TEA WITH don't let disco
A couple weeks ago, I sat down with designer Ashley Harris of Don’t Let Disco, recent winner of a 2024 Fashion Trust award, to drink tea, bead, take some film photos, and talk about our grandmothers in her Brooklyn studio. (Here is video from behind the scenes.)
Hope you enjoy TEA WITH ashley harris.
I find beading to be meditative but I would say that my most sacred and most comfortable moments are in the wee hours of the morning when I’m drinking tea and developing a new collection.
A Do you want to bead while we talk?
M I would love that because I don’t really have any beaded jewelry!
A If you haven’t worn something beaded before, the best way to segue into that is to make your own piece.
M What kind of tea do you want? I brought you a classic herbal gift set which has holy basil, love, and calm, but I also made you a special Disco Tea.
A I kind of don’t want to ruin the gift set yet, so let’s drink the Disco Tea.
M I feel like the gift set would be a nice wedding weekend thing.
A Well I love that because because we’re going to stay in Newport at an AirBnb so that would be super cute.
M Are we going to drink out of these?
A I was going to let you pick.
M I kind of like the gold ones.
A So these are from that little shop that is right next to R & D Foods On Vanderbilt.
How did you get into teas?
M You know my grandma that I always tell you about? I grew up drinking a lot of tea with her. It’s a strong part of Ukrainian culture
A You know a lot of my jewelry vendors are Ukrainian, from Odessa. When I did the disco dress we used beads from Ukrainian bead makers.
M The tea just needs a minute. So what is the name of the beading bar that you do here [in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn]?
A We call it the disco beading bar. We usually do them on Sundays. The beading bar is kind of an amalgamation of all the places we’ve been. We did the first one in Geneva, Switzerland and had lockets there. Every time we do them on Martha’s Vineyard we do the drilled stones or we do the shells. We try to make it specific to the region. Everything stays in the beading bar until it’s gone.
Sage, can you please pass me the scissors? I have a friend who told me that he fell I love with this girl in his fourth grade class specifically because of the way she handed her the scissors.
M So cute.
M As far as your beading practice, and I know you’re a big tea lover, do you drink tea while you work?
A I don’t drink coffee and I keep wacky hours. There are times when I take a nap then wake up and drink tea to stay up during those times. I’ll drink tea when I’m listening to my own thoughts or journaling. I find beading to be meditative but I would say that my most sacred and most comfortable moments are in the wee hours of the morning when I’m drinking tea and developing a new collection.
And I’m kind of manic when I’m developing a new collection. I will take something apart, I will string it together. There’s a piece over there near Sage that’s super long, a pyrite piece with the stars. That’s about 77 inches of tapered pyrite stone that was a part of my midnight collection, 11 pieces that were all for my Fashion Trust collection.
They say that pyrite is a really strong manifestation stone. And I like that for entrepreneurs and I like to bring it out when beading with entrepreneurs.
M With the beading bar, do you offer tea to guests?
A When we first started, I would stress out about having champagne and different flavored waters. I thought it would be a fun thing to do but nobody would drink them. And so we started having tea. Now we just have sparkling water, regular water, and tea.
I’m going to try the Disco Tea. Yum!
M It’s burdock, mint, and fennel.
A It almost takes like the anxiety tincture that *Lauren made me!
*My sister, Dr. Lauren Geyman, Brooklyn-based naturopathic doctor
M It’s probably the liver-supportive herbs in this blend. It’s mostly the burdock that’s really textured.
A I think there are a lot of similarities between beading and tea blending. If you are a follower of Don’t Let Disco, you will notice the different sequences that appear in all of our pieces and the way in which different beads speak to one another. People are always like “how do you know which beads to use?” and I say, “This is weird but they tell me where they want to go.” I have like a 15 year old bead collection. It’s growing and breathing and it’s very much alive. Sometimes when I’m traveling, I might buy a bead and have no idea where I’m going to use it but then when I’m back in the studio, it feels like we’re blending something. It feels like we’re mixing paints or mixing flavors. I like sitting unexpected textures next to each other. Like something matte next to something shiny or something shiny next to something that’s shiny in a different way, like with a different glaze and I have to imagine that if you’re blending different [tea] flavors, there’s a similar art to it. Blending unexpected things to make them work in unique ways. And then obviously the different stones have different energetic meanings.
M So they’re like .. crystals?
A - Yes, and I charge all of them. We have a daybed in our living room with a lot of sunlight and I charge them there on the new moon. Because here’s the thing, I became obsessed with rock crystal through Pools of Light jewelry. It’s a Victorian era jewelry [which was believed to have] healing powers. The Pools of Light jewelry was never drilled because it’s said that if it’s drilled, it loses its magical powers. Since by nature, beads have to be drilled for us to string, I find it important to make sure they’re energetically charged before they’re on the string. So that’s my rule around that and how I get around them losing their magical power from being drilled.
M What about these cups we’re drinking from? You use them to hold beads and also to drink tea out of?
A I use them to hold candy that looks like beads during the beading bars. There a New York Times article from a few years ago about the importance of continuing to play as adults and because people say that beading is really nostalgic for them, we usually have candy, beads, and tea. The candy is usually in those [cups we’re drinking out of] I really like the armless cups
M Yea, the little tea bowls. Are there any ceramicists that you like in terms of your own home collection?
A I had some vintage pieces that I got in a thrift shop for a house of beads photo shoot, but I really like I think it’s called Hasami, they’re Japanese, and they’ve got really cool texture. They actually kind of look like Wangechi Mutu, she’s a Kenyan artist that had a show last summer where she used Kenyan soil to create sculptures and the Hasami tea cups reminded me a lot of that show. And then in terms of ceramics and art, I love Simone Leigh. I’m absolutely obsessed with her ceramic sculptures. When I worked at Sotheby’s, I was always strangely drawn to Wedgewood because I like that it looks shadowy and it’s so interesting to know that it’s centuries old.
M I didn’t realize you worked at Sotheby’s!
A I was there for five years. I worked mostly in European decorative arts, so like lots of porcelain, silver, Renaissance paintings, 19th century paintings, rare books and manuscripts. I found all of those departments to be incredibly fascinating because they’re so storied.
M Did you grow up drinking tea?
A My grandmother was a big tea drinker and would have tea, honey, and lemon. I can remember exactly what her little tea cup looked like too. It was burgundy porcelain with little floral images and she’d have coffee in the morning and tea at lunch and then tea again right before bed.
M Do you have favorite teas?
A I love your holy basil, but I also love English breakfast tea. I got really into it when I was living in London and working at Sotheby’s. I also love chamomile tea. I know that’s really basic.
M Not at all! We carry a really nice chamomile and where we’re hosting this retreat in Italy, they’re harvesting wild chamomile for us so that will be out next batch.
A I feel like with chamomile people always say that it makes them sleepy and I don’t like to feel sleepy, but it doesn’t make me feel that way.
M I think that’s the thing with herbs, they have different effects on different people. I also think there’s a big difference between well sourced chamomile, which are beautiful flowers, I really love how they move, compared to the chamomile tea that comes in most teabags.
A I love chamomile in perfume and I also love green tea in perfumes.
M I don’t really know perfumes that use tea, well except I guess jasmine and other flowers but not actually tea.
A There’s this woman I follow on TikTok, Tracy Wan, who you can give any note to, like you can say I want to smell like the sunscreen on someone’s sweaty back in Saint Tropez in the middle of August and she will give you a scent that smells just like that. But she talks about teas a lot.
We somehow then got into this long, winding conversation about people wearing expensive jewelry (ie. enormous diamond rings) on the subway which I am leaving out of here for now (lol) but will end on this note ..
A My tea drinking grandma, she would always put her rings on, even to just go out to get the mail. And when she wore her Don’t Let Disco bracelets, I would say “Let me take a photo of you” and she would say “Hold on let me go put my rings on.” She had a friend who back in the 70s made her a bunch of rings from scrap metal and one of them was a serpent ring [my sister got that ring after my grandmother passed] so I had Ope make me a serpent ring as an homage to that.
PS - read our TEA WITH Ope Omojola, of Octave Jewelry