Photos from Essence

Continuing in the backlogging of my internship, it's Essence time! My boss just sent me some pictures that she took of the booth. There's not much to say about Essence except that it was crazy busy, frustrating, and a lot of fun. I worked all three days and helped set up. They were anywhere from four to twelve hour days. Don't get me started about the parking! Traffic is bumper to bumper all down Canal and the connecting streets when Essence happens which makes getting around downtown by car, whether you're going to Essence or not, impossible. NOTE TO FUTURE INTERNS: If you are heading to Essence, DO NOT DRIVE YOURSELF AND TRY TO PARK. Otherwise you'll spend two straight hours looking for parking and end up getting rear-ended by a saucy elderly lady pulling out of the casino parking garage. I rest my case.
Anyway, pictures! (All pictures courtesy of Christine Brown of CFreedom Photography )

We had two booths at Essence. One was dedicated to the artwork of Douglas Redd, pictured below. The lady in blue is the director of Ashe CAC, Carol Bebelle. She was helping us hang up clothes when the business got crazy.


The other booth was dedicated to selling clothes from the Ashe boutique. You can see me in this next picture, customer servicing whilst sporting one of Ashe's lovely tye-dye wrap dresses, which we basically sold out of. It was pretty intense. They let me keep the dress, though, which was very nice of them.



These lovely ladies work with and at Ashe and helped a lot with the booth. The lady on the left is Annie, who volunteers with Ashe, and the lady on the right is Twyla. She is operations manager for Ashe. They are both modeling t-shirts bearing Douglas Redd designs.



Ashe also had an information booth in the outside hallway, pictured below. Here's Gwen, Ashe's Intern Coordinator, doing her thing. Needless to say, we're fine friends by now (:



And last but not least, an Essence post would not be complete without a photo of the patron saint of boutique success, Fatiha.(pictured in the center wearing an Ashe Scarf). This lady is a boutique machine and a lovely person in general. We bonded a lot over Essence. In the orange is Carol Bebelle again, and there's Annie on the right, being awesome as always.



So, yay Essence! Keep in mind that this event happened simultaneously with Maafa. Needless to say, such a hectic weekend. Everyone at the center got Monday off to recuperate from the weekend. I definitely slept all day.

Yay Essence!
Jess