AphroChic: Jeanine Hays on Being at Home and Creating Supportive Spaces

By Julia Gamolina

Jeanine Hays is the co-founder, along with Bryan Mason, of AphroChic, a brand dedicated to celebrating culture, creativity, design, arts, science, and technology in the African-American community, with a focus on the intersection of modern design and global culture across diverse populations. AphroChic began as a blog in 2007 before quickly expanding into creative fields such as interior design, product design, fashion, content creation, publishing, and more.

Jeanine and Bryan are experts in creating experiences and telling stories through social media and video, and connecting brands to a wide audience, particularly the African American community. AphroChic has worked with a number of Fortune 500 companies including LOWE’s, The Home Depot, and IKEA. The brand has also been featured in print and online in numerous publications including, The New York Times, Architectural Digest, Elle Decor and New York Magazine, which celebrated AphroChic as one of the top interior design firms in New York City. In her interview with Julia Gamolina, Jeanine talks about how the brand came to be, and advises us on how we can make our home a place for self-expression as well as a space that uplifts and supports.

JG: How did your interest in all things design first develop?

JH: The first time that I was intentionally aware of design was probably when I was six years old - my mom gave me the opportunity to help design my bedroom. I remember vividly the moment that I gained an understanding that someone could choose what their space would look like. We went to get fabric, and I picked this strawberry shortcake fabric because I was obsessed with Strawberry Shortcake at the time. Then, my mom made the fabric into curtains! That to me was such a moment - I realized that I could bring something I love into a space that was mine.

Being able to be a part of this process at such a young age was really cool and I learned that my space was an opportunity for me to express myself. That was where it all began for me, this love of making space your own. I was always trying to personalize my home, whether it was my college dorm room or my first apartment.

Tell me about your career before AphroChic.

Design wasn’t my career at all - I was a lawyer! I worked in public policy for many years, starting in Philadelphia where I worked with the juvenile justice system. Then I went on to California, working for a non-profit organization doing work with the state and the federal government. However, design was something that I found myself going back to again and again, sort of as a restbed in between projects I was working on. Even during law school, whenever I wanted to ground myself, I would also reach for art and design. The path to AphroChic developed very organically, somehow, in interesting ways, and it all makes sense now.

Right, now. Madame Architect makes so much sense whenever I pause and consider where I came from, but if you had asked me five years ago, I would have never predicted that I would be doing this.

Exactly. To take it all the way back, I had gone to law school at American University, and I remember that there was a Crate & Barrel across the street. I would always go between classes, and look at whatever new color palette they had, or furniture silhouettes, just whatever that was new with the seasons. That would be my treat.

How AphroChic officially started was really with and at the beginning of the blogosphere, which was in 2007. “Blogging” started to be a thing, and we tapped into that. I always say “we”, because AphroChic really is a company that is between my husband, Bryan Mason, and I, the two of us. In 2007, I was working for this non-profit, and my husband was getting his Masters in Theology. During the nighttime, I was putting together mood boards of these spaces that I would imagine - colors and palettes, things like this. This was before Pinterest, which came out two years later! Ultimately, I loved putting ideas together, and I would show them to Bry. Finally, he said, “You should start a blog, a space where you can connect with other people about design.” He wasn’t into design at all at the time, but he is now [laughs]. So that’s what we did! We came up with the name AphroChic to express our African-American heritage and to also express our love of style and design. We went on Blogger, Google’s free blogging platform - I would write in the evenings, when I came home from work.

“...how do we fill this gap that is consistently there in the design world, and with people that we know are out there, and that are looking for ways to express themselves with their cultural heritage at home.”

What were you hoping to express with this blog?

I started by writing blog posts about people that weren’t really seen on mainstream blogs. The mainstream blogs were definitely catered to a white audience, and that always bugged me - I would go onto sites like DesignSponge, and all these other great blogs, but no one on there looked like me. I remember thinking to myself, “I know a lot of great people who look like me and who are into design, and art, and my own family has great spaces.” I was wanting to be a part of the conversation and also to create a space that was a lot more diverse and that told the stories of people that everyone didn’t know about.

How did you evolve AphroChic into what it is today?

When we began, it was really just about our love of design and wanting to talk to and about new people. At first, we had about twenty readers - family members [laughs]. About six months into it, we got a feature in the Washington Post - they wrote about us as a new blog that people should know about, and that’s when things really took off at a new scale. AphroChic became a brand! We went from twenty readers to 20,000, then to 70,000, and eventually to hundreds of thousands of people that were following what AphroChic is all about.

It’s really been a journey of being authentic and trying to open up what design looks like. Through the years, AphroChic has evolved into a few different things - we still have the blog, but we also moved into design ourselves, product design specifically, because of the gap that we saw in the market. We were looking for things that were new and fresh, and we couldn’t find things that we wanted because they simply didn’t exist. We said to ourselves, “Well, if it’s not out there, let’s just make it!”

We wanted to, again, create a new conversation of what product design could be. We wanted something that was reflective of our heritage, which was also reflective of a lot of other people. Our product line has expanded over many years - in addition to our pillow line, we now have wallpaper, rugs, lighting that is handmade in Morocco. It’s always been about adding to the story of who we are through our own cultural heritage. We wrote a book, Remix, which was one of the first books to look at African American design in a whole decade. You’ll hear that theme again and again - how do we fill this gap that is consistently there in the design world, and with people that we know are out there, and that are looking for ways to express themselves with their cultural heritage at home. That’s been the thirteen year journey.

I appreciate this so much - I’m originally from Russia, and the way we approach our home there is also so different; I mean, people put carpets on the walls, people own samovars, all this! And the whole dacha - summer house - culture. I’m always looking for ways to incorporate how we lived there into how I live today.

Exactly! We all have that desire, especially since design in America can be very sterile. Things are more driven by economics and what people can sell, and less about expression and heritage. One of the things that we always looked at were our own homes, and the homes we grew up in, and those were all about expression! Art on the walls, funky pieces around, colorful objects, and I’ve always taken that with me - hopefully in a more sophisticated way than in the late 70s when I was growing up [laughs], but just really taking the key elements that every culture has.

For example, every culture has something around rugs - you said in Russia, people hang them on the walls. In Morocco, rugs are your sofas, they’re what you lay on, if you’re from a nomadic tribe, they’re your whole home! Pillows, textiles - there’s always something cultural in those elements, and we forget that sometimes. But every piece of furniture or accessory always has a cultural weight to it, and that’s what we go back to - honoring the cultural weight and the need that people have.

This leads me to what we’re collectively going through today - we’ve been home for at least a month now, and will probably be for another month, those of us that are fortunate to have a home in the first place. What can we be doing right now to make staying at home more interesting, more bearable, with visual variety, all that?

This question has come up so much. I’m a natural nester - I love to be at home, so for me, working on the home space is what I enjoy doing and what helps me relax. I think that people do need to think about home in that way - that it’s a nest and that it’s a space that needs to be supportive of who you are. Sometimes, that can get lost for people - especially in New York, people tend to think of home as a space where they come to crash. For New Yorkers, the city is our home as well, but this time has certainly changed that.

People can take this time to focus on creating a space that is really supportive. And that can be whatever it means to you! There’s a lot of focus right now on perfection - even in a moment like this, people are thinking, “I have to be working every day, I have to put my makeup on for Zoom calls, I have to continue to plan my social media,” and that’s not really where we’re at! Right now, we have to go back to something that’s maybe even a little ancient - it’s about comfort, and about cocooning ourselves and creating a space that makes us feel whole.

“...people do need to think about home in that way - that it’s a nest and that it’s a space that needs to be supportive of who you are.”

How can we do that?

For some people, that may be painting their walls, for others it might be taking out those kitschy objects that they maybe didn’t want to display but that have a lot of meaning to them and make them happy, or putting up new pictures, getting a plant on their weekly grocery store trip, making their own art and putting it on the wall. It’s less about perfection and more about creating a space that makes you feel good, happy, and whole. Even on the worst day, your home should make you feel safe. Doodle on the wall and make your own wallpaper, hang your collection of vintage kimonos, re-purpose things that are in storage - that’s what people should think about most. Put the things out in the open, and do things that make you happy.

Back to you, where are you in your career today? This particular moment is a funny one to ask that though…

You know honestly, it’s a great question to ask now because this moment itself, the pandemic, has helped me understand a lot more about where I am. It’s really been an eye opening moment for all of us in so many ways. The pandemic has revealed a lot of societal issues that we have, and the situation is that we can’t escape some of these things that have gone wrong in society, as well as things that we needed to change.

For myself, one of the things that has happened is that I’ve slowed down! I’m sure you feel the same way, that you didn’t know that you were going at one million miles an hour, but I’ve certainly realized that it’s been that way for me since moving to Brooklyn a little over five years ago. I’ve realized that we just never stop - from the moment that we’ve gotten here, it’s really been nothing but non-stop work. This moment is teaching me a lot about being slower, and being a lot kinder to myself, and with that, it has allowed me to be a lot more creative. When you slow down and think a lot more, you realize all of the ideas that you have, and ways that you can implement them. That’s what Bryan and I have been doing - we’ve been at home, thinking of all the things we can do and how we can be of service.

Who are you admiring right now? Who is out there doing good things for the world that you’d want others to know about?

I love anybody who is speaking about wellness right now. Thinking about ourselves in this way is really a revolutionary act, and one of the people that’s encouraging people to do that really well right now is Nikia Phoenix, who we interviewed on our podcast. She does these beautiful morning meditation videos that are really calming.

I also love artists, and there are many that I think are doing such a great job at this moment by giving us somewhere else to look and something new to imagine. One artist I’ll mention is Cinga Samson. He’s from South Africa, and his work is in very muted palettes. Something about that feels like a restbed on the eye - he’s from Cape Town, so there’s an oceanic vibe to it, as well as a modernism to the characters that are a part of the work. Very inspiring.

What would you say have been the biggest challenges for you throughout your career?

Life in general [laughs]. Life is very funny - I would never have, in a million years, imagined that where I am today would be my life. I think everyone in their twenties has a vision of where they will be, and here I am in my early forties, amazed at where I ended up. I mean, I thought I was going to be a lawyer and that my life would be about public policy! It’s so different than what I imagined, but I am exactly where I need and needed to be.

The lesson that I’m consistently learning is that we’re on this really incredible journey, and that there are these moments from time to time that are “closed door” moments. For example, I was at a job where my employer had run out of money for my role. That’s certainly a “closed door” moment, and what do you do? Obviously I need to do something else, but that’s when the pivot happens, when the shift happens. And that’s exactly when Bryan and I decided to give AphroChic a chance. We gave ourselves six months, thinking that if it didn’t work, I’d go back to being a lawyer and Bryan would go back to being an academic, which would have been fine! But we gave ourselves that six-month pivot period, and we’ve made it this far. The challenges are really opportunities sometimes, and that has carried us through. You should always be looking for ways to shift in these challenging moments.

“You should always be looking for ways to shift in these challenging moments.”

This leads me perfectly into my last question, which is particularly timely as well since most of those graduating in May will be graduating into a completely unideal situation. What is your advice for those just starting their careers and trying to find their place in the world?

The week I started law school, 9/11 happened. I was in DC. It felt like the worst year - we experienced constant anxiety and we didn’t know what our lives were going to be like after all this. In thinking of students today, I’m asking myself, “Gosh, how did I navigate those moments?” Part of it was knowing that I was a voice for my generation! That was what I was working on, and that’s what I was hoping to do when I got out of school, to contribute something new in that way.

I think that young people now need to think about what that new thing that they will contribute might be. That’s a hard task, because in school you’re trained to go into a specific field. In particular, for young people in the arts - artists, photographers, writers - they are the people we need right now to pave the way. They are the people that will help us transition, develop new ideas, and help us develop a new culture. I’d encourage them to use social media, because it’s such an amazing platform for getting your message out there, to find their voice, not afraid to be yourself, and to contribute and be of service. Use the tools that we have to create what’s next.