Amena Brown:
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to a new episode of HER with Amena Brown. And I've been telling you all that September is a month of anniversaries. It is my wedding anniversary. It is the anniversary of the relaunch of this podcast. And as many of you know, I am the poetic partner for national haircare brand Pattern, and this month is Pattern's two year anniversary and ooh, y'all. [musical interlude]. I am excited to welcome into our HER living room the CEO and founder of Pattern, producer, actor, CEO, activist, Tracee Ellis Ross.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
Hi. Wonderful to join you here, Amena. We have such a strong creative bond, so it's wonderful for me to enter your family and your world the way you have so beautifully entered and elevated Pattern's and mine.
Amena Brown:
I feel so many emotional vibes. I'm curious to also talk with you and hear how it is feeling to you now at two years of being CEO and founder of Pattern. But first I have to start with the very important questions, Tracee. You're here in the HER living room. I imagine this as the living room where I gather with my girl friends when we go to each other's house. We bring drinks. We bring snacks. When you go to hang out with your girl friends, what is your favorite food or drink that you typically bring to the gathering?
Tracee Ellis Ross:
Well, we often cook together. There's a small gaggle of us. My best and closest sort of core group of girl friends lives in New York. We often are at Monica's house around her kitchen table. Monica's a great cook. I've been best friends with Monica since college. And I usually make something out of what she has as opposed to bringing something, so I'm usually in charge of the salads. I'm a queen of the salads. I also love a bottle of wine. What do we drink? We usually drink wine. We recently have graduated more into cocktails. When we're together, when we travel, we do an Aperol spritz. Romy and I love a dirty martini, and so does Kevin. So we mix it up, but it's a long friendship, so I don't know that there's a regular thing. It's a good 30 years, Amena, with all of us.
Amena Brown:
The depth of a 30 year friendship. Think I've got some friendships a little over 20 years, about to hit the 25 year mark. There's a level of depth.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
Yeah. There's something that happens. It's amazing. I mean, there's nothing better than that. It's the next closest thing to family, and it's a different version of family. It's the chosen family. But yeah, 30 years. I mean, Monica and I... Hold on. It might be longer than that. I was 17.
Amena Brown:
Wow. That's dope.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
Samira, I was 22. Romy, I was, I think, 25. Even though we went to high school together, we weren't friends in high school. She was a year behind me. So yeah, it's been a long time for all of us.
Amena Brown:
Can you discuss the merits of the salad situation? What are things that you feel are necessary to make a salad, really step it up? Discuss.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
Okay, this is a really good topic, Amena. People poo-poo and say, "Oh, salad's not cooking." Bull crap, people. Let me tell you something. There's a lot of really important factors. Number one, bagged lettuce is a no-no.
Amena Brown:
Oh.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
No ma'am. Got to get that lettuce and break it off of its own little heart. You got to wash it by hand. You got to shake it and get that water off. Every time you touch the lettuce, first of all, lettuce is not a sturdy situation. Lettuce is delicate. It is fickle. You've got to be loving with it. You can't dress it too early. Salad dressing out of a jar, bottle, anything pre-made, no ma'am, over, done. The salad has been ruined. Nope. People are always like, "I don't understand what you do to my salad." My ex-boyfriend was like, "I don't even eat salad." And I was like, "You do now."
Tracee Ellis Ross:
He's like, "It's my favorite thing in the world." I make all kinds of salads. I was just thinking of the last time I was with Monica and Samira and the ladies. We did butternut squash on arugula with shallots, so baked butternut squash on fresh, live arugula with sunflower seeds and shallots and a balsamic vinaigrette with a little wee bit of honey in it.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
I also love when I do... I shave the carrots, really thin... I don't know what you call it when they're long and skinny, with olives, green and black olives cut without the pits in them, fennel, red onion. I mean, come on. Come on. And then there's the regular salads that I always make. One of my favorite salads, there's two favorite salads that go with steak, depending on how you're making your steak. You can do romaine hearts with corn, hearts of palm, and red onions with olive oil and lemon, or you can do arugula with apples, red onions. One of my siblings doesn't like fruit in the salad, so I have to put that on the side at home when I cook.
Amena Brown:
Oh. I want to thank you for regaling us with these tips, because I mean, as soon as you said shallots, I was like, oh, I see what we're doing here. This is not a game.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
Yeah. I like to tell people shallots are an elegant onion.
Amena Brown:
I do feel that way. I feel like anytime someone's like, "And there are fried shallots," I'm like, "I'll have that," because that's what-
Tracee Ellis Ross:
I'll have that.
Amena Brown:
... a fancy lady would eat, and I want to also be fancy.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
Yeah. I'm in charge of the food with my family when we do family whatever. My brother Ross and I do the food.
Amena Brown:
Oh, I love it.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
Whether it's the cooking or the, "What are we going to order," but we're in charge of food. My younger brother Evan does snacks.
Amena Brown:
So it's cooking or curation. I respect that, Tracee. I respect that. Being able to be a curator of food, I respect that.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
That's right. You got to figure that out. Is it a pizza night? You know what I'm talking about? Is it Chinese food? What are we doing?
Amena Brown:
And then you got to know where to order from. That's a talent, because I do have some friends, after a while you're like, "You can't be the one who picks anymore because you don't know how to."
Tracee Ellis Ross:
How about those friends that you think you were really close, and then you don't have the same taste buds, and you're like, "Yeah, this is awful and tastes like nothing. So I don't know where your taste level is, but I think our friendship might be over."
Amena Brown:
It's a question. It puts some question marks in the air. I've had some friends when we go to visit places, I'm like, "We're going to choose the restaurant, not you, because there's some levels of food that are okay with you, and I feel life is too short to eat food like that."
Tracee Ellis Ross:
Yeah. I happen to, all of my core group, we share the food foodiness.
Amena Brown:
This is important. I feel enriched. I feel enriched.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
I'm getting hungry.
Amena Brown:
I feel enriched and attacked about the bag of salad that's in my fridge, so that's fine. I know the life I need to live now, Tracee. I know the life I need to live. I have been brought to a new level today, so I'm going to work on that. I want to start also by just sharing a mushy moment with you that is Pattern involved. So y'all in the living room, I realized I was going to be working with Tracee and Pattern by getting an email through my website, from a creative agency. Now, of course, Tracee, it didn't say your name and it didn't say Pattern. It was very respectfully nebulous. It was very like, "A campaign is being launched in the air at some point sometime soon. A prominent figure is founding this company. We want to know if you will add a poetic voice to a thing that is happening. Please write us back." At which time, Tracee, I was like, "A scam." So I sent it-
Tracee Ellis Ross:
Yeah. I mean, listen to me. Amena, that sounds like a scam. I'm surprised we're sitting here right now. That sounds like you were being catfished, sucker punched all in one.
Amena Brown:
I was like, "This is a scam." So I sent it to my now manager, but she wasn't my manager then. I was like, "Can you be my manager 20 minutes and find out if this is legit?" So we find out that it is Pattern, and I have my first phone call with you and the team where you were telling me, "Here's the vision for Pattern. Here's what I want the language to sound like surrounding this brand that I'm creating." And I was in my car in a small town in North Carolina right before a gig. My family was in the hotel where I was staying at the time. And I was like, "We can't have my family loud talking while I'm trying to find out what's going on with Pattern right now, number one. And number two, I can't tell y'all it's Pattern or that it's Tracee, so we're taking this call in the car."
Tracee Ellis Ross:
At that point, no one even in the public knew I was even starting a hair brand.
Amena Brown:
Y'all, we were all sworn to secrecy, and I was like, I'm going to keep this secret. Nobody needs to come get my bone marrow, because I was the one revealing this before it was rolled out. Which I do want to say to y'all, at that point, keeping that secret and then seeing how Pattern launched, seeing the rollout, I mean, that is still one of the most amazingly executed rollouts I've ever seen. Because each of us that were involved sort of knew our different parts, but getting to see it all roll out together. So my mushy moment, Tracee, is that we talk through everything, we talk through the fact that we were going to meet up in New York because you were going to be there meeting with other people on the team that were getting ready to help do the launch.
Amena Brown:
And right before we hung up, you said, "Amena, I should've started with this." You said, "your work is truthful, it's soulful, it's full of joy, it's full of lightness. And that is why I want to work with you." And then we all just did our, "Everybody has their assignments. Okay, bye." We hung up. And I sat in my car for a little while, Tracee, because I was in this point in my career, I was turning 39 that year, 2019, and I was experiencing this very strange shake up in my career at a time that I didn't think it was going to shake up.
Amena Brown:
And I just felt this sense of like, there are some things I've been doing, some spaces I've been in. I need to get out of that. My work is trying to tell me it wants to broaden itself, but I know I need to leave where I've been. I don't know where I go from here. And you saying those words to me really impacted me in this way, because I was sort of doing this searching inside, which you didn't know, but you saying those words to me really set me on a path inside of understanding what was possible for my career at that point. So mushy moment. It's on a little Post-it in my office. I'm not going to lie about it, Tracee. It's on a Post-it so I can remember.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
First of all, I really appreciate you sharing that with me. I feel like the touchstones of those moments and being able to give them space and breathing room in community and with another person, and particularly the person that named that for you or whatever that is, it does the same on my side, you telling it. I had my own experience, and I've had multiple mushy moments with you, though, because part of what sort of opened with you and I was my 10 years of dreaming of Pattern and all of the language and words and vision and imaginings, and all of that that I had dreamt of needed to take flight with somebody's expertise.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
And part of our conversation was that I started to feel the branches of Pattern growing, and the realization that when you are a CEO, when you've found something, when you find a baby and you make it, then you let all the other hands be a part of it. I was trying to get you to express my vision, but through what you do, your experience, your joy, your light, your rhythm, and all of our hands... As you said, we all went off on assignments. And it becomes this thing that is not mine, it's ours, which is the reflection of what I really wanted the company to be about.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
It's a reflection of who we are, and we're so many different things. And I also remember in that conversation with you, having what had been in my mind and heart for so long, having it come out, and it made it feel really real. This wasn't something that I was just, I don't know, just me in my bathroom or in my bed dreaming. It made it really real. And then the other third piece was, I remember saying to you... Because we had multiple conversations. We had that first one. Then we had the in-person one, which by the way, I've never seen that footage back, Amena. I just remember we videoed that.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, me either.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
[inaudible 00:13:18]. I was like, where'd that go? [crosstalk 00:13:19]-
Amena Brown:
Yeah. We got to find out about that.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
That would be really cool to see that. So we had multiple conversations, and then I remember saying... I remember at the end of every conversation, which is something that we still do, I'm like, "so those are my ideas. Now you go make your magic." And I remember you called me once. You were like, "I don't know if I'm the right direction." I'm like, "Do you think you're in the right direction? I think you're in the right direction." And then we would play some more.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
And then remember, that's how the other piece came out from the Manifesta, which the world still has not gotten to feel and hear, but is coming. That was just something that was an offshoot of a moment for you. It was like another piece started spilling forward. It's so funny because it sounds like we're talking about nothing, but we're talking about something. Do you know what I mean? I was like, if someone else is listening, which they're going to be doing, they're going to be like, "What are they talking about?" We're talking about poetry. How do you define poetry? How do you define what you do?
Amena Brown:
I kind of feel like the style of poetry that I write is something like if comedy and monologue and jazz and hip hop tried to come together in something. I feel like that's my style. And maybe a little bit of a soul music writer. I feel like some of that, like the way that Bill Withers was able to... I mean, like that Grandma's Hands, that imagery right there, which I felt was really important in the words I was hearing you say about your vision for Pattern. It felt important that those words needed to be concrete, that when people hear you saying those words, they needed to have visual, have a sense of smell or remember some things because those words were written that way. And I do love for words to do that work. I feel like that's the best thing.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
They do. And they also offer a frame. They offer a mirroring. They offer context and history and tie us to our legacy. They do all of those things. We get to tell our own stories. And we have not always been able to, even though we have been doing it anyway. And particularly as Black women, the power of language and the ability to language feeling, to language history, to language legacy, family, community. How do you put into words what your grandmother's mac and cheese tastes like? you know what I mean? How do you put into words what the experience is of sitting between your aunt's legs with a Goody comb, getting your hair done and having her squeeze you so you don't move?
Amena Brown:
Okay. Okay.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
It's like you say, there's many people in the world that, holding your ear, they don't know the connotation of that. So how do you both not tell for those who don't know, but share for those of us that do in a way that etches our truth in time and that offers an expansiveness to the reality of what is our connection? And so much of that comes through the portal of hair. And it's something that you and I have talked about, but Pattern is not a social justice organization, but at the center of Pattern is the celebration of Black beauty.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
And in the world we live in, that in and of itself is a form of activism. It's a form of resistance. And so all of the different pieces of the company and that portal that you have given us access to, even the glossary was something that I dreamt up so many years. I remember where I was. It was like four years before Pattern had a name. I was still trying figure out how to make the company happen. I was like, one day... Because I would go to all these different places and they're like, "You mean kinky hair."
Tracee Ellis Ross:
Everybody had these different definitions, and then there were all these different connotations, and this person felt this word was negative, and this one loved the same word, and all these different kinds of things. And I was like, so much of our words that we have come from a paradigm and a system that did not celebrate and see us or see us as beautiful, and certainly didn't understand our hair. And so I wanted to write a legacy that didn't necessarily redefine, but gave our language, our words, the poetry that actually matches our hair. Because the words are so small, but what they connotate is expansive, and so I wanted to redefine the definition, not the words.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. That was a really fun thing to get to do once you shared with me, "This is the vision of what I want this glossary to be like, and I want to still keep this poetic voice." So to get some of those words that, wash day, I mean different terms that we've thrown around and to reimagine them in this poetic form was amazing to get to do. And still, now what I love about the glossary is that it lives and breathes, so there will be different times that-
Tracee Ellis Ross:
It's expanding.
Amena Brown:
... new terms need to be added to it, and then to get to reimagine those terms has been so fun. I want to take you back to New York City when you are there what we now know was six months before Pattern was going to launch, your meeting with everyone, getting all the final touches, put on different things. I am one of the people that is going to be meeting with you. And I remember I was staying with one of my girl friends. Shout out to Jamila. I was staying with her in New York, and I was like, "What we're not going to do is not be late to this meeting." So I was like, "I'm going to leave early enough in case the subway decides to fail or some speed movie happens. I don't want to be late."
Amena Brown:
I get there, and I'm 30 minutes early, and there's a Starbucks down the street from the creative agency where we were all meeting with you. And I remember I had my New York bag because I have my certain things I feel like I need to have when I go to New York. So I had my New York bag, and I walked into the Starbucks, Tracee, and I plopped my New York bag on the table, and I sat down and just hyperventilated for like 10 minutes. I was so nervous about everything because I had the first draft of the Pattern Manifesta to share with you, and I was so nervous. It was going to be our first time meeting in person. And as New York is, this man walks in and he's like, "Is anybody sitting here," and totally sat at the table with me while I hyperventilated, and didn't ask me anything about if I was all right, nothing.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
Amena, do you remember the date? Because I think I have those pictures in my phone.
Amena Brown:
Oh my gosh. It was the end of March or the beginning of April 2019, because there was a certain amount of days that you were going to be in town, and we met for two days. I can't remember if it was March 30th and April 1st or if it was April 1st and April 2nd, but it was somewhere around that time. And I did my little hyperventilation for 20 minutes and got myself together. And then I still, honestly, Tracee, even though I had talked to you on the phone multiple times by this time, I was still like, what if I'm still being catfished? What if the whole time it really wasn't Tracee?
Tracee Ellis Ross:
Oh my God. That's [crosstalk 00:21:31].
Amena Brown:
I was like, just not sure. I was wondering if I was going to go up to the elevator and it was going to open up and it was going to be like a scene from Fame where the dancer thought they were getting this amazing audition with this amazing Hollywood director, and instead it was going to be some big, hairy man with a crop top and his hairy belly.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
Oh, I can't.
Amena Brown:
And I was going to walk in, and he was going to be like, "You thought you were meeting with Tracee Ellis Ross, but it's me. I'm Tracee."
Tracee Ellis Ross:
I can't believe that even then... I wish I had the picture because I know it's in my phone. I just don't know the date. And I can find it, and I'm going to text it to you. But that's so crazy. You were cool as a cucumber, Amena.
Amena Brown:
Okay, outside, okay, because inside I was freaked out until I... Once the elevator opened up, Tracee, and I saw this is a real creative agency. The name is right there on the wall. I saw you and the team in the boardroom in their meeting. And I was like, you're okay. You're safe. And then you and I went in the room and read through the Manifesta and did what was going to be this amazing creative process of really shaving the piece in these ways, figuring out the things that were there that you wanted more of, the things that maybe weren't there that you wanted some of.
Amena Brown:
And I want to ask you, when you look back on that, now that here we are at two years anniversary of Pattern, when you look back at that moment as you are stepping into CEO even further, what was that time like six months out from Pattern's launch as you're okaying all the things that are going to tell this story that you've had germinating for so long?
Tracee Ellis Ross:
Well, I will also say I surrounded myself with old friends. The creative director is someone that I had known and know, and is a really good friend, for 20 years. Stylist, creative consultant, best friend for 30 years. And I did that on purpose because it gave me my footing. In the places and spaces where I had doubt, I knew I could trust not only their expertise, but their judgment as people that I go to even if it weren't a work project. They're my counsel anyway. But the truth is, I felt so in my element. It was like, I've been waiting my whole life to get a chance to make that kind of baby.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
And every step of this company has felt like that. Even the parts when I get wobbly, when I get scared, when I get overwhelmed and feel like I actually don't know, or I don't know if we should have done that. Was that the wrong thing? Whoa. You know what I mean? It didn't feel bad when we decided that, but now that it's hitting the air in the atmosphere, I feel differently about it. I don't know. There's been so many of those moments, so much growth curve on a regular basis.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
And I don't think I knew how much was involved, and I love working, especially because the things I work on are things I love, and my hands are in every aspect of Pattern. But the copy on the back of a package, every single thing on the back of a package has to be approved, and I want to make sure it matches my exact intentions and the company's mission and the company's ethos, and that there's no wrong term. And then realizing that even if there are things that you go, "Ooh, I didn't like that, that was a mistake you can," you can, okay, so that's a wash. It is what it is, but you keep it moving.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
One of the things that I discovered in this Pattern journey is that I love a team. I've always loved a team, but it's very different being a CEO in a team than an actor in a team. And it's really interesting to learn something new and to not know how to do it. And I think the biggest thing that I've learned that I like to share with people is, I didn't grow up knowing even what a CEO was. I remember maybe four years ago somebody saying something about C-suites. I was like, "C-suites? Is that a presidential suite?" I was like, "Is that something at the airport?" My brain went to hotel or airport. And they were like, "Like CEO, COO."
Tracee Ellis Ross:
And I was like, "What are you talking about? I don't know what that means." You don't have to know what that means. Being a CEO is based on intention, vision, gut instinct. But what I have really learned is, a successful company is not built from just a mission and a vision. You can't have a successful company without that, but that's not the only factor. Execution, operation, strategy is incredibly important. You can have the best idea. You can have the best product. You can even make that product and it be amazing.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
If you can't fulfill your orders, the supply chain is so complex and so intense... I mean, I'm learning on a regular basis the financials of how you back in things, how with a retail partner versus just direct to consumer or online, how you hold stock. It is no joke. And if your company, and by the way, this is a term I didn't know, scaling. Again, scaling, I'm like, what, how you climb up the outside of a building? How you scale a building? No, it's how a company grows. So as a company is scaling, the growth pains of that. And so for me as an artist, because I am first and foremost an artist, I'm a creative, but I do have a very strong business mind, trying to merge those two things has been exciting and wonderful, but it's a lot of new stuff to learn.
Amena Brown:
Right. I want to ask you about this. What's your favorite thing so far about being the founder and CEO of Pattern?
Tracee Ellis Ross:
The incredible stories I hear in the most fascinating ways and places. They enter into my space and [inaudible 00:28:13] on the street or through a comment on Instagram, or a friend will send me a text that her mom's cousin or something... And I'll get videos and things of like, "My daughter hated her curly hair, but she's embracing it now." "My hair is the softest it's ever been." "My curl pattern is back." The stories that I hear about people embracing their authentic, natural curl patterns and experiencing their hair in a space of beauty and joy is so fulfilling to me, because it's so much of who we are and it's the most beautiful thing. And our culture has really robbed us of some of the most basic joys about our authentic beingness. Sure, the term Black girl magic is lovely, but we're not magic. We're real.
Amena Brown:
That part.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
And we're so real and so incredible that to some people, it looks like magic. But I feel like we get to recognize each other and continue to uplift this idea that each unique version of a twist, bend, coil, zigzag is just some piece of art that is connected to a being and a soul and a legacy and a history. And so having that mirrored back in all these many different forms is just the most exciting thing to me.
Amena Brown:
Oh, I love it. I mean, especially remembering that moment where all of us were learning about your vision, and then getting over the last two years, Tracee, to see that vision go out to this community and to see it also belong to us, and that that is what you wanted. That is what you told me in the room. You said, "I want you to write something that I can say, but I want it to belong to us." And I thought that was so powerful. It was so powerful.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
Amena, I will take a second here as we wrap up to just say, you reached out to me recently about a piece that you were working on to share it with me, and I was so honored that you consider me as part of your creative circle, because I consider you as part of mine. And so the reciprocity there felt really buoyant for me. There was something about it that made me bounce a little bit.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
And in this pandemic, there's so many things that have been hard, and for many, much harder than others, but I think the deliberateness of how we recognize our tribes, because I think we all have many different tribes, we're in this one and this one and this one, but I just was so grateful. And you were saying that because of the pandemic, your process has changed, and so you have to be deliberate about how you connect and share and grow something. And so I want you to know how honored I was that you would share that with me and how special it was to hear something in its early form as you're in process. It really was special to me.
Amena Brown:
I love our creative juju, Tracee. There's more to come.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
Me too.
Amena Brown:
There's more to come.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
There's more to come. There's more to come always. It's just such a joy. It's such a joy. I remember the first moment I saw your smile, the first moment I heard your voice on the phone, and all of the incredible, the deep gratitude I have for what you have shared, your artistry that you have shared with Pattern and helped us to build a brand that really is ours. I'm so grateful. And I was so happy that you asked me at this really wonderful moment of an anniversary to come talk to you, for me to join you in your living room. You know what I mean? It's so good. I'm so grateful.
Amena Brown:
Tracee, thank you so much. And next time I see you, the salad. I'm going to be ready, honey.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
Oh, yeah. No, you're going to be ready, or I'm going to make you one. You know what I mean?
Amena Brown:
Thank you so much.
Tracee Ellis Ross:
Thank you, Amena.
Amena Brown:
HER with Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.