Jade Purple Brown illustrates Black women for fashion and beauty brands, filling a gap she noticed early on. She and Sue Warnke discuss building creative careers while juggling other work, the extra hustle Black female entrepreneurs need, and what success actually means: living on your own terms.
We're beautiful and we have so much to offer, so why not show the full scope? My name is Jade Purple Brown. I'm a visual artist living in New York. I use graphic design, illustration, and art direction to create content for fashion and beauty-based brands. I love just showing strong women, very modern women, especially Black women, 'cause I just feel like they're not represented as much in illustration. And I feel like that's what a lot of people wanna see. They wanna be able to see themselves within the illustration. I kind of saw, you know what, this is my chance to create something different, and this can actually help me stand out. I'm Sue Warnke. Representation in business is just so important because you can't be what you can't see. I didn't know anybody who did graphic design or illustration, and I stumbled upon it much later in life because of that. And I always kind of wonder what my life could have been if I would have saw somebody in that role earlier on. Starting out, it was just really hard. I was working a full-time job, and on the side of that, I was trying to do freelance work from 7 PM until, like, I pretty much I had such a really great full-time job, but I just wasn't living my dream. I wasn't happy going into work every morning, so I just knew something had to change. I want to make myself feel good. I want other people to feel good, and I just want to keep inspiring other people along the way. Black female entrepreneurs are the fastest-growing demographic because we always have to work 10 times harder most of the time. I'm a very competitive person. most of the time just to get the same recognition. So when it comes to actually building our dreams and getting things up and going, like, we go hard and we have a plan and we're not stopping until we get what we want.
Hey, this is Jade. I can't get to the phone right now, but if you leave me a message, I'll get back to you as soon as I can. You've always had that special spark, and I really admire how you've been able to express yourself and your visions through your work. And always been able to stay true to yourself and your beliefs.
When you were about 2 years old, you started to become very particular about the type of clothes you wanted to wear. You didn't want to wear anything plain Jane.
And one of the things that always— I just always loved and admired about you, you knew what you wanted.
To me, success is all about living life On your own terms and kind of doing the things that you want to do and not being pressured for society, just living for you.
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