Transcript
Bevy Smith (0:00)
I'm working, I'm cutting my teeth in fashion advertising, luxury fashion advertising. And then at 29, I decide I want to quit.
Interviewer (0:08)
But didn't you want the paycheck?
Bevy Smith (0:10)
Nobody worried about no paycheck. I knew I could do with a lot less. I knew I didn't need a six figure salary to take care of one person in Harlem.
Interviewer (0:19)
But sometimes people begin to get the six figure salary, and then they get addicted to it, and they don't know that that didn't happen to you.
Bevy Smith (0:27)
I mean, I liked all the stuff. I like the perks of it. But I also have always been this restless kind of gal. And freedom has always been far more important to me than money.
Interviewer (0:50)
You get on the ladder, you climb it, and when you get to the top, you don't usually just jump off. But that's exactly what our guest today, Bevy Smith, did. She was in her late 30s, and she found herself in amazing rooms at luxury fashion houses all over Europe. But she didn't like the person that she'd become or the life that she was living. And so because her mom taught her early not to settle, she didn't. She actually threw it all away and started all over. Today on the messy parts, the one and only Bevy Smith, who says it gets greater later. So, Bevy, I'm so excited to have you on. I think that this is gonna be an amazing and an energetic conversation because I've spent a lot of time watching your TED Talk and your new podcast, Bevy from Bed, which was amazing and has great production quality. I wanted to start with who you were as a child, like you in Harlem. And you actually talk about that and you call it. I'm from the hamlet of Harlem.
Bevy Smith (1:47)
I'm from the hamlet of Harlem. From a real neighborhood. I'm from 150th street and 8th Avenue.
Interviewer (1:54)
150th street and 8th Avenue.
Bevy Smith (1:55)
So I'm from central Harlem.
Interviewer (1:56)
Yeah. And so you grew up there, and what made you decide that you wanted to go into fashion or music? Because actually, you were sort of at the intersection of both.
Bevy Smith (2:07)
Well, my mom was very, very fashionable, and she loved clothes, and she actually worked just so she could buy herself clothes and didn't have to ask my father for money. And so I grew up around this very fashionable woman, this woman who really took looking good seriously. Also, when I was a kid, there was a great bar on the corner of my block called the Dunbar Tavern. There's a big housing, used to be a co op, and it was built for Upwardly mobile black people. So it's right across the street where I grew up in the Dunbar Tavern were the most glamorous women you ever want to see. And they were barmaids back then. Female bartenders were called barmaids back then. Children could go into bars. So my mom and my dad didn't hang out in the bar, but I had a lot of girlfriends that would go into the bar to see their parents. I know that sounds insane, but it is what it is.
