Jasmene Bowdry was living the American Dream. With a lucrative, high-level job in corporate America and enough disposable income to travel whenever and wherever she wanted, the sky was the limit for the fashion buyer. With a promising future working for high-end luxury fashion brands like Saks Fifth Avenue and a constantly increasing bank account, from the outside looking in, it seemed like Jasmene had it all figured out, but for some reason, she still wasn't happy.
Like most of us, Jasmene grew up with the belief that to truly reach a level of optimum adulting, you had to go to school, get a degree, find a good job, and retire. But as Jasmene matured and continued to excel in her career, she began to question this way of thinking. "It really just came to a point in 2015 where I was like, okay, how can I merge these passions of mine? I love fashion, I love business. How can I really merge all of that together and do something that really fulfills me?"
While she had pursued her dreams of becoming a boutique owner in her spare time away from work, reality hit her like a ton of bricks when she was let go from her full-time job and forced to explore other options. Although Jasmene had plans of leaving corporate America in the future, she learned to see her seemingly spontaneous misfortune as an act of God. She explained:
"When you pray for things, God will make them happen in his time, and I was just like well this is just the time; that God wanted it to happen sooner than I did. So, to me, it was a blessing."
It takes a truly ambitious woman to shift her paradigm to see the obstacle in every opportunity, and for Jasmene, the now-owner of SHIFT StyleHouse fashion boutique, that transformation inspired the career of her dreams. As a young girl from Lansing, Michigan with a love for dressing up paper dolls, Jasmene never imagined that celebrities like Tyra Banks and Sarah Jakes Roberts would wear pieces from her boutique thanks to stylist J. Bolin, or that she'd have the opportunity to open her own pop-up boutique space in Macy's next month. But God has a funny way of pushing us into our passions.
Along with preparing for her brand debut at The Market @ Macy's in Lenox Mall on July 7th, Jasmene also spends her time as a business coach who helps women learn the ins and outs of starting their own boutique.
We sat down with Jasmene, who got real about most important things every woman should know when launching their own businesses:
Know Your Audience
So you've decided to get like our girl Jas and step out on faith to start a new business. While your first thought may be creating an Instagram page or finding a web designer, Jasmene advises that we apply a different method. Instead of focusing so intently on the aesthetic aspects of your business, get to know everything you can about your ideal customer.
Knowing your customer and honing in on your target audience to be more niche than broad is key to seeing success in your business. This is part of the reason Jasmene started her online coaching business, The Boutique Teacher. She told xoNecole, "Many times when people start boutiques, they want it for the masses. They want everybody to come shop. And when you're trying to sell to everybody, you sell to nobody."
"When you're trying to sell to everybody, you sell to nobody."
Take Your Time
Knowing your customer isn't just about filling out a worksheet, issa process. Doing the work can mean taking days, weeks, or even months to develop and evolve your business. Jasmene shared that because her target audience drives the core of her business, she uses this information to make any and every major decision that she's confronted with. "I really dove down into like, who my girl was. When I decided that I'm going to rebrand, it wasn't something that happened overnight. It was months of work and research to really understand who my ideal customer was. It was months of finding the perfect pieces that fit along with her lifestyle."
For Jasmene, getting to know her ideal customer meant using her imagination, even giving her target client a name. Once she made the decision to focus on that aspect of her business, she hasn't looked back.
Standing Out In A Crowd
Anyone who's ever dipped a toe in the fashion industry knows that thriving in an oversaturated market is no easy feat. There are new businesses popping up every day, b; so it's important that you find a way to stand out from the crowd. The SHIFT Stylehouse owner emphasized the power of staying in your own lane, because no one can do you like you.
As an introvert with just a dash of social anxiety, at times, it's hard for Jasmene to be in front of the camera. But, according to her, moving in silence isn't always the best move. She told xoNecole that the key to conquering your market is just being you, sis. "Sometimes you gotta pop out. Sometimes you do have to show yourself so that people can see you and understand you because people buy into the stories of the people they buy from; who they trust and love and who they can connect with. So sharing your unique story is really what will set you apart in this industry."
"Sometimes you gotta pop out. Sometimes you do have to show yourself so that people can see you and understand you because people buy into the stories of the people they buy from; who they trust and love and who they can connect with."
Stop Purchasing Vendor Lists
Starting a business is hard, but nothing that's truly worth having will come easily. The same is true when you're starting a boutique, and according to Jasmene, the easy way isn't always the most lucrative. I can admit that I've fallen victim to buying a wholesale vendor guide on a whim, hoping that it would help me fulfill all of my entrepreneurial dreams, but Jasmene informed me that this way of thinking was dead wrong.
"It's deeper than somebody just putting in the names of vendors on a spreadsheet. You need to build a relationship with wholesalers and manufacturers. You need to touch the quality of the product before you decide you're going to try and sell that to somebody," the style curator explained. "I see what a lot of starter boutique owners do is, they have the idea that they want to start a boutique and now they're like, 'Okay, well where do I source the product?' So they think that getting a vendor list is the solution to that."
Jasmene advised that although that vendor list may be specific to one audience, it doesn't necessarily mean that vendor's products will work for your ideal client. Vendor lists have the potential to stunt your growth, and if you're not careful, can be a real waste of money.
Feel The Fear & Do It Anyway
Courtesy of @JasmeneMache
Maybe you think you don't have enough money to start a business. Do it anyway. Maybe you think you're too old to step out on faith and leave your job. Do it anyway.
According to Jasmene, we will never truly feel like we have enough, know enough, or are enough to follow our dreams. Her mantra since leaving her job in corporate America has been, "'Feel the fear and do it anyway.' There's so much greater on the other side of fear. There's so much more outside of your comfort zone, and I was so comfortable working in corporate America. I wasn't fulfilled, but I would think that my paycheck was fulfilling me."
According to her, if she had one piece of advice, it would be: "Take the leap, take the risk. Never get too comfortable. Never. Had I taken risks earlier in my life, then the brand could have probably been so much further. But that's not something I harp on, there are no regrets. Everything happens in the timing that it is supposed to happen."
"Take the leap, take the risk. Never get too comfortable. Never."
If you're in Atlanta this month, make sure to check out Jasmene's brand, SHIFT StyleHouse at The Market @ Macy's while it's available for a limited time in Lenox Mall in Buckhead!
You can keep up with Jasmene via Instagram @jasmenemache and shop her dope collection at SHIFTStyleHouse.com.
Featured image courtesy of @jasmenemache.
Amber Riley has the type of laugh that sticks with you long after the raspy, rhythmic sounds have ceased. It punctuates her sentences sometimes, whether she’s giving a chuckle to denote the serious nature of something she just said or throwing her head back in rip-roarious laughter after a joke. She laughs as if she understands the fragility of each minute. She chooses laughter often with the understanding that future joy is not guaranteed.
Credit: Ally Green
The sound of her laughter is rivaled only by her singing voice, an emblem of the past and the future resilience of Black women stretched over a few octaves. On Fox’s Glee, her character Mercedes Jones was portrayed, perhaps unfairly, as the vocal duel to Rachel Berry (Lea Michele), offering rough, full-throated belts behind her co-star’s smooth, pristine vocals. Riley’s always been more than the singer who could deliver a finishing note, though.
Portraying Effie White, she displayed the dynamic emotions of a song such as “And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going” in Dreamgirls on London’s West End without buckling under the historic weight of her predecessors. With her instrument, John Mayer’s “Gravity” became a religious experience, a belted hymnal full of growls and churchy riffs. In her voice, Nicole Scherzinger once said she heard “the power of God.”
Credit: Ally Green
Riley’s voice has been a staple throughout pop culture for nearly 15 years now. Her tone has become so distinguishable that most viewers of Fox’s The Masked Singer recognized the multihyphenate even before it was revealed that she was Harp, the competition-winning, gold-masked figure with an actual harp strapped to her back.
Still, it wasn’t until recently that Riley began to feel like she’d found her voice. This sounds unbelievable. But she’s not referring to the one she uses on stage. She’s referencing the voice that speaks to who she is at her core. “Therapy kind of gave me the training to speak my mind,” the 37-year-old says. “It’s not something we’re taught, especially as Black women. I got so comfortable in [doing so], and I really want other people, especially Black women, to get more comfortable in that space.”
“Therapy kind of gave me the training to speak my mind. It’s not something we’re taught, especially as Black women."
If you ask Riley’s manager, Myisha Brooks, she’ll tell you the foundation of who the multihyphenate is hasn’t changed much since she was a kid growing up in Compton. “She is who she is from when I met her back when she was singing in the front of the church to back when she landed major roles in film and TV,” Brooks says. Time has allowed Riley to grow more comfortable, giving fans a more intimate glimpse into her life, including her mental health journey and the ins and outs of show business.
The actress/singer has been in therapy since 2019, although she suffered from depression and anxiety way before that. In a recent interview with Jason Lee, she recalls having suicidal ideation as a kid. By the time she started seeing a psychologist and taking antidepressants in her thirties, her body had become jittery, a physical reminder of the trauma stacked high inside her. “I was shaking in [my therapist’s] office,” she tells xoNecole. “My fight or flight was on such a high level. I was constantly in survival mode. My heart was beating fast all the time. All I did was sweat.”
There wasn’t just childhood trauma to account for. After auditioning for American Idol and being turned away by producers, Riley began working for Ikea and nearly missed her Glee audition because her car broke down on the highway while en route. Thankfully, Riley had been cast to play Mercedes Jones. American Idol had temporarily convinced her she wasn’t cut out for the entertainment industry, but this was validation that she was right where she belonged. Glee launched in 2009 with the promise of becoming Riley’s big break.
In some ways, it was. The show introduced Riley to millions of fans and catapulted her into major Hollywood circles. But in other ways, it became a reminder of the types of roles Black women, especially those who are plus-sized, are relegated to. Behind the scenes, Riley says she fought for her character "to have a voice" but eventually realized her efforts were useless. "It finally got to a point where I was like, this is not my moment. I'm not who they're choosing, and this is just going to have to be a job for me for now," she says. "And, that's okay because it pays my bills, I still get to be on television, I'm doing more than any other Black plus-sized women that I'm seeing right now on screen."
The actress can recognize now that she was navigating issues associated with trauma and low self-esteem at the time. She now knows that she's long had anxiety and depression and can recognize the ways in which she was triggered by how the cult-like following of the show conflicted with her individual, isolated experiences behind the scenes. But she was in her early '20s back then. She didn't yet have the language or the tools to process how she was feeling.
Riley says she eventually sought out medical intervention. "When you're in Hollywood, and you go to a doctor, they give you pills," she says, sharing a part of her story that she'd never revealed publicly before now. "[I was] on medication and developing a habit of medicating to numb, not understanding I was developing an addiction to something that's not fixing my problem. If anything, it's making it worse."
“[I was] on medication and developing a habit of medicating to numb, not understanding I was developing an addiction to something that’s not fixing my problem. If anything it’s making it worse.”
Credit: Ally Green
At one point, while in her dressing room on set, she rested her arm on a curling iron without realizing it. It wasn't until her makeup artist alerted her that she even realized her skin was burning. Once she noticed, she says she was "so zonked out on pills" that she barely reacted. Speaking today, she holds up her arm and motions towards a scar that remains from the incident. She sought help for her reliance on the pills, but it would still be years before she finally attended therapy.
This stress was only compounded by the trauma of growing up in poverty and the realities of being a "contract worker." "Imagine going from literally one week having to borrow a car to get to set to the next week being on a private jet to New York City," she says. After Glee ended, so did the rides on private planes. The fury of opportunities she expected to follow her appearance on the show failed to materialize. She wasn't even 30 yet, and she was already forced to consider if she'd hit her career peak.
. . .
We’re only four minutes into our Zoom call before Riley delivers her new adage to me. “My new mantra is ‘humility does not serve me.’ Humility does not serve Black women. The world works so hard to humble us anyway,” she says.
On this Thursday afternoon in April, the LA-based entertainer is seated inside her closet/dressing room wearing a cerulean blue tank top with matching shorts and eating hot wings. This current phase of healing hinges on balance. It’s about having discipline and consistency, but not at the risk of inflexibility. She was planning to head to the gym, for instance, but she’s still tired from the “exhausting” day before. Instead, she’s spent her day receiving a massage, eating some chicken wings, and planning to spend quality time with friends. “I’m not going to beat myself up for it. I’m not going to talk down to myself. I’m going to eat my chicken wings, and then tomorrow I’m [back] in the gym,” she says.
“My new mantra is ‘humility does not serve me.’ Humility does not serve Black women. The world works so hard to humble us anyway."
This is the balance with which she's been approaching much of her life these days. It's why she's worried less about whether or not people see her as someone who is humble. She'd rather be respected. "I think you should be a person that's easy to work with, but in the moments where I have to ruffle feathers and make waves, I'm not shying away from that anymore. You can do it in love, you don't have to be nasty about it, but I had to finally be comfortable with the fact that setting boundaries around my life – in whatever aspect, whether that's personal or business – people are not going to like it. Some people are not going to have nice things to say about you, and you gotta be okay with it," she says.
When Amber talks about the constant humbling of Black women in Hollywood, I think of the entertainers before her who have suffered from this. The brilliant, consistent, overqualified Black women who have spoken of having to fight for opportunities and fair pay. Aretha Franklin. Viola Davis. Tracee Ellis Ross. There's a long list of stars whose success hasn't mirrored their experiences behind the scenes.
Credit: Ally Green
If Black women outside of Hollywood are struggling to decrease the pay gap, so, too, are their wealthier, more famous peers.
Riley says there’s been progress in recent years, but only in small ways and for a limited group of people. “This business is exhausting. The goalpost is constantly moving, and sometimes it’s unfair,” she says. But, I have to say it’s the love that keeps you going.”
“There’s no way you can continue to be in this business and not love it, especially being a plus-sized Black woman,” she continues. “We’re still niche. We’re still not main characters.”
"There’s no way you can continue to be in this business and not love it, especially being a plus-sized Black woman. We’re still niche. We’re still not main characters.”
Last year, Riley starred alongside Raven Goodwin in the Lifetime thriller Single Black Female (a modern, diversified take on 1992’s Single White Female). It was more than a leading role for the actress, it also served as proof that someone who looks like her can front a successful project without it hinging on her identity. It showcased that the characters she portrays don’t “have to be about being a big girl. It can just be a regular story.”
Riley sees her work in music as an extension of her efforts to push past the rigid stereotypes in entertainment. Take her appearance on The Masked Singer, for instance. Riley said she decided to perform Mayer’s “Gravity” after being told she couldn’t sing it years earlier. “I wanted to do ‘Gravity’ on Glee. [I] was told no, because that’s not a song that Mercedes would do,” she says. “That was a full circle moment for me, doing that on that show and to hear what it is they had to say.”
As Scherzinger praised the “anointed” performance, a masked Riley began to cry, her chest heaving as she stood on stage, her eyes shielded from view. “You have to understand, I have really big names – casting directors, producers, show creators – that constantly tell me ‘I’m such a big fan. Your talent is unmatched.’ Hire me, then,” she says, reflecting on the moment.
Recently, she’s been in the studio working on original music, the follow-up to her independently-released debut EP, 2020’s Riley. The sequel to songs such as the anthemic “Big Girl Energy” and the reflective ballad “A Moment” on Riley, this new project hones in on the singer’s R&B roots with sensual grooves such as the tentatively titled “All Night.” “You said I wasn’t shit, turns out that I’m the shit. Then you called me a bitch, turns out that I’m that bitch. You said no one would want me, well you should call your homies,” she sings on the tentatively titled “Lately,” a cut about reflecting on a past relationship. From the forthcoming project, xoNecole received five potential tracks. Fans likely already know the strengths and contours of Riley’s vocals, but these new songs are her strongest, most confident offerings as an artist.
“I am so much more comfortable as a writer, and I know who I am as an artist now. I’m evolving as a human being, in general, so I’m way more vulnerable in my music. I’m way more willing to talk about whatever is on my mind. I don’t stop myself from saying what it is I want to say,” she says.
Credit: Ally Green
“Every era and alliteration of Amber, the baseline is ‘Big Girl Energy.’ That’s the name of her company,” her manager Brooks says, referencing the imprint through which Riley releases her music after getting out of a label deal several years ago. “It’s just what she stands for. She’s not just talking about size, it’s in all things. Whether it’s putting your big girl pants on and having to face a boardroom full of executives or sell yourself in front of a casting agent. It’s her trying to achieve the things she wants to do in life.”
Riley says she has big dreams beyond releasing this new music, too. She’d love to star in a rom-com with Winston Duke. She hasn't starred in a biopic yet, but she’d revel in the opportunity to portray Rosetta Tharpe on screen. She’s determined that her previous setbacks won’t stop her from dreaming big.
“I think one of my superpowers is resilience because, at the end of the day, I’m going to kick, scream, cry, cuss, be mad and disappointed, but I’m going to get up and risk having to deal with it all again. It’s worth it for the happy moments,” she says.
If Riley seems more comfortable and confident professionally, it’s because of the work she’s been doing in her personal life.
She’d previously spoken to xoNecole about becoming engaged to a man she discovered in a post on the site, but she called things off last year. For Valentine’s Day, she revealed her new boyfriend publicly. “I decided to post him on Valentine’s Day, partially because I was in the dog house. I got in trouble with him,” she says, half-joking before turning serious. “The breakup was never going to stop me from finding love. Or at least trying. I don’t owe anybody a happily ever after. People break up. It happens. When it was good, it was good. When it was bad, it was terrible, hunny. I had to get the fuck up out of there. You find happiness, and you enjoy it and work through it.”
Credit: Ally Green
"I don’t owe anybody a happily ever after. People break up. It happens. When it was good, it was good. When it was bad, it was terrible, hunny. I had to get the fuck up out of there. You find happiness and you enjoy it and work through it.”
With her ex, Riley was pretty outspoken about her relationship, even appearing in content for Netflix with him. This time around is different. She’s not hiding her boyfriend of eight months, but she’s more protective of him, especially because he’s a father and isn’t interested in becoming a public figure.
She’s traveling more, too. It’s a deliberate effort on her part to enjoy her money and reject the trauma she’s developed after experiencing poverty in her childhood. “I live in constant fear of being broke. I don’t think you ever don’t remember that trauma or move past that. Now I travel and I’m like, listen, if it goes, it goes. I’m not saying [to] be reckless, but I deserve to enjoy my hard work.”
After everything she’s been through, she certainly deserves to finally let loose a bit. “I have to have a life to live,” she says. “I’ve got to have a life worth fighting for.”
Credits
Director of Content: Jasmine Grant
Campaign Manager: Chantal Gainous
Managing Editor: Sheriden Garrett
Creative Director/Executive Producer: Tracey Woods
Cover Designer: Tierra Taylor
Photographer: Ally Green
Photo Assistant: Avery Mulally
Digital Tech: Kim Tran
Video by Third and Sunset
DP & Editor: Sam Akinyele
2nd Camera: Skylar Smith
Camera Assistant: Charles Belcher
Stylist: Casey Billingsley
Hairstylist: DaVonte Blanton
Makeup Artist: Drini Marie
Production Assistants: Gade De Santana, Apu Gomes
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