“You actually want to give me money for this?”
That was one of the first things that 27 year-old, Brooklynite, Joan De Jesus thought to her self when she sold her first pair of earrings.
“So I basically bought a bunch of pom-poms from a local shop {in Mexico} and I started messing around with them, just making things for myself,” she explains. “I wore them out and a bunch of my friends were like, ‘thats so cute, can you make me some?’ and I was like, I can try.” “So I started making them by hand winding the yarn myself, making them for friends, and my friends really liked them, then my friend’s friends wanted some, so then I was like, well, if your friend’s friends, friends want some they are going to have to pay me for my time, you know.” That was the beginning of Babe Comets.
The idea was inspired by a trip to Merida, Mexico that De Jesus took with a girlfriend in November 2016, in hopes of getting her creative wheels turning. “I remember before Solange dropped her ‘Cranes in the Sky’ music video she posted something about being in Merida, and the visuals were just so beautiful,” she says. “It was a bunch of pastels and old beautiful houses, because they still have all this old beautiful architecture there and I was like, you know what, let me just get a deal on a flight and go, I just needed to be somewhere else.” The trip served its purpose indeed because while out in Merida, De Jesus gained an immense amount of inspiration. Seeing structures and ruins that people literally built with their own hands centuries ago without any machines or electricity, without the age of the internet and social media being of any influence, and the fact that they were still intact today got the young entrepreneur thinking on what she can make herself. “So I came back to NY and I just started making earrings for myself, because I remember a bunch of young Mayan girls in Mexico would wear these pom-poms on their book bags, the same way American girls would wear handkerchiefs on their purses sometimes,” De Jesus explains. “It’s cultural for them, thats why a lot of Mexican inspired fashion has a bunch of pom-poms everywhere.”
“I had like a small crew of super amazing women fems, latinxs (a gender neutral term often used in lieu of Latino or Latina) and just non-conforming folks that were really really fucking with the project hard and so that happened in November 2016,” she says. After the response that she was getting in her community she decided to launch her own Etsy shop in January 2017. However when De Jesus noticed the success she was receiving of the Etsy shop, she decided to launch her own website: Babe Comets, three months later. “I felt like if people were coming to this site so i might as well own it,” she says.
Joan De Jesus on set of her product shoot.
When it comes to a team, De Jesus doesn’t really have one per-se. She creates everything from her product to her website. However she has gotten the opportunity to work with some talented and all around inspiring people from photographers, to make-up artist, to the models showcasing her merchandise. “Every photographer I have worked with has been a person of color and in terms of my product shoots and my models I like to make sure that I see me or any form of me or my childhood, or that my friends and family are reflected in some of the product shoots that I have,” she proudly states.
“So if you look at any earrings that I have on my site, you’ll see I have a a woman that is from Southeast Asia, I have a Haitian Black woman, I have a bi-racial person, I have another Black American woman, and they all kind of follow different paths of life,” De Jesus continues. “I really like the fact that a lot of them actually were fans of Babe Comets, or knew me, or just really rocked with the project a lot, and so when I reached out to them to come help me do some product shoots they were so amped about it.” Instead of searching in model agencies or putting up a post in Craigslist searching for models she personally wanted to hand select the women she would have working with her. “I wanted them to present the product in the best, happiest light and I knew you could only do that with people that were truly invested or had an emotional connection to it,” she adds.
Clearly, De Jesus is nothing less than proud of her origins and of being a woman of color. Her father is Afro-Dominican and her mom is an indigenous Salvadorian woman and she expresses her love for who she is and her Afro-Latinidad across work as you can see. To De Jesus, the Afro-Latino movement came from an overall acceptance of blackness across the board. “We now have more communities to lean on and the internet has made it possible for you to find a blog or a blogger or a social media thread that you can connect to and have you feel like you have access to people who are confident in their own self and because of that you also feel like, ‘wow there are people who look like me, I’m not the only one!” she says. “Because there is a lot of Afro-Latinas that basically live in areas where they ARE the only ones, so I think that the combination of more imagery that we can identify with, the whole grasp of the internet and social media has made that possible.”
For right now De Jesus is going to further explore all the avenues that she can when it comes to designing earrings. She says even though she might one day she might expand her business and design other accessories such as necklaces, bracelets, or even shoe accessories right now she wants to exploit everything she can create with making earrings first. “I personally love earrings and I’m a big fan of wearing all black and just having a pop of earring, or wearing something really simple and just having an accessory that pops for you, so right now I’m just sticking to earrings but who knows if it will diversify into something else,” she explains.
When it comes to becoming a huge corporate name, De Jesus says she definitely never intended her company to be like that. She originally began Babe Comets as a way to be able to express herself, her own individuality, and her style and creativity. So when it comes to any kind success that she has received from this to her it’s extremely surprising. “I definitely have more inspiration, definitely have more styles, I want to continue to explore different mediums, different mixed media, different shapes, and different color schemes, so we definitely have more to put out there,” she says happily. “ And as long as I keep on creating awesome stuff, dope stuff, that my community really fucks with, I will be completely happy and satisfied wherever it lands.”
As many creatives will tell you one of the hardest things that they struggle with is confidence. Many times one will think that their ideas or finished product isn’t good enough or that people are not going to like it. However, the advice De Jesus gives to any young creatives out there in these situations is to just start it. “Literally start it, and if people don’t like it, it’s fine, you’re young, fail as much as you can now, because it really doesn’t matter, its all apart of the creative process,” she says. Another great piece of advice that she gives is to find the community that will support you and really put your energy into them. She believes once you have that down everyone else will follow.“You need 15 to 20 mini evangelist who just stand for you so hard and thats how you really grow. Of course you can get like a big feature, you can get a blog post, you can get like one of these major publications to do a feature on you but really you need to remember why you’re doing it and who you are doing it for and for me it’s been really clear,” she says. “I monitor my success depending on how many dope fems of color are wearing my earrings and also not to put them aside either I have several friends who are male and/or male identifying that also wear my earrings, so I’m always going to add them into the mix.” These people De Jesus believes will drive your business or company because they will tell everyone they know about it and heavily represent it for you and thats most important.
Go and check out her dope earrings here!!!!
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