A Black Female in A Male Dominated Culture is Making Herself Seen | No Deadstock
FeaturedYou recently did an unboxing with a package courtesy of Adidas LA, and they were sneakers with a constructed upper made from one of Kareem’s Lakers jerseys, After looking at the comment section many people love your unboxing and currently seating at 23.8k followers on Instagram I’m sure brands are reaching out on a daily for your influence.
So what is the next big collaboration for Janelle?
Honestly, I have no idea… I just try to go with the flow and whatever is presented to me is whats meant to be. I got into shoes not for all these collaboration and deals, I just ginuely starting doing stuff I liked to do and then those brands deals and collaborations end up coming. So I’m just going to continue to do what i’ve done this whole time and do what I need to do.
Your clothing line Hours. officially launched back in November, however, the tag has been one you’ve used on Twitter prior to the creation of Hours.
So can you tell me how did the vision to turn a Twitter hashtag into an entire brand that have all of your followers buzzing?
So during the first couple months of quaritine everyone was locked in the house, we couldn’t do anything, couldn’t go anywhere, and i’m a very sexually person. i’m very open about my sexuality and sex in general so I would always post these sexual post i’d have on my phone or whatever i saw on Instagram and i would put #Hours. Hours is basically afterhours, after 10:30pm /11 o’clock, it’s baby making hours. So before i went to sleep I would post whatever nasty stuff I saw and put #Hours. Then one of my friends was like “Yo you should really market this, you should really brand this.” Around my birthday last year… I put some basic stuff out, the big thing was the grey sweatpants. So basically the brand is minimalistic livestyle brand simply thing you can use when you going to your appaointments.
Her Side Podcast is a show that touches on Sneakers, Music, and Sex, on all streaming platforms for podcasts with over 60 episodes. The show is hosted by Lauren Enriquez and yourself (#Jaylo)
Tell me how did this podcast come to life?
So me and Lauren were both work at a this sneaker store Magpark, honestly we kind of hit it off as soon as we started working together. We actually had a podcast before that with two other host and it just didn’t work. It was like to many cooks in the kictchen in a sense so we all parted way in good fashion, then me and Lo came together like “why dont we do one ourselves? We’re already like best friends.” At the time were working so close togther so that how it formed. We were really trying to come up with a name so one of our friend helped us with the name so we got “Her Side Podcast” which basically a women’s perspective on all things sneakers because that what I’m into and then Music which is what Lo is into. So in those two segments we just do weekly thing that’s happened in both respected communities and then we’ll have like a broader topic which is usally about sex. Living in LA and what we have to deal with… That’s basically how it formed.
In what many would consider being a male-dominated community, being a female sneakerhead can be very difficult not only to do you have to keep up with the men but also other women and fight the perception that female sneakerheads only buy hyped sneakers like Nike or Jordan.
Tell me how does it feel to see women like Melody Ehsani or Aleali May bring their ideas to life in maybe the most love Jordan silhouette the Jordan 1?
Yea it kind of hard being in a male-dominated community, espeailly no i think within the past maybe two years the “popular sneaker” has definately shifted and sneakers in general have become a real mainstream thing, more than it had been and i think that were the whole hyped stuff within the past two years has came from… The Air Jordan 1’s, the Air Force’s, and Dunks right now are taking over that’s were you see the new female coming in. Well for me i can tell who has genual love for this shit and who kind of doesn’t. I can usually spot them… I don’t want to feel like the gatekeeper in this but, I just feel like you always have to be authenic even if you’re new…you can usually see when there doing it for the likes and i’ve always had that issue with brands or companies showing spotlight to these other females who are new and don’t know that long struggle a lot of us have had to be in some of these place we are in today. You (companies) need to shed light on women who really came up in this and have shown their genuien love, half the time it no how big your collection is it’s about the knowledge you have in this game because that shows alot more than the actual stuff…my knowlegde is totally bigger than the shoe that i have and that alway been my big issue.
As far as the women who’ve had a collaboration with sneakers like Melody Ehsani and Aleali May, i think it really huge i’ve been following Melody Ehsani since she was with Reebok…and now having her Jordan’s its like wow, I’ve seen where she come from and what she’s done and she always had like the most outlandish colorful sneakers which i totally love that. I love bright shoes and i love that being the highlight of myoutfit. As far as Aleali May collection I love what she’s doing in the fashion world and then crossing it over with street wear workld and sneaker world it’s really dope. I just don’t want sneaker brand to stay in one bubble because female sneakerheads are so much larger than that… because I am so much into all these fandoms and pop culture things that more me, I love sneakers like that ( Adidas x Toy Story collab) thats the kind of sneakerhead that i am. Female sneakerhead have so many differnt lanes that we can create and different audience of women and men we can pull together so i just hope they (sneaker brands/companies) stay within this bubble.
It’s no secret that your favorite Jordan is the Jordan 3, started by the Black Cement 3s because of their ability to go with literally everything. One of the best collaborations this year in my opinion was the A Ma Maniére, or “Raised by Women” colorway dedicated to James Whitaker’s Mother.
Having a women’s exclusive sneaker use to mean a sneaker with a college of feminine color tied together on one shoe but do you think sneakers companies are begging to realize that the simplistic colorways are more appealing to female sneakerheads?
I think it is, one thing I like that Yeezy have done is that they’ve created gender netural colorways across the board in all of the sneakers they’ve dropped and it’s in unisex sizes so it makes it easier for it to appeal to both men and women, That exacly what those 3’s did, they appealed to both men and women even though they were a women’s sneaker and for women at that. So obviusly it appealed to more men because it wasn’t extremely feminate and obviusly for the women it wasn’t the pinks it wasn’t the purples, it wasn’t the pasels or these crazy materials, animals prints or whatever we’ve been getting. it was just straight to the point anyone could wear them but, that shoe being a womens sneaker it just put it over the top. if it came out as a mens sneaker I don’t think it would have done as well.
This time last year the world was asked to be put on pause, but due to injustice committed against George Floyd and Briana Taylor and so many others, communities filled with people of different races and creeds came together to demand justice in peaceful protest around the globe. After taking a deep dive into your social media accounts I found took a peaceful ride with “ Ride for Black Lives” as a demonstration for justice.
Can you talk to me about the experience of and emotion you felt riding your bike around a 13-14 mile loop to spread the peaceful message of love and unity?
It was new to me, I mean riding a bike isn’t new but I haven’t rode a bike in years. I think bike riding became a big thing because it was the only thing that let us go outside in a sense so I ended up getting a new bike. So I saw that he was doing this ride, I think our first ride was about 30 miles, oh my God i was so sore but it was honestly so cool I saw alot of people that i knew in the sneaker world and different people in general. I went with my brother and it was a different experince obvisly there were alot of Colored people (people of color) out there and even non-colored people as well and it was us coming together…It was a whole group of people and you don’t feel this pressure to bike as fast like the fastest person out there. You’re really just chilling, vibing with people, people like playing there music it’s a really cool community activity that we were able to do together. I haven’t been in some time, I dont know if I can do 30 miles again but, i defintaly still love being on my bike it wasone of my best purchases I made in the past year and a half.