We were lucky to catch up with Ke’Yanna Nelson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ke’Yanna, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

The first time, I knew I wanted to take the creative route has to be the first day of 2nd grade. My teacher passed me our reading text book and it had an amazing colorful painting on the cover. When I saw that I immediately knew I wanted to create for a living, at first I thought I wanted to be a painter. When I started painting I was not that good, then I started to draw and drawing became more natural for me to express the creativity that I had holding inside of me. As I got older more creative dreams started to come to me like fashion design, styling, and modeling. When I was 13, I realized that I wanted to have a clothing brand, and do anything related towards fashion and being creative. I was literally so obsessed with watching Kimora Lee Simons and Tyra Banks on television dominate in the fashion world. They were very inspirational to me when I was a kid.

Ke’Yanna, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I started my first business in 2016, it was a stylish e-commerce boutique. I knew I wanted to eventually have a clothing brand so I invested in something small like eyewear to get my feet wet, and to figure out how the e-commerce business works. It was actually a practice test for me, but my passion grew the business to be featured on fashion week. I did go to school for fashion and business at Tennessee State University, but I ended up dropping out after I fell in love with having my own fashion brand. After working my 9-5 I would come home and research on how to start a business, market, and create content. After I started, my business I was so excited that I was finally in the fashion industry and I would create content everyday and post it on instagram to let everyone know about my brand. I did not make my first online sale until after 3 months of consistenly posting, ater that a fire was lit inside of me and I just kept being consistent and moved to Atlanta, GA the following year to perfect my craft as a fashionpreneur.

I am proud that I have customers that love my products and designs as much as I do, and I love to see a new found confidence when I see them modeling my brand on social media.

I want my supporters and customers to know I created this brand to make them feel good, because when you look good you feel good and when you feel good you attract a lot of good things to you. I love that I am able to use fashion to express how important it is to have high vibrations.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

My way of getting into a creative space is silencing my mind, by meditating. When I began mediating, I started to realize the less I thought the more room I was making in my head for amazing ideas to come to me. I don’t know about you all, but when I was a kid I used to day dream a lot about doing what I’m doing now which was to live in Atlanta, GA and have my clothing brand and much more of course. Day dreaming really sparked my creativity as a kid. As adults, it can be difficult to day dream with the day to day adult responsibilities which can result in our creativity becoming dull and not as sharp as we would like. To this day, I have moments when I get in a creative funk and I cannot create. On days like that I will look for inspiration, by getting out of the house and going somewhere artsy like a museum, concert, out of town, or to the park.

For example, when I first started my online eyewear brand, I took a trip to Los Angeles, CA for my birthday, and discovered eyewear vendors which was a plus. During the trip I was inspired by the Cali style, the good vibes, their creativity, and uniqueness. When I went back home I was still off the high of being inspired from that Cali trip and wanted more experiences like that so that inspiration drove me to launch my brand as well. I could have let the inventory sit and forgot about it, but since I was in a creative mode from that trip I put my all into creating a brand that people ended up loving as much as I do.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My mission is to create and provide fashion that will make them feel so good that it will raise their vibrations to attract their desires.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: instagram.com/_thekeyanna
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/?trk=guest_homepage-basic_nav-header-signin

Image Credits
Ke’Yanna Nelson Sr. Dax Flash Gio Elegant Photos