaker 1: I had seen in the past. My dad used to
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  Speaker 1: buy us a lot of um I don't know where
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  Speaker 1: he would get them, but he would come home with
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  Speaker 1: like unmarked like plastic bags with these shirts that said
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  Speaker 1: like educated Chicana. You know those shirts that you whever
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  Speaker 1: the fun he would find them. So when I saw
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  Speaker 1: the Miha and Muka, it was very reminiscent of those
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  Speaker 1: types of those types of shirts that my my dad,
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  Speaker 1: the Odi Chicano, would always buy for us. That's why
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  Speaker 1: I love Belladonna and then the ASA. What are your
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  Speaker 1: memory either, when did you first find out about Belladonna? Um?
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  Speaker 1: I can't remember how I stumbled across the Instagram page,
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  Speaker 1: but I do remember one of the first shirts that
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  Speaker 1: the few shirts that I bought from y'all was the
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  Speaker 1: Balletta Princess the War Paint and then then not Your Higha.
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  Speaker 1: They were super cute. Remember y'all were having a sale
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  Speaker 1: and I was like, all right, here's my chance. I'm
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  Speaker 1: going to buy all the shirts I've been eyeing. UM.
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  Speaker 1: And then I just love the way that y'all would
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  Speaker 1: um all the photo shoots that that y'all would have
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  Speaker 1: you Lag in particular, I remember you had this um
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  Speaker 1: you were wearing the art Labo shirt, the crop and
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: you have like your hair done in curls and you're
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: like holding like a red phone. Oh it was in
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  Speaker 1: my house and actually when were you still live together?
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  Speaker 1: Like girl girl, no budget, no resources, you got to
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  Speaker 1: wing it. You gotta figure that ship out. So like,
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  Speaker 1: you know, like in the beginning, a lot of those
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  Speaker 1: shoots we would just do in my apartment with our phones,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: like trying to figure out like what like where's the
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  Speaker 1: good lighting. Luckily she has a photography background, so she
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  Speaker 1: was able to, like you know, art direct a little more.
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  Speaker 1: She'd be like put don like like Okay, this is
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  Speaker 1: what it's gonna do. She would do my makeup, she
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: would do my hair, she would do all of it.
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  Speaker 1: But yeah, that was like that was in the It's
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  Speaker 1: so funny because it seems like so long ago, but
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  Speaker 1: what was it like two thousands, you know, because that
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  Speaker 1: was the year I graduate. I did graduated from undergrad
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  Speaker 1: and then over the summer you had like a you
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  Speaker 1: did like a call for models because you were doing
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  Speaker 1: a video shoot um for one of your music videos.
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  Speaker 1: And then I hit you all up and I was
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  Speaker 1: like pick me. I love y'all, I'm going to be
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  Speaker 1: in l A. This is why Yasha fuck with me.
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  Speaker 1: And then you did message me back and you were
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  Speaker 1: like come through and it was a lot of fun.
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  Speaker 1: It was super medic Taco here appropriate the one on
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  Speaker 1: Third Street. I think, Yeah, yeah, I know. The fun
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  Speaker 1: part about that story is, um, you know the model
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  Speaker 1: call outs. Like when I first started doing music, that
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  Speaker 1: was always how I would get girls to be in
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  Speaker 1: my videos. You know, I really wanted to kind of
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: like leverage my MySpace page and figure out a way
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  Speaker 1: how like, you know, did us make space for us
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  Speaker 1: to bring girls that grew up like me, girls that
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  Speaker 1: look like us onto you know, m like when those
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  Speaker 1: platforms were really popping, right, But yeah, it was so
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  Speaker 1: and and it just makes everything feel so much more
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  Speaker 1: fun because I feel like a lot of times at
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  Speaker 1: our shoots and those early music video shoots, like girls
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  Speaker 1: would make lifelong friends. Like you know, you get to
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  Speaker 1: like actually still follow the girls that I met. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I still follow one of them in particular, she's a
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  Speaker 1: makeup artists. That's crazy. It's really funny. We have our
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  Speaker 1: favorite restaurant that we go to, um here in the
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  Speaker 1: San Fernando Valley, and actually, um, one of the men
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  Speaker 1: who's worked there, who's worked there in my whole life.
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  Speaker 1: It's like a family restaurant that we'd always stopped by.
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  Speaker 1: I shot a video in like two thousand six called
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  Speaker 1: Sad Girl and His Daughters were in the video, and
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: he's kind of like the I don't want to he's
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: not a bus boy because he's not a boy. He's
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: a grown ass man, you know what I mean. But
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  Speaker 1: he's like, you know, it just helps around the restaurant.
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  Speaker 1: And so I've been friends with him our whole life.
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  Speaker 1: And to see his little tiny girls were in that
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  Speaker 1: video now other really grown as women with babies. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's just really crazy. But it's just been fun to like,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: you know, you just really told your age we're grown
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  Speaker 1: women doing ship since two thousand and five, two thousand six.
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  Speaker 1: You know you can put those nuss together, um, but yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I know, it's just really cool to see, you know
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  Speaker 1: what I mean, the friendships that you can make at
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  Speaker 1: like you know, shoots like that by just doing al
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  Speaker 1: out on social media. And I love how you bring
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  Speaker 1: up you bring up you know, like these are such
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: major throwbacks that you just mentioned, I mean my Space
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  Speaker 1: and tre and the other the other like way that
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  Speaker 1: we've been introduced to you blad last through your music,
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  Speaker 1: like you've been mentioning so like I remember watching the
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Home Girls music video come out on TV, and then
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: I remember hearing Sprung on a thug um, and so
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: I want to ask you, like maybe you can tell
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  Speaker 1: us a little bit more about your journey and going
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  Speaker 1: from making music to getting into Vella Donna and fashion
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  Speaker 1: and everything else that that you. I mean, I'm gonna
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: do the short version, so just wrapped me up. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: very long. But I grew up here in the San
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Fernando Valley, like in the Havanas Panorama City area, very
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: kind of like traditional chicken a household. I have four sisters.
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  Speaker 1: My family did not have a lot of money. I think,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: like the best way to sum up the situation and
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: be like I didn't have my own bed until I
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  Speaker 1: went away to college. Like it was just a family
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  Speaker 1: where we shared everything at all times. Right. Um. So
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  Speaker 1: then I went to UCSB um where they also went. Um.
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  Speaker 1: I struggled a lot at school, like you know, like
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  Speaker 1: financially it was so straining, like I didn't have the
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  Speaker 1: means were like the family to really be able to
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  Speaker 1: help with all of that stuff. But um, I was
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: at Chickeno Studies major and then I had like a
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: crazy anxiety kind of like breakdown um my sophomore year
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  Speaker 1: and I was just like it just wasn't the place
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  Speaker 1: for me, I couldn't find my rhythm. Um, it was
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: really difficult, especially like coping with the anxiety. So I
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: was like, you know what, and I kind of knew,
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  Speaker 1: like I had my intention set on music. I knew
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: I wanted to make music. I felt like the easiest
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: way to reach like the world with a message is
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  Speaker 1: literally through a song, you know, like that's a very
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: quick way if you have something to say, to say
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  Speaker 1: it if that catches on. UM. So I moved back
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  Speaker 1: to l A. My space was cracking. UM. I feel
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  Speaker 1: like it was the perfect opportunity for me to start
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  Speaker 1: connecting with like minded women. UM. And I wrote this
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  Speaker 1: song called home Girls really on my own, put it
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  Speaker 1: up on my Space, and like kind of the rest
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  Speaker 1: was history. It's like now we're very used to things
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  Speaker 1: kind of like um, you know, taking on a life
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  Speaker 1: of their own and becoming like you know, this internet
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  Speaker 1: sensation and in like a local way, that's kind of
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  Speaker 1: what it was. Um. But with home Girls, which I wrote, uh,
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  Speaker 1: like specifically for my sisters, and just this kind of
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  Speaker 1: idea of like I grew up with strong women kind
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  Speaker 1: of like surrounding me all of my accomplishments. I always
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: kind of like felt I had a lot to do
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: with like my girls around me, the support system that
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: I had, So I just wanted to almost like write
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: an ode to friends. And it sounds so fucking corny,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: but it's really interesting to me that it was, like
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  Speaker 1: it was so sincere and I don't think anyone had
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: ever really sing a song about like being friends. That's
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: how corny at all. That's like what we're all of that.
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  Speaker 1: But like when I would going to the radio station
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  Speaker 1: and it's about my best friend, yeah, you know what
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  Speaker 1: I mean, Like I'm like breaking that down and they're
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: playing like I don't know, like snooping game and like
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: all this hard shit, and I'm like, I'm just here
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: to represent more friends about it around the world. How
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: much of hip hop music is talking about the homie
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: right right and then so like so it's just about
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: their best friends too exactly, and it really you know,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: I wanted to get lay out those those early songs
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: were like the story of my life, like You're you
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: here and Home Girls, I talk about like um coming
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: up where I'm from. Life gets a little crazy. But
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: I have no regrets because it made me and I
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: really have felt like it could be really crazy in
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: the neighborhood that I came up in. But there was
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: so much beauty there, and there was so much that
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: I loved about it, you know. And I just even
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: had a line in there about like my I would
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: lead to raise me and it was just crazy, Like
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: I just put that song on my Space. I didn't
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: realize like everybody was raised by their grandma, and you
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: know it's like everybody's like, oh, that's me too, girls,
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  Speaker 1: And how do people so, how do people respond to
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: the music and who like really like was responding and
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: listening because I know you also have done like you
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: would do a lot of shows, like at car shows,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: lots of car shows, like all of my early beginnings. Um,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: I would say, we're you know, like I wrote these songs.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: I always say for like girls who kind of like
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: around the way, girls who who were from like from
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: nothing to something like with that mentality, And so it
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: would it would would be girls predominantly from l A
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: I would hear from, and then I would see like,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: oh Ship Bakersfield, and then it would be like northern California,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: like the Bay Area, and then I'm like, wait, you're
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: in Chicago living that same experience. So I think like
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: there's so many like nuanced things that I would say
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: in the record that you kind of have to like
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: know to know for you to be able to relate.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Like even even me saying something as simple is like
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: m uh my Wila raised me, Like you're gonna have
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: to even know what that is, you know what I
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: mean to be like, oh ship like I felt with her,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: or like I get what this is about. Um. And
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: then I feel like the music video is kind of
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: just always added another layer so you could see like
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: this is the way I see my neighborhood, um, when
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: so much of everything else that that your force fed
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: especially about like l A or Chicano culture, is like
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: it's dangerous, it's scary, dark, it's you know what I mean,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: like all of these things, and like to me, it's
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: just never the way I looked at it. I just
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: always looked at it like, hey, like the sun shines
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: different in my neighborhood, like when the palm tree sways,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: like what that feels like, and just trying to depict that,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like in a song, I
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: want to see a family that looks like I want
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: to see girls that look like the girls I grew
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: up around, like getting their fair shine. Um, and I
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: just wanted to do the art Le Vote Tour. It's funny.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: My fiance always teases me, He's like, maybe you should
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: have like a higher like higher higher goals and you
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: absolutely And I'm like when you're from, like you know,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: around here, like that's your ship growing up, and so
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: that was like, you know, those early days, they were
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: so meaningful to me because like, growing up, that's what
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: I listened to, Like I couldn't wait to be on
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: that stage or um. I did the cover of low
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Rider magazine like in like two thousand seven or two
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: thousand eight or something, and it was like, you know,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: to me, that was like Vogue, Like that's all you
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: know what I mean, That's like an equivalent in almost
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: just like a regional way. Um. And so like those
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: things were really there were a lot of fun, but
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: they definitely kind of set the tone own for what
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about today, which is the brand
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: have in addition to Belladonna, you have your own company,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: honey Bee Goals. Yes, So tell us about you and
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: where you came from and how you got into all
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: of this. Girl, I don't even know what year is it. Um. Well,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: I was born in East and we moved when I
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: was kind of young to Riverside, and um, it was
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: always coming back and forth because we were the only
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: family that moved to uh yet to the i E.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: So we were always we didn't know anybody else. We
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: were always out here um summer's weekends until I could.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: I just did not feel like I ever belonged there.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: I felt like I'm a city girl. I'm the all
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: the art and I've always been very much in the
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: art since i was a kid. Um, So as soon
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: as we could steal our parents cars, i was back
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: out here for the weekends, right but no, So yeah,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: so I have since I was a kid. I've always
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: been in an artist. I've always been. When I was younger,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: I was paying to draw, and you know, my parents
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: did what they could to like kind of nurture that.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: But again saying similar to law, like, I grew up
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: in a family who, um didn't have a lot of money.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: There was six of us. I'm the fifth youngest. Um.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Apart from that, I was a very dysfunctional family just
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: you know a lot of like drug addictions and convicts
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: in prison. It was just a lot. So my parents
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: couldn't really um, they couldn't really afford to like nurture
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: that that passion that I had, and they didn't know
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: how you know, in the first generation UM American. My
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: parents are both from Mexico and so you know, my
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: parents came with you know, my dad was an orphan
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: at like ten um, you know, and he was homeless
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: when he came out here, and you know, he crossed
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: the border illegally and slept under bridges, so he could
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: figure it out and was you know, able to which
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: I'm so proud of. He was able to kind of
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: figure it out and make his own version of the
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: American dream and you know, have build a business and
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: by his family at home. And so that's kind of
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: where I came from as far as like family. UM.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: Around maybe the time that I was seventeen, my father
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: passed away. It was kind of unexpected. And then two
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: years later my brother passed away and that was also
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: like drug related, also unexpected. So I kind of lost
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: myself for a few years. I didn't know what the
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: hell I was doing, had no direction in life, which
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: just literally like a week a leaf in the wind
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: until Um, I kind of refound myself again in art.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: You know, I've always been very, very heavily into music,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: specifically like nineties hip hop and just um again like
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: the staple stuff. But um, I found myself going to
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of hip hop shows. I was constantly um at,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: if not at one venue, at another, sneaking in, making
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: friends with security guys. I wasn't even old enough. Um so,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: um what happened was one day I think I had
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: just gotten back into like art and painting and stuff,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: and it was when Dila died. I don't know if
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: you guys are familiar with this was with two thousand
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: and six, so he died. I was a huge fan,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: and I decided to hand paint um Donuts the album
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: cover on a pair of earrings. I don't know why,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Like why would I painted on arrands? Actually no clue
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: what inspired you? Yeah, I have no idea why would
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: like even now I'm trying to figure out why would
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: you like like like yeah, uh huh. So again, like
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: I was very much involved in the hip hop scene,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: like I was there, like I was pretty like like
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: I said, I've literally I've been hundreds of shows. That
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: was That was my life. So anyway, I painted those. Um,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: I went to I remember I went to like a
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: tribute show for him, and I got asked left and
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: right like where did you get those? Where did you
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: get those? I like, well, I painted him. So then
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, people start like pretty much asking
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: me for um custom orders, and I was like, I
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: don't know what the funk I'm doing, but I'm going
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: to pretend. So yeah, and then so it kind of
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: started that way, and then a couple of years later,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: I kind of actually took it seriously and I got
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: my I went and we'll try to figure out like
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: all the legalities and you'll get a license and a
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: seller's permit, and then like I faked a look book
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: and then I went, I was like a whole and
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: you know, that's just trying to figure it out, and
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: I think, so I went, I learned like the basis
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: basics of photography. I shot a look book because well
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: because at the time, my boyfriend he was very much
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: into streetwear, so that's that was kind of my honey
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Bee gold is more considered streetwear. So um. The boyfriend
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: at the time was working for a few big brands now,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: and so he was like, look, this is a look book,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: this is an order form sheet. So I just copied
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: it but my own game. Yeah. Yeah. So then I
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: remember at the time I was working, and I remember
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: that on my spare time, I would just go looking
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: for like stores, like I would call them and I
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: would pretend I was like, Hi, I'm like a representative
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: for honey. I was so nervous that times I was like,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: I don't even hold that. I was like, just kidding,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: I don't know what to day. But anyway, so I did.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: I did. I would pretend that I was like a
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: sales reep or whatever, and then I would call and
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: then I would get all of their um all of
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: their buyers information. So like I did this book book,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: I like put everything together or whatever. And so one
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: day I was like, all right, this is the day.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: I literally had probably put together more than fifty like
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: contact informations and I just piled them all out. I
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: did like a little intro what Honeyby was and at
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: the time, my vision, which is still pretty much the
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: spirit also of Bella Donna is a strong independent um
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: woman who has who deserves as many rights as the
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: next person. You could hold their own that's always been
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: like my message and what I've always believed in. But anyhow,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: so I did a little intro whatever, sent it out.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: By the end of the day, I had about eighteen
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: accounts from stores, from boutiques all around the US. I
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: couldn't I was. I hadn't even sold one thing on
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: my website yet. These were all just custom owners I
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: was getting from, like people that I would meet out
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: in the streets or whatever. So I was like, oh, ship,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: So then that's kind of where it started. Yeah, you know,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: my accessories run again. It's always kind of carried that
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: same message just being you know, just a strong woman
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: and you know, just a statement pieces like kind of
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: like very unapols logetic, very fuck you to society. I
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: am who I am in your face, very in your face.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: And it was amazing because that was my message and
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: I didn't I never, I never. I didn't think too
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: far ahead of like how are women going to receive it?
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: I just was like, this is how I feel, this
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: is who I am, this is what I'm doing, and
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: you know, throughout my journey, that's kind of that message
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: has been received. And I would always get messages from
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: girls like you know, thank you. It makes me feel
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: beautiful in my skin, and I'm just like wow, Like
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: this brand has more of a purpose than It's not
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: just being cute and fashionable. It's kind of just being
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: who you are and accepting who you are, which is
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: like throughout the history of my brand and if you've seen,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: like some of the models that I've have are just
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: unconventional beauties because it's not societies norms or standards or
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: or not. So that's kind of like how me and
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Lala met because I feel like as well as long,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, even though my brand has always been heavily
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: influenced by like like hip hop, it's always that's kind
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: of like the root of it. I have always sprinkled
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: my Mexican culture in there, whether it's the we can
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: see that like jump like Nicholas said, maybe the loca
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: or whatever, and this is like two thousand seven, so
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: it's not even really the thing, but I always like
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: put it in there because it always went so much
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: to me, And so I think that's kind of how
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: her and I met. Yeah, tell us like the like
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: the foundation, like how y'all met, Like how y'all decided
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: like we're going to build a brand together, or maybe
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: you didn't even like conceptualize it as a brand just yet.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: But how is it that y'all were like, well, let's
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: do this. I love to tell a story because I
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: think she's make something. Each time I will tell you
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: how we met. She's slit in my Twitter DM. Basically, yeah,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: she was like, do you want to be my friend?
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: It's my birthday? Come on? No, she was so nice.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: I was like, who is this girl? Why is she
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: so nice? Like she actually was like it's my birthday,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Like you know, we don't really know each other, but
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: come And I was like, okay, I did, I coming?
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: But she was so nice and she would always promote
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: my brand and I'm like, she had a big following
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: and every time she did, I would get like a
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: wave of new followers or sales or whatever. And I'm
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: like who, Like, I wasn't familiar with her at the time.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: I'm telling them because I was still stuck in okay,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: I still am yea yeah, yeah, So I didn't know
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: who she was and I was like, who is this girl? Like,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: and she's so sweet? Like who? At that time, people
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: weren't just doing nice things like that. Now, when you
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: know what I mean, not with how I was involved
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: with marketing or whatever, how I would get like the
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: word out yeah, so and then from there it kind
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: of and then what happened, like you messaged me again.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: One of the other girls I was part of the
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: project she was putting together was a fashion designer and
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: so she had like a birthday party somewhere right, So
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: I was like, do you want to come? And I'm like, okay,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: let's go. So we go to her party and it's
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: funny because we were both there and I could like
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: we were both very um anxious, like we were very uncomfortable,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: and I think she might have picked it up from me,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: like you your person who has anxiety, as how somebody
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: kind of know when someone else has it, like you
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: can kind of read the signs, the cues, you know
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: what I mean. And I was like, oh, I think, yeah,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: I think she has anxiety issues, like you want to
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: leave on like absolutely rely. I get really anxious when
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of people and if I'm like if
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: I'm sober, I can't deal with it, like it's too much.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: So we ended up leaving and then she's like, oh,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: I felt the same way. I'm like, oh my gosh,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: shut up for real. And then so we just started
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: talking about like our anxiety where it came from. You know,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: we both happened to feel like it's a lot of
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: it's from like traumas from our childhood and growing up
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: kind of in dysfunctional like crazy like households and ship.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: So we immediately bonded because it's at that time especially
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: it was still even now, it's still kind of taboo
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: to talk about mental illnesses. And so when you find
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: other people who not only understand, but could also relate
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: personally and have overcome you here an aspects of it,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: I think like you tend to like bond, bond really closely. Um.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: So it's interesting, Yeah, I say, like we bonded over
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: our dysfunctional family because we're both from very big families
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: that have a lot going down at all times. I'm
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: still to this day. Then. Um, Also, we had a
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: big conversation that one night that we met about like
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: our spiritual beliefs um And at that time, like I
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: was with like, uh, what's her technical term a spiritual
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: or intuitive counsel? She was an intuitive counselor that's like
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: what she technically was an intuitive counselor, and so I
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: was telling her how much like that helps me not
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: only cope with my anxiety, um, but also just with
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: other like big life decisions like learning really how to
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: like lean on your intuition um. And so we had
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: a big conversation about that, and like sometimes like when
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: you have these conversations with people, they look at you
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: like oh yeah, I mean or like it starts to
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: like never know holp if someone's going to think like, oh,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: you're like a weird hippie did way yeah, yeah, yeah
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: you really don't seriously Yeah, Like literally I anloaded all
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: my baggage on her, and the first time, I'm like
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: lug bage. I come from like a really dysfunctional family.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: I'm in like intensive therapy for anxiety. Plus I go
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: to an intuitive counselor and she was like, oh, hell yeah,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: like I'm down, give me all the numbers. And so
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: that's really how we bonded. And I think that's an
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: important part of our story because it really lays the
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: foundation for a lot of times, Like now we're in
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: a business relationship, right, but it's a relationship. And I
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: think especially having like kind of like the same like
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: beliefs and value system and kind of almost like a
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: lot of times like the same spiritual outlook on things
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: can help your business and in any relationship run a
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: lot smoother. And we got all that shipped out like
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: on the first night, like Okay, we're kind of on
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: the same page, like we have a good understanding of
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: each other, like if because I've already had my fair
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: share of like on my mental health issues, like I
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: can recognize them in her and I'm like, okay, so
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: she's like depressed right now, like I know because how
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: it's gonna go, Like this is what I have to do.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: So we're able to kind of like work really well
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: and that sense. But we ended up just being friends
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: in the beginning. Um and looked really fast because here
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: in l A. Because she was like I was still
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: on the riverside, got it, I got stuck out there.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: She was in riverside, but she got she had a
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: lot of big accounts like here in l A. And
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: also a lot of big opportunities like with stylist, Like
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: I remember you had a job with like Nicki Minaj,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, yeah call us about the stylist calls
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: me like like midnight and She's like, hey, girl, like
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: I'm styling Nicki tomorrow in Atlanta, but I'm leaving to
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: I'm leaving the l a X at five in the morning.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Can you be here? I'm like, fun, yeah, I can
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: so here. I go like getting But that was my
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: life though, that was my hustle. Like anytime I got
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: a call that was an opportunity like that, I don't
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: give a funk where I was. What I had to do,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: what I do with like you know. So it was
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: a lot of that kind of stuff. And in that
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: particular situation, Nikki ended up like she actually wore like
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: head to toe was like worked in my stuff. Yeah,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: it was a brig. It was the really great thing.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Was huge for an event that was for a music video. Yeah,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: I think it was one with Black Up Luck. I
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: don't remember the name of the song. You know, She's
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: stuck in Nice n dude ever saw the video or
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: heard the songs. I started to get a really great opportunity,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: like huge I got. I had gotten hire to do
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: um even do a whole thing for Lady Gaga when
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: she was super pop. Her whole video Like they didn't
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: end up dropping it, but it was like a celebrity
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: like cast of people, and they had me designed everything
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: like I did, was getting a lot of opportunities um
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: like that, and yeah, it was so nut. I was
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: like this is this is absolutely surreal. But I was
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: still never side and I was constantly getting having did
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: their all in l a Like, I was constantly back
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: and forth, back and forth. I knew, I'm like this
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: is got like I can't do this something. So I
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: was just like moving with me. I have like this
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: cute little apartment I got rent control girl have an
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: extra bedroom. So we moved in together and went through
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: a lot of like fun girl talk type ship like
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: she was going through a breakup at the time, like
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: something that I had already been through. So we're just
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: really able to be there for each other. And I mean,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: if you really want to get to know somebody, like
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: you live with them, like you live with them like
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: I know that, sou and you know, through that experience
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: of living together, we would always talk about, like we
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: both wear a lot of we were wearing at the
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: time a lot of boy mail streetwear. Right, let's talk
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, let's talk about like the before you
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: all started, Like what did streetwear look like? At the time.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Well for me personally, on the point that I was
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: with when I was younger, like I said he was,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: he was working for a lot of very big brands,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: they're big brands now, and he kind of introduced me
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: to what streetwear was. He was a skater, he was
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: like super into like Susie was in a you know,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: a black scale cris and Castles, and so he kind
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: of he's the one who like led me into that lifestyle.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: And then, um, it was had such a heavy influence
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: on my brand of Honeybee. But um, when I was
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: involved in that, I can pick it up. But you mentioned,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: you know, wearing lots of men's clothing, right, Well that's
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: the whole thing. So like so streetwear is streetwear like
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: all of the things that you mentioned, like low writing culture,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: like hip hop. These are all male dominated spaces, right um.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: And I think when you're a girl who's interested in
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: these things, you're always just like on the fringes, you
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: know what I mean. And if something's made for you,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: like if a streetwear brand Crooks and Castles, let's use
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: them as an example, which there they were a great brand,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Um who inspired me a lot. They were all like
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: a like a tribe of Filipino boys that were like
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: really good friends, and I loved how they represented for
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: their culture and the sense of community that they had.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: But when they would drop something for girls, it was
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: always like the afterthought, which it was funny. I don't think.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know if all of people know that they
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: used to make prom dresses. I didn't know that. My
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: ex boyfriend told me he was like because he he
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: was like, he would follow all these brands when they
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: were like tiny, so he's like, yeah, they were all
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: like cutting, So like they used to make prom dresses
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: for girls. That's crazy. And well, when they would drop
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: something for girls in the streetwear side of things, it
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: would be an afterthought, like they're not really thinking about
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: the cut, they're not really thinking about the color way.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: It's like, let's just either put this on pink for girls,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: or let's just make it smaller. The girls weren't the
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: four thoughts. So we both wore a lot of boys streetwear,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: so you would have to like tie it up, you
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: would have to tide it. You would all, yeah, you
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: gotta make it, you gotta make it sexy for you.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: And so for us, we were like and then also
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: just at that time, there was some pretty major I
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: feel like general market streetwear lines. Um that like maybe
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: like three to twenty was the ratio of girl to
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: boy brands. So they were definitely like Hell's bell as
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: there was like it was like brown Babies and married
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: to them all. Yeah, well Brown Babies now is actually
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: well some of the girls are now dying nine piece
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: and you know, and they're also they're also like the
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: hood Witch came from, we came from brown the Brown Babies,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: which is like a collective. Yeah, and this is like
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: two five, two six, like maybe like around that time,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: this is like legit her story, right, this is this
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: is her story, This is women's fashion history. We live
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: this like this was what we This is how we
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: grew up like we were you know, we all kind
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: of started coming up. They were they had a little head.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: I want us. We're gonna we're gonna get into some
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: tvte if this is a good time to bring up,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: like y'all, y'all like your your motto, what bella Down
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: is all about is like we live this and you
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: can see that in like the hashtags, the captions, everything
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: that you'll represent and you do so I really want to, Like,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: I think it's a good time to talk about like
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: TVT Yeah, like, what are some trends that you see
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: now that like y'all Evan Rockinson's back in the day,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: crunchy hair, crunchy hair, remember in seventh grade and it
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: was like the goal was who can get their hair
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: the hardest? Yes, and I've come. You come to school.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Your hair look like wire, like like it's I don't
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: know because like it's Moose even a thing. It's like
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: I have, like Moose exists, you know, the Moose in
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: my hair gel like this, but that short, dude, I
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: think you like if you ever when like a slick back,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: you could use like a gel truly. No, I used
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Moose a couple of years ago and fun, I made
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: fun of me. I put it on. Y're like you
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: know what my mom uses Moose, which is why I
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: used to. I feel like some of the listeners are
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: probably what the moose Moose? Oh my god, Like yeah,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: it's rare, Like I don't think like Moose is like
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: us the same like I used yesterday for brunch. Your
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: right away you smells super good. Usually when I wear
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: a plonytail, I would just put moose to hole my
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: baby hairs out. Yes, such hair I'm thinking. I'm thinking
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: also very specifically, Like you know, on Instagram, it's all
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: about aesthetics and it's all about the looks that people
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: are serving. And I think right now, like the whole
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: like throwback sort of chill aesthetic is like, oh yeah, yeah,
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: what is how about like what you guys have seen
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: on Instagram? Like I mean, like, I think there's a
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: really fun throwback picture we have of Gnat in her
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: dickies overalls in the eighth grade, and I like dickies
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: overalls and my brown lime lips with my eyebrows like
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: like maybe an inch long that I had shaves. Yeah,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: and then I remember, Oh, i'd always put sun in
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: in my hair. Yeah, do you guys know what sun is? Yeah,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: it's like peroxide. It's basically peroxide for you, but it
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: would make your hair more orange. We would sight in
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: our hair to lighten it up, to like make it
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: look like I don't know, I don't know what that.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: I don't I feel like it's I just feel like
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: it's like the cheap version of highlights. Yeah, you can't
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: afford highlights, but you can afford and yeah, before your
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: mom would take it. They actually like get highlights um
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: that Dicky's overalls. I feel like especially like the dark
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: line almost like with a brown liner or like wet
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: and wild six six six, like the liner with like
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: the nude we used to put you know, we used
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: to don't. We wouldn't put like a lipstick in there.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: We would just put our foundation because it was also
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: a thing to like put entirely too much fucking powder on, right, right,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: just put foundation and then the lip liner and that
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: was that. The lipstick was foundation and then it would
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: be crustiest buck by the end of the day. I
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: feel like now it was like everlasting lipsticks, like the
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: crustiest Anyways, maker has changed a lot, right, Yeah, definitely,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: the options, The options are endless now. One thing that
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: it's never changed up and rocking a winged eyeliner since
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: that my mom taught me how him to do that
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: when I was like fourteen to this day, that's iconic,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: that staple that will never go. I feel like nails
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: like they have definitely had a resurgence. I see so
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: many like even nails are a curlings nail art. Um. Yeah,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Like I feel like when we were like in middle
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: school high school. There wasn't like the decals and the
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: all the extra ship like you would have like a
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: curlegs you would have the French defend exactly and the airbrushing.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: But I didn't have a little when I was the
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: little like a little hoop you could do a little hoop.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Say that lately, Yeah, I've seen That's who the Kardashians
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: have started doing. They started, they start all that, they
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: swear they started, they start all right, So this is
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: a good time to go into a break and and
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: and and and and and and and and and and
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: and wrong and and and any wrong and and and
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: any wrong and and and umm from from from from
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: of it and little ship. Okay, so we hope you
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: all enjoyed the song. Break Now we really want to
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: get into to the eleison of the room. We gotta
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: address it to the meat, to the like as Mala likes.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: So you know, we love, we love La La, we
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: love now we love belladonna um which all have been
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: dragged recently, pretty merciless Lee and your year years year
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: for years. At this point, it's make a reoccurring drag
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: the same thing. It's a constant dragging. Let's let's talk
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: about We're going to talk about it because you know, um,
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that plenty of our listeners have been keeping
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: track of, you know, the happenings and the dragging on Instagram,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: especially on Twitter, even going back to Tumbler, like there's
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: now years um and like history here right, and so UM,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: I first want to ask, you know, like if you
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: could give us a little recap, give us some drag
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: history the first time you remember getting dragged and what
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: the issue was, and you know, the more recent things
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: that I have been coming up. I really feel like
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: the first drag involved a white model that we use.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: I think that's when we like, that's when we were
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: introduced to like, oh this is a drag, okay, you
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like this is something like keep
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: in mind like we're from like the MySpace culture, did
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean? And that kind of wasn't
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: like really a thing. Dragging was not a thing. No,
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: it wasn't. And so um, the we used I'm trying
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: to remember exactly how it happened. We used a model
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: like we do the call outs, like you kind of
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: see how we get models because you were one like
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: we just post like, hey, come through, are you available?
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Who wants to come? A lot of times people bring friends, um,
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: And we didn't then, and we still are trying to
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: learn how to do better with like figuring out people's backgrounds,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, without yeah yeah, yeah, like
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: without being too contrived, um and being like we need
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: one of this and one of that and you know
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: what I mean, like just forget it. Yeah, just really
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out the best way to approach it.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: But back then we would just like post like if
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: you want to come come world at the Los Angeles
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: Cruise night tonight, come right. So something like that had happened.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: We used a girl. We didn't know anything about her background.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: She was friends with other girls that were shooting with us.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: We shot her. That was that, and then like maybe
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: like even like a few months later, I don't think
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: I remember the year maybe when yeah, it was probably
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: it was definitely. Um so we had not we had
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: not been in business that long, you know. Um, So
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: we used this model and then one day I feel
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: like we logged in and it was just like all
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: through our timeline like fuck you guys, you use this
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: white girl. She appropriates um Latin. It was like you
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: use this white it's giving like the PG version. It
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: was they were attacking us and attacking her like brutally,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: like fuck this fucking whore, this bitch, she needs to
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: fucking die. It was like insane. Okay, it was like
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: the next level fucking She was getting like death threats
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: on her actual Instagram page. It was really bad. And
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: I want to ask, so when we so that we
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: can kind of like set the vocabulary here when we
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: say a drag, a dragging, I think like our listeners
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: know what that means, But how would you all define
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: getting dragged since it's happened to you, Like, how would
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: you really define it? How would you describe it? What
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: does it mean? Because I think there's this sort of
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: notion on sort of like with the Looke Internet that
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: are dragging is almost something like positive or it's like
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: necessary or educational, but it's not always. But that's how
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: that's how a lot of the rhetoric around it is like, oh,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: well they came for this person, they dragged this person
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: because they deserved it or it needed to happen. But
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: in your experiences, what has getting dragged actually meant? Like?
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: What are people doing and saying the craziest thing in life.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of these people say because they're
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: hiding behind a phone or what their computers, they're saying
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: things they would never say in real life, right, and
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: so it's very violent. A lot of times it's not
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: this thing where we're gonna it's like this friendly, like
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: spiritual conversation where we could just walk away enlightened with
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: each other or like learn something new because it's stop
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: that way. Yeah, that initial one, I don't feel like
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: there was like I would There wasn't really anything productive
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: about it. There was no like gain or like hey,
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: like you know what I mean, Like I walked away
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: with like learning this or oh shit, maybe we could
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: have done approached this different or um. I think most productive,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: the most productive thing that could have happened from that,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: right is it's like the first person who realized like
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: something about this woman hit us up and let us know, like, hey,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: she has this photo on her page from like to
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: Halloween's ago or whatever it was. It was so long ago.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: I don't recall the exact details, but she had dressed
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: up like a Cholas for Halloween and it offended a
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: lot of people and that and rightfully, so right, but
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: like then how do we have the conversation about like, hey,
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: you guys, I'm not sure if you know about this,
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: but if you do, then that's one conversation. If you don't,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: maybe is it possible for us to talk about this,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, and then like start the conversation.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: But it was like we just woke up one day
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: to all of this. We know that, like call out
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: culture is very reactionary, so I think people with type
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: type type and then the next thing you know, it's
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: moved on to somebody else or moved on to a
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: different matter what still addressing you? What it is like
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: they're just bullies and like I don't know, it's kind
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: of holier. Well, and my thing is like, so this
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: is only the first example, right, That's that's what I
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: was gonna say. So days after there was another yeah,
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: like the most famous yeah yeah yeah, so that had
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: happened where we got called out for her. And I
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: think the hard part is is like then when something
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: would like we would try to address something, then it
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: would shift right then it's like okay, well find about that,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: but now you don't have enough. Plus you guys don't
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: support plus size, And then we're like, wait a second,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: like we do have these sizes. If you would check,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: like we could do better, let's talk about that. Let's
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: talk about how we get a better co owners plus size?
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: What are you talking about? But like again there's just
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: like again, it's like nuance conversations like right, like we
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: have to figure out Okay, hey, this is a new brand.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: How how much does it cost to have like a
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: wider size run? You know what I mean? Like can
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: they afford to do this? What are you guys doing?
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: There's like it's a conversation before it goes to like
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: death threats, you know what I mean. And also just
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: like making up things like you also don't get to
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: just like make up new like quote unquote facts like
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: your own facts about like who we are or where
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: we come from or like a privileged background, because then
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: it makes it hard to engage in any conversation because
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: you're like, okay, you're just like making things up, like
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: how we can't have an actual conversation. Yeah, So there's
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: never there's never an excuse to threaten a woman's life,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: to threaten to harm a woman. It does not matter
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: if she appropriated a culture in a Halloween picture, you know,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: like years ago, and it doesn't matter, like the complexion
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: if you don't threaten a person's life and literally criminal behavior.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: And like for me in my line of work and
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: working with domestic violence, if a woman tells me such
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: and such threat in my life, go fillow restraining order,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: go fillo a police report. Separate yourself from that person.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: Like that's the severity. So when I hear that under
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: the auspices of like a drag or of social justice
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: or a call out, that all these death threats are
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: like a part of it, that's a problem. That tells
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: me that there's nothing genuine or social justice or educational
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: oriented about the drag. How productive is it really? Right?
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: It's stressful and it's so it's antiproductive, and we feel
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: guilty that like this girl just came, super sweet girl
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: came to be a part of our shoot. We didn't know,
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: you know, we're not checking people's like you know, bring
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: your your yeah, your family treat. So you know, we
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: felt so bad that she was getting all of this
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: hate because of you know, something that we put her
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: in non intentionally, and it was all great intentions but
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: it got really and there was obviously some part of
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: her that connected with it and with what we do.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: But in all honesty, it's really interesting because, um, we've
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: never had we never had that this issue before and
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: we haven't had it since because typically who shops who
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: definitely shops with us and are women of color. Absolutely,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: that's who really connects to what we do. But in
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: this specific instance, it was like you know, people saying
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: like when they see her, they're going to spit on her.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: It was just like excessive, like there was no lesson,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: like where is the conversation of like even this, like
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: you like you could almost assume that she would respect
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: us enough, like from working with us. We didn't know
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: her very well, but there could have even been like, hey, guys,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: can you speak to her about this and like school
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: her on this subject, but there was never the opportunity
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: to do that. It went from zero to ten thousand's
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: so fast. Um yeah, I mean until and to currently
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: to currently, this conversation still gets brought up, you know,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: like we can talk about um a current drag that
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: again brings it up, like you know, who we're here for,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: who's really shopping with us? Like these conversations are are
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: really important, but with this particular model, like, um, my
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: main concern was, like we can correct the cultural appropriation
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: and we can address that and we can have these conversations, right,
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: but what if she kills herself? Yeah? Like that's just
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: literally where my mind goes. And it's like and then
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: also along with that, like is when you're calling out someone? Um,
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: and again like this is not the culture that I
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: grew up in. I'm not really sure like what the
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: rules are. Like you don't get to just make up
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: new facts about people and their upbringing and where they're
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: from and who they really are, Like you don't get
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: to add that in like to talk about that what
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: are you from? Myths and realities? Some two truths and
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: a lie? What the wildest things you all have heard?
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: I think yourself were me and that we're both from
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: Orange County and that we were like like rich privileged
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: girls Orange County. I don't all. I don't know. It's
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: like the weirdest ship that I'll see, Like I've seen
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: that I'm Armenian, like very interesting, like where is your
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: very dark hair? I don't know, I don't know. So
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: I've gotten that one before I've seen that, or just
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: like you know, we've both been doing this long enough
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: that there's like, you know, l A Times articles written
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: about my music career. There's Latino Magazine, there's there's articles.
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: You know it really check your receipt. Yeah, there's like
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: there's articles, there's past music videos you can reference to
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: see like, hey, what kind of girls are in the
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: what kind of girls are in the home Girls video?
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: Who's in the sand Girl video? What what sizes are
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: represented there? What? You know what I mean, like all
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: of those kind of things, like you can look to
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: get a little bit of a gauge of like who
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: we are. But um, something else that I've heard about us,
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: like this isn't funny, but it's just fucking weird, Like
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: we're not here for Central Americans. I saw that recently,
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: Like yes, like our friends, like our friends are close friends,
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean that we support that we're racist. Yeah,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: it's really there. It's really interesting, and I'm like, those
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: are a big statements. So this is a good transition
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: into like the tumbler posts, which is what gets referenced
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: the most and what still comes back, which even came
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: back recently like a few weeks ago, right, I think
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: that we should just read it, yes, and let's let's
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: talk about it, and let's just talk about it. Yeah.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: So um, I think that in the research, the Tumbler
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: research that we did, there was an anonymous submission on
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: August eighteen to the tumbler at reclaiming the Latina tag.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: So this is a post that I don't know who
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: the author of the post is. And that's fine. We
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: don't want to we don't want to put anybody on
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: the spot or call anybody out. But the page that
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: I was on is called at reclaiming the Latin Attack
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: and the post is still up there so recently and
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: this post. I've seen this tumbler post many times. It
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: resurfaces like every six months, and I think one of
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: the reasons why it resurfaces so often is because there's
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: no date indicating but in the beginning is you know,
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: the other night. So I think every time it gets
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: posted and there's young people, new users, people who have
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: not been around as long, they see it and it
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: looks like a brand new incident that just happened. Because
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: I remember when this happened, right when it happened in
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: so when I see this. I know that this happened
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: years ago, right, and obviously I'm working with y'all. We've
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: had this discussion off the record, right, I think it's
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: important that we, like now on the record, let's talk
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: about and many of the people that are engaged in
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: the draggings that have been going on like this past
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: year are young, are very young right there there. We're young,
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: but they're younger than us. Even so I know that
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: there's not concepts there. Mama, why don't you go ahead?
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: And Okay, so this tumber. The other night, I politely
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: asked Lalla Romero why the models of her l A
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: based clothing brands Bella Donna are only light skinned, and
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: she told me to look at the timeline again and
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: not ask such a dumb question. Then her friend told
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: me to funk off and that the colorism issue is
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: played out, which was then followed by a fan saying
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: she as in me, wants the models to look like
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: they're from Wahaka. I don't even have to be Mexican
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: to know that comment was rude, ignorant, and proof that
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: the colorism issue in our community is not played out.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: La La blocked me and then told the friend who
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: said that about colorism, that she loves him and they
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: should see a home. They should see a movie soon.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: La La prides herself on being in l a Latina
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: with a hood chill esthetic, but all her models are
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: light skinned and white passing. I will never say that
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: the color of their skin takes away from their Latina ba.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: But if her brand is by Latinas and for Latina's,
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: wouldn't she want to be more inclusive and represent all
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: of us. I was very polite to her and never
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: said anything rude or negative, but I guess I got
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: to her anyway. I hope you guys will be able
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: to help me spread the word it about the brand.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: The owner is not a nice lady and seems to
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: agree that colorism is not a present or important issue
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: in our community. In all honesty, she basically just makes
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: the chill aesthetic accessible to white people and cares little
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: about the actual people she claims to be representing. I
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: regret having ever given her my money as a darker
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: skin Latina, but I really thought I was supporting in
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: edmana with a cool vision. Okay, let's let's talk. Let's
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: talk about it. Let's talk. So when you hear that,
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: or when you've read it, what comes to mind for
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: you or what are your perspectives on this now that
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: years have passed and it's continues to circulate, right, Um,
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: It's really interesting because I feel like initially I didn't
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: want to address it, like I didn't want to like
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: make a post about it or have a conversation about
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: it because it's so far away from who I am
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: and what I represent, and like the years of work
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: before even Lladonna that I had been doing that where
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, anyone who would read this would
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: want to just check and they'd be like, oh, this
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: doesn't really align. And then you know, flash forward here
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: we are years later where I'm like, wow, like this
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: still exists and it's still I think it's still like
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: hurting people, you know what I mean, Upsetting people, like
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: really upsetting people, especially because that context isn't there with
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: the date, because it does like when it pops up
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: if you think that just happened the other night, that
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: like that's hurtful, you know, and there's no context to it, right,
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: Like when that happened, it was fresh off the back
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: of the drag with the with the model, right and so,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: and and there's no good excuse, you know what I mean,
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: for like not being a good alley like in the
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: heat of the moment, but after I had been like
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: dragged for days and days of this exhausting conversation about
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: this model. I I think now, like when I think
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: back to it, I'm like it was I was just exhausted,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: like you know what I mean, Like just go check
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: the timeline, like you'll see the first few models that
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: we use were actually black girls, you know what I mean.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: And there's just a bigger conversation there. And I feel like,
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: regretfully now, I wish I would have like either just
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: not acknowledge the comment, like while I was frustrated, you
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: know what I mean, and then like went back to
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: it or not you know what I mean, or not,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: but not have been like rude to someone who maybe
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: she wasn't part of the drag. Maybe this was a
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: genuine concern, do you know what I mean. Maybe she
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: wasn't coming from like that same base camp um that
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: was being so hateful with like you know, the threats
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: and all that other stuff. But it all felt so
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: fresh as to like what was happening, um, And I
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: think the other really hurtful part about this that I
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: really regret not addressing it sooner is um. Like even
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: in that can you read this sentence about what one
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: of my followers said, Oh that um? Then her friends
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: told me to sunk off and the colors of issues
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: played out, which was followed by a fan saying she
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: wants the model to look like they're from Wahaka. So
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: like even the friends saying the colorism issue is played out, like,
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: there's no one that I'm actually like close friends with
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: that believes that statement. So I think if anyone were
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: to have made that statement in the heat of a
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: drag on my Instagram page, it would have been like
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: in the colorism issue, as in like what's been going
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: on the last seventy eight hours or whatever, you know
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: what I mean, which which still like I just wish
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: I would have left it alone, you know what I mean?
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: And I got back to it when I wasn't like
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: frustrated or like flustered or like in the middle of
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: just all of that drama from the previous few days.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: And then even like the comment about um, what was
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: the next part? So it was like the friends like
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: like someone that I knew said something about colorisma la
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: la black. Yeah, okay, so the wahaka right, this is
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: someone else made this comment and I deleted it. I
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: didn't like it. I didn't high five then, Um I
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: didn't like I deleted the comments and I deleted the
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: whole threat. If this was something that I believed in,
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: that I was proud of, like anything else that I post,
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: it would have lived there. It would still be there,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? Like this conversation was
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: like not indicative of who I am, of what I represent.
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: That's why it all went away very fast. And I
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: think that just through this experience like a that I've learned, Um,
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: just like you know, just how to be a better
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: ally and how to just no matter like what you're
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: kind of going through when you have this big of
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: a platform, just sometimes you got to write it out
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: and not be so defensive, you know what I mean,
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: Because it's really really hard when you've laid years of
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: work trying to like say one thing and and put
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: forth a certain message, and then like someone comes along
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: and questions all of that, and you want to say
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: something back, you know what I mean, But maybe you
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: should just like kind of step away and think about
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: it first, Well, it's also like even when the intention
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: is there, right, and the intentions are good, it's also
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: like the optics of things, And that's very much like
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: what social media is, right, It's like the way things appear.
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: So even if your intention or y'all's intention wasn't to
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: like only have lighter skinned models, right, because you're saying
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: check the timeline, it's like also the way things are perceived. Absolutely,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: And I want to ask, you know, because the colorism
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: issue is still like we back up rewind. There was
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: a recent Twitter threat that had been written right, that
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: included this tumbler post and in which the Twitter is
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: um the writer is kind of laying out all the
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: things that they see as issues with Belladonna, and like,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: the colorism continues to be an issue of Like there's
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: this continuing narrative that you only like, I always see
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: this word that Belladonna only uses white passing models or
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: Belladonna only uses light skin models. So this was the
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: reaction like to this, you know situation back in two
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: thousand and fifty, when the colorism question is brought up. Now,
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: how do you all respond to it? What's your answer
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: today or how do you handle that conversation with regards
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: to I think the first thing is like, would you
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: like to model for us? Sure? You know what I mean?
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: Or if you have any models that you would like
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: to recommend, Like, the door is always open, It's literally
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: always an open Yeah, it's it's really always an open call.
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: So that door is always open, and you pay your models.
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: We pay any of the girls that you've ever seen
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: on Belladonna's Instagram page, most of whom are young women,
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: are in school, they're black and brown, and they all
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: get paid. They're not hash or like money, they're paid
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: in UM. Yeah, they've opted for the girls that work here, right, Yeah,
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: I mean you guys have girls from the community working here.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: The chilmet on Instagram. One of them was a model
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: for us at one point. That's how we met her.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: And then Carmen, who's been with us for years. UM
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: started off with Lala as her fan club president. Yeah,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: just as a street team member, work for my brand
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: and for honey Bee, and then Belladonna's who started it,
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: and she just kind of does everything and I want
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: to say, I want to put this out there. Also
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: is like you know, like we we want to just
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: address the issues head on, all four of us, Me, Lala,
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: and Nat. We're all a bunch of light skinned bitches,
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: a bunch of light skin homes, and that means that
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: we all benefit structurally socially from colorism and for being
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: light skinned. I don't think that light skinned people um
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: should be the ones taking the lead on the colors
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: and debate we're deciding how to solve the problem, because
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: that's part of the issue, is that we have too
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: much power in those areas that we're centering our voices
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: even in those conversations, which is not what we should
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: be doing. You know, it's interesting to me when I
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: see because I look at the drags. I don't participate
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: in dragging online, you know, I just sucking don't. I
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: don't care to do it. I don't think it's productive.
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: I think it turns into a fucking mess of hate,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: of attacks, and it ends up being more harmful than educational,
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: right even know, Like what when people sit out for
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: the drag, Like what really is the goal? Like that
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: people lose their jobs, that people stop working with them,
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: Like what is it? I'm like with with the Belladonna drags,
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: I'm like, is your goal that the entire company gets
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: shut down and all the girls who literally pay their
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: bills like monthly and exactly because of Belladonna and the opportunity.
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: Is that what you want? And then it's interesting to
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: me when I see other light skinned women take light
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: skinned people in general, taking the role of well, I'm
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: going to lead the fight against colorism. I'm going to
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: be the voice for dark skinned people, and I'm going
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: to be the voice for for you know, the black
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: women that I think need to be on this page.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, why, why are all other light skinned
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: hos Because if I'm a light skinned hoe, I know
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: you're a light skinned hoe. Why is this your fight
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: that you're fighting? Get me odd to me? No, it's interesting.
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: I think, like the something really important in this conversation
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: is like us always trying to be mindful not to
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: take up someone else's space, right, Like we want to
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: be there to use our platform to support someone else,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. But all we can ever
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: tell is our story, and our story is a black
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: and brown story. Our story is a very round the
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: way it happens to be multi multifaceted and very Los
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: Angeles base, very West Coast. Let's take it to the Southwest. Okay, awesome.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: Now we're now through us being able to tell our story,
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: our platform has grown, so now we can help other
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: people tell their stories, you know what I mean. But
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: and it's really been a lot about creating opportunities. Right
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: when you look at the models that we've used, whether
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: it might be a trans model, maybe it might be
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: um like a lesbian couple. There's been a lot of
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: instances of just all different types of models on our age.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: We never like make a statement about it because it's
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: just who we're friends with, It's just who we love.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: It's it's who has a great spirit, you know what
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: I mean. It's it's kind of like the position that
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: we come from to find them, Yeah where where it's
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: like unless they want that to be like the lead
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: in the tagline, Like it's not really our place to
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: like exploit that, you know what I mean, Because that's
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: not why we booked them. Like we booked them because like,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: oh you're flying, you know what, I need to exploit
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: whatever capital comes with their idea exactly exactly. And the
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: other part is that I just want to come back
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: to this because like I think that often especially young people,
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: especially people who are new to like their social justice
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: or their wokenness. There's this intense desire to see like
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: representation everywhere you look. And I want to say, I
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: have never expected, ever like not to be diminutive, but
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: I've never expected a clothing brand or an Instagram boutique
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: to represent my entire community. I'm like, it's a clothing brand. Well. Also,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: our communities are so multile. I I I as someone
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: living in l A, I know that I am never
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: going to see the South American representation that I want
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: you created exactly, which is what we're doing. What I
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: my part, my role in the podcast is that we
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: can uplift th South American voices, right, That's what I'm doing.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: So you know, I'm not going to put that on
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: y'all and be like, um, you have your Votiqua sweaters,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: what about your Chelaca sweaters? Right about your Patuana sweaters?
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: It's not your context, right, So, and we don't want
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: to stuff on anybody else. We don't want to get
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: anybody else's But guess what, like if you hit us
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: and you were like, hey, law, what if we did
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: this together, odds are we'd be like cool, let's figure
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: it out and we'll promote it for you. Ye are
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: followers who want that, So that's kind of like go ahead,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: you guys, sorry, you know that. That's just our point
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: is like where again, it's also business one on one
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: if you see something missing created, that's what we do,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: and we're not We can't represent everybody, especially, it's not
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: right for us. No, and I want to say, you know,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: like if there's anybody who claims to represent everyone, it's
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: not genuine. It's so genuine. No, Yeah, there's so much,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: there's many things. There's so much that we have to say,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: but we also want to like touch on other topics. Yeah,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: that is really it's really important. The other thing is
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: like what does it really look like? Or what are
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: the power dynamics that play? If two people who are
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: not dark skinned people are only using images of dark
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: skinned your clothes, then you're exploiting dark skinned people, right.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: There has to be props, you know, just to like
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: photograph and exploit. Right, So there's that piece as well.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: So the other stuff that's come up. So there's this
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: Twitter thread, right, and we kind of took the main
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: point that we're um addressed so that we can kind
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: of come back and talk about it. So there's this
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: idea that Belladonna capitalizes off of like hood or chila
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: culture and it just makes it more accessible to people
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: without actually doing anything in return for the community, allegedly. Allegedly,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: that's like a hard one to even respond to, Like
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, It's almost like some aspects
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: of these conversations, it's like, you know, we have multiple jobs,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: we have a lot to do in our day. Um,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: we have so much going on, and then to address
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: like things that are so off base, you know what
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: I mean. I'm like, just hit the like the tag
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: photos and see who shops with us, right, do you
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like literally that's all you have
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: to do with us and jam. Yeah, it's like when
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: they say that, like, um, there you're exploiting you know,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: such and such culture. That's my culture too. Yeah. This
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: is our this is how we grew up, These are
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: our experiences, this is how our influences. We didn't just
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: stumble into this. This is who we are, right. Who's
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: why why don't we get to share our our narrative
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: exactly our men with everybody? Why does that? Why is
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: that a problem. It's interesting because I feel like sometimes
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: like all, look like who's doing this call out right?
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, so you're also like a small business
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: owner just starting out. You're also selling your narrative, you
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: know what I mean, You're you're sharing that through your story.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: And then I'm like, okay, so like where's the line?
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: Like why is it okay for some people and not
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: for other people? But more than that, it's like the
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: comment of this being made accessible for white people, Like
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: we've actually been um very conscientious about like not doing
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: wholesale accounts specific places where we feel like our customers
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: won't be There's only one place you can buy the
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: brain now, it's directly through us. We see what our
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: customers look like, we see their surnames, we know what
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: neighborhoods these actions are going to. I'm not going to
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: Beverly Hills, guys. I do the sales tax for years now,
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: and I know where our customers are and I promise
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: you exactly they are not in Beverly Hills. Are where
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: the the biggest chunk is in l A, California, Houston,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: and they Chicago, New York. You know. Um, But it's
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: really interesting because like I said that, you hit the tag. Yeah,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like, you see who shops
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: with us, You see who we build like, who we
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: build with. You see who our homegirls are. You see
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: who our friends are like you see we literally what
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: it is specifically have stayed UM out of UM having
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: cell accounts so we can have because she said, so
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: it's more direct with us. We're not gonna we're not
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: gonna go We're not gonna go to urban outfitters. We're
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: not going to go to these places where like how
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: she said, we feel like our people aren't going to
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: be there. They're gonna come to direct. And it's also
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: interesting because there was a statement that, like, your clothing
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: is not accessible to the hood or to the barrio
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: cow it's too expensive, which I always think that that
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: statement is very interesting. When people make statements about no
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: one in the hood is spending money on on these
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: luxury items, I'm like, that's literally not true, not true.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: We will like it doesn't really matter, like honestly, like
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: in some cases the budget, if you want something, you're
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: gonna get it. You're gonna save both perfect examples of that,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: Like I had a forty hour a week job in
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: high school to get what I needed and what I wanted,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. But that's not really like again,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: like if you're going to say something about like our
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: price point, make sure it's accurate. But I don't just
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: take a new numbers to me. Who's to say that
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: a girl that's that's from the Hold or lives in
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: the hood, doesn't have a fucking education, has a good job.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: And that's what I have to say. We can't afford that.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: And first of all, our price point is still considered,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: especially in the streetwear world. Talk about talk about how
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: much men's streetwear is okay coming from that world, and
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: that's where our perspective is where influences have been. Um streetwear,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: Like you a sweater and this is just like a
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: regular hundred dollars. This is just this is a basic price.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: And nobody I'm ever going to argue about men's streetwear
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: brands and prices. So I remember my my first girlfriend,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: she was really into her is was and who knows
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: it was really into Supreme and she spent like three
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: on a hoodie. I was like, I'm like trying to
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: look at what bags you guys have, like your Michael
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: Cores bags. You're Louis Vuitton bag in your nails, how
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: much you spent on your nails When I was unemployed,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: I still got my nails done exactly like your fancy
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: your fancy foundation. And it's not to say that we're
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: even on that, you know what I mean, that's not
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: what our where our mentality is like, we just want
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: your prices are not crazy at all? Well, and I mean,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: I guess it's all relative, like for somebody that maybe
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: that maybe a lot, But we always kind of like
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: I grew up with four sisters, I like, we were
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: always like, hey, it's that thing, like maybe you won't
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: go to Starbucks this week if you know we're going
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: to have a drop on Friday. You know what I mean,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: It's that thing you don't really want to share with
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: your sister. You don't want her to suck it up,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: you don't want her to spill on it, you know
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: what I mean. It means something to you, it's meaningful,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: And that's really just a perspective that we came from.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: Like you know, you gotta keep in mind, like these
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: photo shoots that we put on, we're paying all the
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: models we're putting in that you know that time to like, shoot,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: these things, these are all we have an office all
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: you also pay your designers, you hire people as well
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: along the way to do these things with you. Absolutely,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: and it's just you know, it's not even that it's
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: just a lot of expensive. It's like we're literally here
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: creating content like you don't just like repostings all day.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: It's all content that we're hoping is going to live forever.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: And let's talk about the content because another issue that
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: has come up has been this idea of plagiarism, right,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: And I think that there's an intersection here of the
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: rules when it comes like what is plagiarism? How do
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: you actually define it? And where that intersect with the
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: world that sh'all are in is with the street of
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: street where right? And if you could talk a little bit,
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about the plagiarism dragging that's
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: been going on and sort of how you feel about
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: it or what your responses to well, at first, actually
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: before we get to that, because I want not you
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: in particular, since you come from the street where background,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: like I want you to talk about kind of like
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: the like everyone it's up for graps, everyone can do it.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: The thing is it's like, you know how how see
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: where even started was every It was people um doing
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: their own interpretation and pulling um pulling inspiration from iconic
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: places like high end designers Vera and Pepper Dan is
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: an example. So everybody had their different interpretation or their
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: different you know, perspective of what that looked like. And
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: everything is completely up for grabs, and nobody nobody claims,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: oh I did this first, or only I could do this. No,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: every it's it's free game. We can all everybody who
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: if you if you have an idea and it's gonna
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: be good, it better be better than the last person.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: You better. If you're gonna come, you better come with
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: the like their iconic logos and images. It's a great
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: it's a great flip. And that ended up being like
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: Crooks and Cat a lot of logo, a lot of
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: exactly it's a lot of like Disneys, look right there.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: I did like a lot of Mickey Chanelle. Like there's
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: that's all things. Everybody's kind of has their hands in
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: the pot and everybody can grab it, and the game
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: is like who could do it better? And it's okay,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: nobody owns them, and nobody nobody owns it exactly, the
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: own the trademark exactly, right. Yeah, you're seeing it a
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: lot with like song lyrics, right, like, which is something
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: that you can get into a little bit. Yeah, kind
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: of where you know. That's that's also been a big
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: source of a lot of our issues with people thinking
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: that we're copying them because they you know, maybe we
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: made something similar or you know. The thing is is
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: that we have our culture is pretty like our stable
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: pieces are influences are pretty you know, it's like the
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: grab bag. It's pretty narrow, it's pretty small. So we're
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: all have our hands in the pot and we're all
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: grabbing the same thing. Let's talk about some things that
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: you guys have seen a lot and nobody owns love,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: no palace, pallets, hot Cheetos, food are stable all our
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: staple things so that nobody exactly So these are all
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: part of these are stable pieces and people of our culture.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: So like when we get accused of like oh you
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: stole this or you didn't, I'm like, it's very confusing,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: especially coming from the background that we come from. It's
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: it's like you own this by a trademark. I grew
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: up to this, Like what are you talking about like
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: you are just as much. You know what I'm saying,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: Like it's only it was inevitable, but you know what
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: I'm saying, So that comes I think those accusations come
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: at us. And then again, um, it's it's coupled with
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: people making these wild allegations and bring in putting in
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: their own like their own um opinions and making up
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: things and then like you know, it kind of turns
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: into telephone one person said this and in spirals out
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: of control before you know it, they're like big gas rumors, right,
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: Like that stemmed from you know, something that was an
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: accurate right. So then here we are with another like
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: big mess. Right. So and there was there's two examples,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: and I don't know if you're comfortable like getting into
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: some details either one so there was issues with a
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: hot cheetos pin um and then the nothing that Google
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: debacle that took place recently recently. Well I could I
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: could address a second one because it was directly involved me.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: And then I think just the hot cheetos pin was
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: someone had made a hot cheetos pin before us, and
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: once we were already in production, it was brought to
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: our attention that someone you were already in production for
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: your hot Yeah, our hot Cheeto pin was already made,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: and like I think we posted it or something. Yeah,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: that there there was like hey, like I'm already doing this,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: Like how dare you? You know what I mean? And
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: we're like, oh my bad, like we didn't know. And
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: like also like then when we looked into it, we're like,
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: what we're doing it different. We're here for women. We're
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: here for like women and fans, and like that's what
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: that's who we're here for. You know, glitter it's little,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: it's it's very feminine, you know, our twist, And so
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: I think like a lot of times, um, it's been
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: interesting because like we know who we're here for and
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: it's very specific who we're here for, and so um
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: like and in that instance, like we we honestly didn't
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: know like that was already happening. Then then we're like, okay,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: well we're doing it our own way, and like we can.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: There's there's enough room for everybody, you know what I mean,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: Like we're not going to take anything away from you,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: like with our glitter rendition of this thing that none
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: of us own, you know, like like ladies or whatever,
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: owns it, Like that's not that's not the case, you know,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: And it's like never the intention is never to like
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: take away from anybody else. It's just too like, hey,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: like this is petche does't making an appearance in Belladonna
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: since inception, you know what I mean, And like we've
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: existed as a brand longer than a lot of other
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: new brands have, so it's just interesting, like of course
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: we're going to do that, like you know what I mean,
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: Like it's something that that's like, that's what we that's
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: who we are, you know what I mean, Like you've
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: been seeing it all around, so it's not like we
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: just like pulled it out of thin air, you know
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: what I mean. It's definitely been like a staple and
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: an influence for us. So that's kind of like that's
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: what happened with that. And again, like it's never the
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: intention to take away from anybody or hurt anyone. It's
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: just like we what we want doesn't exist, and if
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: it doesn't exist, we're making it for us and for
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: you know, like minded individuals who like glittery, fun girly things.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: I think more importantly, it's also the principle again, like
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: where like I feel like if anybody should feel any
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: kind of way, it's the you know, PepsiCo, it's it's hot,
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: the creator of the right exactly. So our intentions are
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: never to like not anybody. They're never to like, you know,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: steal anything from anybody. It's just that sometimes, like like
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: how we said, we're all pulling from the same inspiration bag,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: and that's just sometimes it happens, and it's like, but
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: the thing is, it's like, this is the part that
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: gets confusing and turns into a big mess. Is not
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: everybody sees it that way and they feel an ownership
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: or they feel and so that's when it turns into
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: a big mess because they let's talk about the recent
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: with the shirt, and let's contextualize because those are song
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: lyrics but iconic so that have been around for a
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: long time. That every Latino party, you're gonna play that song,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: right and so um yeah, so we all know is
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: like a staple if you grew up with the traditional
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: life family, you know, also songs so um. In the
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: spirit of the Woman's March, we were like, okay, we hadn't.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: We had intended to make these shirts for us to wear,
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: but me and Laula were both having who would you
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: want to say, a mental mental the march is overwhelming? Overwhelming?
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: We did. We didn't go last year. It was just
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: a lot and it was very panic attacks and anxiety. Yeah,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: it was just a lot. So like we we had
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: every intention of like making these shirts to wear, and
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: then then I felt like we're not going to go. Yeah.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: We were like, okay, we're not going. But she was
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: like we should just post it to share and just
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: kind of stand in like, you know, support of what
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: everybody's doing in the intention of the day. Right, So
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: even before that that day, I had, um, I was
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: supposed to have designed it the night before, okay, and
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: I said, in't and it happens yeah, and so um,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: I was like I didn't have any inspiration for it.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: I was like, I don't, I know, I wanted those lyrics.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: I'm like, that song is that's exactly what it is. Um.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: You know, it's it's about you know, a woman kind
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: of sticking up for herself and like, you know whatever.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: So um it fits the situation perfectly. And I couldn't
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: find inspiration. I couldn't figure out and I'm like, okay,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: let me just google because um, I had recently noticed
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: I was really paying attention to album covers of Los
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: Angeles and their logo is so cute. So I was like, oh,
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: let me go back and look at so that I
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: think I meet this album covers because they have so many.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: I'm like, let me see if I find something that
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: could like push me in the right direction. So I
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: started like kind of lurking in their older albums, whether
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: it was like the seventies or eighties, and so it
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: was a specific type of writing style. It was more
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: of like handwritten. I was like, oh, perfect, I could
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: do something handwritten. You know what I did? I went
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: and this was as in a designer's kind of embarrassing
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: because it's it's a lazy way of doing this. I
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: just googled free fonts. First thing that came up. I
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: searched handwritten fonts. That was the first one that I
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: liked that came up that I liked, downloaded it, made it,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: and then we added our little switch blade and that
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: I Sword of God. That was that posted it up.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: Two seconds later, it's people coming like you stole this
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: from such and such and she's like, hey, what's going on?
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: And I'm like looking. I'm like, oh, I don't know
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: who this person is. So I'm trying to figure out,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: like why are they saying this? Like what the hell? Um?
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: Then the girl how they came at like you, you
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: guys are thieves, you stole this. Um the girl who
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: apparently there was somebody who had already been making like
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: I guess underwear with the same nothing toole with the
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: same hand, with the same writing style and a little
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: peach and she was like, Hi, I'm the artist you
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: stole this from. I was like, I've never seen you
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: in my life. I have no idea who you are.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: I literally I just told you my thought process and
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: how I came to what I did. We didn't even
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: make the shirts. They were just so like we were
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: gonna make them for her and I and we said it.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: We weren't selling them and we weren't gonna we weren't
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: gonna make them ever. So I'm like, I think that
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: the way um again with like with all, I feel
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: like the way that I might have responded is what
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: caused also was a trigger. But at the same time,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: I feel like, how how do you again? And this
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: maybe a little makes me a little um a little
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: uh antiquated or whatever. But I'm I'm from the culture
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: of like, you don't get to act how you want online.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: You don't get to talk to people like that. Like
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: so when somebody's coming at like aggressively and I'm a
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: human and you're accusing me of stealing something from you,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: when I know that I have not. I've been doing
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: this for twelve years maybe more. You I've told you
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: who some of the people I've worked with. My integrity
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: as an artist and who I am as a person
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: means more to me than than making a few bucks.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: We've passed up on things we don't feel right about
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: because that's just who we are. So you're coming at me,
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: you're accusing me of stealing something. It was a very
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: simple design, like not to offend her, Like I told
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: you it was a stock design. I mean a stof
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: font and anybody has access to And you know, the
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: the lyrics are not even original, they're not ours. It's
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: been doing millions of times. So um, I replied to her.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: I was like she was. They wanted me to apologize
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: to her, Like, I'm not apologizing to you because I
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: didn't do anything, like like, I'm really sorry that you know,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: um like I might have said something condescending, cause I
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: think at this point I was super irritate because I
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: demed her. I said, hey, first of all, you could
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: have deemed me. You could have talked about this privately
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: and I could have explained to you, or even then
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: I could have been like, hey, we're not selling our stuff,
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: but we can promote yours, like send me a cute
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: picture and we post it for anybody who was interested.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: But it did happened that way. It immediately went to
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: accusing too sending people. It just turned into a big mess.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: And so you know, to me, I was not in
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: like you. You don't. You didn't want a resolution. You
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: wanted to come and you wanted to fight. Well that's
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: and that goes back to our question, right, the call
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: out and the drag is for what exactly there was
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: You weren't trying to get a resolution, because that's if
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: you were. We were in the streets and you come
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: at me like that, You're trying to fight me and
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: not like, hey, can we talk like there's like an issue?
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: I feel some kind of way no, And I think
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: I think that something we should add is there was
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: a problem like a week or two before where we
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: used a design that we were under the impression was
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: clip art. It's almost like you know when you um
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: in the new almost like the clip art that you
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: could have used on my Space or like now in
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: Instagram when you do your stories you can add like
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: those new and it's kind of like the Instagram me
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: like what's it called the gifts exactly. So we were
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: under the impression that this was like clip art inspired
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: old MySpace design. Okay, um, And so we even had
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: asked like a few people like have you seen this?
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: Do you know what this is? And they're like no,
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: Like I think it's I think it's what you guys
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: are thinking. So we ended up revamping this design, flipping it,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: and um, it ended up being someone's design, and he
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: reached out to us and immediately we apologize. We were
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: in conversation about like how to rectify it. He was
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: very very nice, how can we can we pay you
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: for it? We love it? Like yeah, no, And he
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: was very open, you know what I mean. He was
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: like really really nice about the whole thing, like, hey,
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: like you know what I mean, let's talk about this.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: And so we were already in conversation with him, but
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: of course, like this isn't on the timeline for everyone
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: to see words like the email thread and it's not
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: really our place to post words. Yeah you know what
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, and like put him in that situation, but
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: he was very very kind and very like receptive and
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: just handled it with so much grace and so professional.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeahah, so but that had happened, and I think again,
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: like now people now people are upset with us, um
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: and so like that had recently happened flash forward into this.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: It's like, ah, like yeah, do you know what I mean?
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: And that was like, like I said, like the initial
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: piece of art. Like sometimes like where she could happen,
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: Like you could buy a design from someone and um,
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: like you think I'm buying it from you, and then
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: someone else pops out of the woodwork like actually I
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: am the one who designed that, you know what I mean.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: And I know what's interesting too, is like there are
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: artists right who like won't put up any art in
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: their houses, no art in their houses, they won't go
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: to art shows. They're not following other artists online specifically
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: so that they're not being subconsciously influent that all the time,
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: I don't look at ship. I don't follow people because
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: it does happen that we're all being exposed. Really, we're
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: all being exposed to the same material over and over
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: and over again. So there is like a collective sort
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: of like imagination that's going on. So the issue that
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: I think that we want to address is not like, oh,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: you know, there's no such thing as plagiarism or it's
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: not possible. No no, no, no no. We want to
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: be clear on what it means plagiarism and laws against
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: plagiarism exists specifically so that an artists bottom line is
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: not being affected because their original work is being sold
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: by someone else. That's why plagiarism, like as a concept exists,
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: and there there's legality around it and contracts and this
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: and that and this and that, right because it has
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: to do with affecting the bottom line. My problem obviously
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: with the nothing situation. Number one, you weren't selling the shirt.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: I want to know was anybody else is bottom line
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: affected by you, you know, making those shirts for the
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: Women's March? No, you know what I mean? Number two,
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: um song lyrics that don't belong to you and stock
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: a stock free font do not an original design make
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry that was kind of that was not it's
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: not that was not an original design. And how many
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: other brands have nothing on their products, you know how much?
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: Right now? Mind, I saw the Woman's March right specifically,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: so nobody owns that except nobody. So the gate keeping
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: of the culture is I think where I take issues. Well,
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: there's like some like very iconic sayings, you know that
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: like you can't really say like one person owns them, right,
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: Like the Nissan is one example, the Semia however, that's
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: saying goes exactly. So there's like these iconic things that
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: like really shape us as a culture, right, but we
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: don't necessarily own them, right. So that's why it's so
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: confusing me when people like feel like they have own
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: ship or just you know, I mean. And and to
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: extend that further, there's like certain things that we've made
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: up that I never saw before we wrote, you know
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: what I mean, maybe like not your hina a better cute,
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: Like these are things like you know, even certain um
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: like concepts and things like that, like from my Homegirls
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: record which inspired like the pins and like all these things.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: And it's like I'll see a lot of these things,
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: um now on other people's merch, on mugs, on all
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: kinds of things, and honestly, um like unless it's forever
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: twenty one, you know what I mean, we just keep
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: a pushing. We never from like exactly, we don't call people,
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: we don't say nothing, but we might get between or
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: not if that, but that's it. We just keep in
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: the things. This again coming from our backgrounds. Even with Honeybee,
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: when when Nikki and all these you know, celebrities started
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: wearing my stuff, China was mass producing um and my my,
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: all my my pieces. I would go to the Slauce
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: and or the swap Means and the Bautiques and I
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: would see all my bootlegs. Wow. Yeah. And you know
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: what I said, I wasn't like trying to call everybody
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: out and get I was like, oh that's dope, I
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: made it, you know. And that's just what you do
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: better and exactly do keep it pushing, and you just
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: keep it pushing, you do better and you just you know,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: you challenge yourself more. And that's just what it is.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: So that's also we come from that. We don't we
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: don't we don't participate in that call out culture. Just
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: do you, Yeah, because what does accountability really look like?
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: What does it mean when we're being called out in
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: these like very dramatic, very harmful ways, what accountability really
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: look like? And we're they're also the really threatening comments
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: made to you all in these other more recent drags. No,
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: I don't. I don't remember seeing anything really threatening or
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: like that again, just more like fairy tales. Like I
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: think more recently is when I was like when I
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: saw like, oh, they don't like Central Americans, like we're
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: come sure, like what you know what I mean? So
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: there was, but I haven't seen anything more retneing. Um.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: What I do think is really interesting is again when
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: we talk about like the gatekeepers of culture, right, the
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: gatekeepers of culture, UM, A lot of things that we
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: do go against like traditional quote unquote Chicano culture, Like
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: our culture is plagued by racism, um uh, homophobia. These
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: are things that we like, we're so against, you know
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: what I mean. It's things that UM like scam and Jam,
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: which is our monthly party we have. Let's talk about
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: when we talked about scam and Jam, or we just
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: even talk about models that we've used. Like, it's really
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: interesting to me that like what we do breaks out
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: of like the Catholicism kind of like patriarchal mind frame, right,
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: Like how dare we use two women who just kiss?
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: Like you know what I mean? And it's never been, um,
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: it was never contrived. It's never been like, hey, this
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: is we're gonna do and we're gonna set you up
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: and then like no, it's just like we hang like
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: we would hang out, have a shoot and like let's
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: just shoot and have fun and you have lunch and
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: you know, almost like we're sitting here today. Um. And
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: it's been really interesting to see that like a lot
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: of the things that we do rub people the wrong way, um,
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: and especially rubs men the wrong way. Right, and um,
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: that's a whole another you know. But like I think that, um,
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: you know, seeing women choose to tell their story the
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: way they see it. Um, whether it's in fucking pink
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: glitter or if it's in a freaking rainbow or however
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: we want to display our pride and our love for
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: our culture and our community, like we can do that,
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: Like we can do that. It's two thousand motherfucking eighteen,
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: like you know what I mean. Um, So I just
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: think that it's just been an interesting time, like you know,
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: like callouts from boys, um, harassment from men. I want
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: to point that out too, because I noticed and I've
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: heard from multiple women, um, who are just friends in
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: the community, artists, creators, journalists, writers, customers, they've worked with you, whatever,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: just women who have been around who were like I
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: want to say, there have been a couple of men
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: who have been very aggressively like been leading the charge
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: on Instagram against you guys. It's very bizarre and like
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: like one man in particular who's been in like the
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: d m s of all these different women basically trying
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: to like instigate stuff against Belladonna and trying to get
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: different moheadas in the community to like post about you
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: all or participate in the drag or get us in
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: touch with RASCLA or whatever. And I'm like, honey, like
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: Belladonna's didn't even make clothes for men, why are you so?
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: I want to put that out there too. It's all
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: the mohata is online. When you see men who are
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: hyper involved in women's issues in women's spaces and instigating drama,
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: don't support that. Don't support that. That's weird, no place
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: for it. Being mindful when these men are using these
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: opportunities to be misogynistic to be women and then make
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: their own like anti machista gear at the same time.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: And then let's ask you run into homeboy in the
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: community out you know, in the world, is he going
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: to say anything to right? Right? He can talk a
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: big game and talk a lot of shit about women
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: on the internet, but in real life, face to facetta,
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: what happens, right, not a damn thing. And this is
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: also the other thing that I don't like it all.
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: It's it's a lot of it's a lot of punk
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: punk ship going on on the internet under the auspices
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: the guys of social justice. I don't buy it. It's bunny,
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: and that's why I don't participate it, right, I don't
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: like it. And I think like we need to move
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: beyond call out and actually talk about like like checking in, right,
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: because our communities are so small that we're going to
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: keep running into We're literally all work together, Like, so
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: what do you what do you all want to You
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: cannot with not with everybody, not funk with all the
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: other women that are creating. But if I don't poisonous
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: that is in the community, And why we're not going
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: to be able to grow because everybody's trying to turn
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: against each other and instead of like let's um, maybe
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: let's educate each other or maybe like we can learn
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: stuff from each other. Yeah, people make mistakes and let
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: people grows. And I do think that online with the drags,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: people are like super sensitive about anything that women creators
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: are doing. Like you all can get dragged for the
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: tiniest thing. I have only really seen Latino like men
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: online being dragged when they have literally been called out
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: for being sexual predators right like rapist. There's a huge discrepancy.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: So I also want us to think about when you
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: all are engaging in pylons of women of color creators
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: because they said something wrong or there was a misstep,
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: and all these dudes are in here stoking the flames,
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: why is it? What's the purpose? And how many of
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: those dudes are checking on their men in their communities
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: and their homeboys. They're not, they're not. So I just
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: want to put that out there. And and the standards
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: that we hold each other too are very different. Still
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: there's still a disparity. It's still it's not level, it's
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: not level um. But you know, I want to thank
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: y'all for having this really kendid interview. Having us in
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: your space, getting to know us, stetting to know y'all
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: has been you know, blessing, and you know, we want
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: to continue working with y'all. I think this has a
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: good time for us to wrap us yet, to share
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: some way boys before listeners staring starting ways, working on
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: their own platforms are just in general. What do you
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: want them to take away from this interview? Well, I
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: think it was really important to me that to both
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: of us actually, that they've kind of heard our side,
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: because I don't think we ever not once have we
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: ever said hey, this is our truth. Yeah, this is
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: our version of what happened. And you know, we've never
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: really stuck up ourselves in that way, right, So what
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: was that your question? Or was it more like what
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: we're wrapping up? Oh? I thought it was more like
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: what we could tell them about starting their own business
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: and not focus on I thought it was more like
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: whether that when you're thinking about that, you know. So
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: basically it was just really important for us, for me um,
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: for them to hear the side of us. And I'm
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: really grateful and happy that we got this opportunity to
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: do so with you guys, and I think it was
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: really beautifully done. And also as far as like like
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: any kind of advice, not even just business, just in life,
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: Like I feel like you are the master of your
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: own universe and anything and everything that you want could
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: be manifested and created by you, Like as long as
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: you truly one thousand percent believe in yourself and you're
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: willing to do and to hustle and to do the
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: work that's necessary and to not give up. And sometimes
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: the work I think when people talk about the work,
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: for me, a lot of times the work was like
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: internal stuff, right, it was like therapy. It was sometimes
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: things that are like really expensive like therapy, and that's
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: getting that type of mental help. Um, that's that's a
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: lot of work, you know what I mean. So I
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: think that type of work is also really important when
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: we have these conversations. And even though even the work
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: of being honest with yourself, I feel like a lot
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: of people, um will be like, um, they get really
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: down on themselves, like I try you know this and
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: that and it's not working. It doesn't work, you know what,
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: will be honest with yourself. Maybe that's not good enough
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: to go back to the drawing board and trying again
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: and keep trying until you get it write. And so
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: that's a lot of people, I feel like, don't see
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: it that way, and they'll just give up. And that's
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: also the work of being honest with yourself and continuously
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: trying again until you figure out what's going to work. Also,
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: I think that, like UM, in this age of social media,
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: like a lot of times you're only seeing the results.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: Like for us specifically, this is like fifteen years in
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: the making, Like this is the result of fifteen years
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: of like trial and error and sucking up and growing
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: and you know, going back to the drawing board. So
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: I think it's really hard, Like it would be really
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: hard for me as a teenager now, just like you're
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: always seeing the results. You're seeing like you know, the
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: after picture. The internet is not real, you guys, really
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: it's And I just I know that, like UM, that
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: your listeners are like really smart and really forward thinking,
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: and no, I know, I like I'm a huge fan
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: of the podcast and like all of the content and
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: the conversations that you have, and so I'm like i
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: feel like I'm really in sync with like who your
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: listeners are. And I think that it's just so important
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: to know, like there's your stories are really important, like
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: the listener, whoever's listening right now, Like your narrative is
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: really important, and especially if you're going to move into
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: the arts, like tell your authentic story, um, because not
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: only will it be like therapeutic for you and help
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: you flourish, but also someone else, it's going to help
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: a lot of other people. UM feel you know what
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, and feel like they matter and feel like
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: they count in the world where you like a lot
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: of times don't feel that way personally. I love those takeaways.
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: Thank you for sitting down and for burying your souls
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: and for talking about the things. And I know that
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: it's been tough, and to be honest, like the dragging
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: has made me really upset. I don't think it's justified.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: I don't think you all deserve it. And I want
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: to say that, you know, like for and again for
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: our listeners, that we're not in support. We are not
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: in support of the dragon culture, the threats, the abusive language,
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: you know, the slander. We don't support it, we're not
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: behind it, and we don't condone it. You know what
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: I mean right, No, I just want to say, like
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: on a very personal level, like La La you like
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: when I was going through some of my darkest periods
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: in the summer, like Lalla was a real last home girl.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: I was going to personal stuff in La La was
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: like always checking on me, and it was like a
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: real last friend. So this isn't just like oh, these
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: or two brands coming together, Like No, like y'all our
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: actual homegirls, you know, and that's why, like we can
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: vouch for y'all human being. It's really interesting again, people
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: like they don't know that like we know know each other,
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Or like like what like
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: what the other level of friendship is like, especially you know,
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: I like very private, so a lot of things are
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: not seeing like you know on my I G story
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: like us hanging out here at the office. But yeah,
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: I think it's just really important that, like the work
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: that you guys are doing is so important. We're so
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: impressed by you guys were so we're huge fans and
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: if there was any place to have this conversation, trust,
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: this is the only place we're happening. Announcement announcement, So
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: what do you have coming up next? What else can
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: we expect. Okay, so we're really excited because something that
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: I participated in in the last like almost the last
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: ten years is there's this event called the Cinderella Project
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: at a place called Home, which is a nonprofit. It's
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: kind of like an actual school program and sell Central.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: It's an amazing place, um where kids can get all
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: kinds of resources from like music training to dance to
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: like computer graphic design like everything. But they have something
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: called the Cinderella Project. It's the Cinderella and Prince Charming Project,
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: which basically, um, we try to supply like about a
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: thousand dresses for girls in need, boys in need in
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: the city that won't be able to go to prom otherwise. So, UM,
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: if you guys want to reach out to me directly
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: at Instagram, um my I g s at La La
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: Rometo or you can hit up you guys, UM and
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: we'll figure out a way to get dresses off our hands.
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: They can come to Scamming Jam or of themselves. Yeah yeah, yeah.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: So we're making it like an official UM collection, so
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: like if you bring your dress, you can get in
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: for free. Um, and just like you know, just be mindful.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: These are young teenagers going to prom from like if
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: your if your sister made you wear an ugly rise
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: means don't bring that, like bring the cute ship because
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: I think. Um, yeah, so thank you again for those announcements.
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: Real quick for our listeners. Um, we have two events
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: coming up this Friday, March second, Mala and I are
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: hosting put on by DJ Sizzle. Yes, it's an all
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: women's audiens lineup. Um, there's going to be vendors and
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: it's a celebration of International Women's Day, Internationals Women's Day
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: and months, so come through. And then also I'm not
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: going to be at the Civic Center. Student is going
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: to be at Civic Center Studios. So that that's the
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: only detail, all right, Starting there's a cover dollars ten dollars.
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: After ten thirty PM posted it. Yeah, we'll share it again.
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: And then we have head on March tent and this
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: year we're actually going to be doing posting, We're hosting,
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: and we're gonna do some street interview. It's gonna be
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: a lot of fun. So come check that out. And yeah,
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: you know where to find us. Um, We're on Apple Podcasts,
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: sound cloud, 're on YouTube now to follow on the
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: I G. Twitter, Facebook, all of that. Yeah, thank you
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: for listening. Next time best See thus