Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Anjie Ballestar. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Anjie, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s jump to the end – what do you want to be remembered for?
My Legacy. Such an important aspect to consider when building an empire, just as we have begun to break the foundation of our own. The richness of an individual’s life. What that individual accomplished along with the impact their life had on people and places. Do we take this into consideration enough in society these days? What we want our legacy to be. The Ballestar is just one piece of my family’s entire foundation that will become our legacy. I hope my legacy has the most positive, innovative, and creative impact on this world. Not just to be remembered, that is the least important. I want it to be a custom to be able to fully express yourself through what you wear every day. A culture that wants 100% unique, customized pieces that no one else can ever say they have. The legacy of greatness, independence, hard work, and ambition is what I strive to embrace as well as leave behind for my family, future children, and the world. I hope to reach as many people as possible to be able to encourage all that no one can be a better YOU than YOURSELF. I want them to embrace their true individuality and express it through The Ballestar. I hope that I am able to touch at least one person; encourage them to believe that they are amazing and their individual expression of that is the best because it is their own.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
`My name is Anjie Ballestar, a fashion customizer and stylist from Inglewood, California. Based out of and current native of Dallas, Texas, I strive to bring my unique customized grunge street wear brand to any and everyone everywhere, Starting off, I attribute a large portion of the influence on my style to my West Coast culture and upbringing. The other portion, I attribute to the fact that I do not believe I am from this planet, but that’s a story for another time. For as long as I can remember, I have had the urge to “cut up” my clothes and customize them into my own individual looks. One thing I can truly say is I have never wanted anything someone else had on. I have always had the internal drive to ensure I was an individual whether people saw me as being a weirdo, or not. As a matter of fact, being a weirdo not from this planet is the very seed that grew into the reason I am able to share my story with you all today, The Ballestar. I can not say that I got into this industry more than I can say I was born to be a influence on this fashion/ beauty/ entertainment industry. Some people find solace in painting, some in reading, and some in music. They find a way to express themselves or relieve stress through their own creativity and artistic originality. For me, its clothes, what I wear, how I dress. The clothing I wear is my outer expression of my feelings and my individuality.
As you probably put together at the beginning of this story, The Ballestar is your go to for individualized and customized clothing. From shirts to pants to shoes to unique custom accessory pieces, The Ballestar, is the place to go to bring your unique visions to life. Have a photo or video shoot? The Ballestar can create that unique piece that makes you stand out from the world. Upscaling other people’s trash into another person’s treasure is another aspect we offer at The Ballestar. Creating something new out of something old and ensuring a uniquely customized work of art is one of our company’s goals. This is what sets us apart from other clothing lines. Although we do provide some mass produced products, the bulk of our products are original and customized. This is what we are most proud of; what we pride ourselves on.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Resilience. The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties, toughness. Although my journey has just begun, it has been difficult to say the least. With such a big caring heart, I have always been such an open and friendly person. I genuinely always want everyone, even those that I do not know, to be successful in any and everything they set out to accomplish. This, unfortunately, is not always the case for others, and, is not always reciprocated. I learned this lesson with building my brand and my resilience is what gave me the strong foundation on which I stand today. A person who I considered a very close friend turned out to have a very different outlook on me. I could never understand why they would not support me or my brand the way I supported theirs. For years, I made sure to stay true to myself. Support. Motivate. Work Hard. Still, being the close friend I considered them, the question of why would always linger.
In many ways, I believe, the universe will show you your path, guide you along that path, and show you different things to assist you with daily decisions. It will give you signs to show you when a individual does or does not mean harm. It is your job to open your eyes and ears and receive the information in order to make the best decisions for yourself. Over the years, I chose to ignore those signs because I wanted to believe this person was a friend. After embarrassing themselves one evening, they decided to let me know exactly what their outlook was and just how much they were never my friend. They brought to my attention that every one knows my creativity and style comes from the fact I want to be just like them and that I was the ugly friend. Hearing this could be devastating to some and I thought it would be for me. Being such a caring person only wanting the best for everyone, I thought hearing these things would hurt my feelings and cause a ripple in my immediate day to day. Surprisingly, I discovered just how much resilience I have inside.
@ThaUglieeFriend. I embraced this individuals’ opinion and have decided to use it as my own personal platform. I want to build everyone up with the little things in life and bring awareness to the work that has to be put into life to truly be at peace, be successful, and reach ALL of your goals and aspirations. But, I especially want to touch those caring, big hearted, friendly individuals. Those individuals that may have people in their life that view them as ThaUglieeFriend. I want to show how to embrace those negative attacks against your brand and thrive off of them. “How To Be ThaUglieeFriend” is a tag I use on instagram to highlight my skills, every day life, hobbies, and interests. I want people to see ThaUglieeFriend and begin to highlight all of their skills and successes, because, if we are ThaUglieeFriend then we are all of these great things we are capable of creating and accomplishing.
We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.
The story of how I met my business partner is a very simple story. So simple that I believe with all my heart it was destiny. I met my business partner at a hookah bar on a Thursday night in October 2020.
That actually came to be the best night of my life. It is the night I found my life partner. From the name of the brand , to the entire vision of the empire to come, my business partner has been the other half of our entire operation. His creative mind creates abstract works of art that continue to blow my mind. Without him, there would be no The Ballestar. I truly am so grateful to be so blessed that I was given my own guardian angel, in the flesh.
Together, we plan to give the world all our best works and change the lives of everyone that comes in contact with our creations.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.theballestar.com
- Instagram: @thauglieefriend
- Facebook: Anjie Marie
Image Credits
Bouhous Productions