There is a certain kind of kid who collects rocks, obsessing over each one’s shape and texture, unable to leave a perfect specimen behind, no matter how many they already have.
That kid was Ashley Harris, whose childhood rock drawer grew into a bead obsession. She did the expected thing, which was attend college, get an English literature degree, and work for global brands, including Sotheby’s.
But her eye for art and love for design kept calling. Starting in 2019 and evolving through the pandemic, she transformed her work into a jewelry brand. Don’t Let Disco is a play on words, encouraging the wearer to hold on to what makes them stand out while also reflecting on the past, culture, history, and craftsmanship.
With her new Caviar Crafts collection, Harris is moving Don’t Let Disco into the fine jewelry space with its signature mixture of beads, charms, solid gold, and “abstract chaos,” as Harris says. It’s at once a reflection of jewelry’s overall post-COVID moment of playfulness. But it’s also Harris personified, disrupting what fine jewelry should be.
Harris grew up in Cleveland with twin sisters and a devoted mom who encouraged her girls to be collectors, she says. Each of them had a drawer or a cabinet inside the family kitchen, and that’s where Harris says she stored her rocks and “little gems” until her mother realized how overflowing her enthusiasm had become.
“If it was unique or symmetrical, I had to take it home,” Harris says. “Then, once [my mom] said I had to stop, I got anxious. I’m a Libra. I can’t make a decision. I’d have five rocks in my hand and try to decide which one could come home.”
Her mom might have been practical about kitchen space, but she was akin to Harris in an important way: She was a jewelry addict. Harris says her mom wore 22k gold bangles to the point where if the two became separated in a store, “I would always know where she was because I’d hear her bangles.”
Harris made jewelry from high school forward as well as working at a jewelry store at the mall as a teen. “I never knew there could be a future for me as a designer,” Harris says. So she stuck to making things for herself and friends, scouring vintage jewelry counters at flea markets and thrift stores, and selling her beads and crafts at her college student lounge.
“We’d have these events called Market Fridays, and I’d walk away a couple of hundred of dollars richer. We’d skip the dining hall and go get sushi,” Harris says with a laugh. “It was empowering for me, and I was making money doing something I loved.”
After Spelman College, Harris worked in a variety of marketing and brand-related jobs, including for firms such as Ogilvy & Mather and Renegade in New York. She joined The Daily Beast in 2015, where she was the associate director of brand strategy, bringing her skill and curiosity to the tech-heavy gig.
A year later, Harris took on a marketing director role at Sotheby’s, something she describes as a pivotal role for her.
“I didn’t think they would hire me because I didn’t have the right background,” Harris says. “But there was this brand-new [leadership] with media backgrounds, and they wanted new blood. They found my proposal to be refreshing, but I remember the CMO telling me: ‘I love your ideas, but I’m warning you: You’re not going to have big budgets like you used to.’ ”
In reality, Harris says, that small budget really was no budget, which meant her creativity and entrepreneurialism had to shine. Harris admits she’d say yes to challenging projects because she loves solving problems—and that resulting scrappiness has proven hugely helpful in running her own small business.
Around this time, Harris received a flash from the past in the mail—someone sent her one of her beaded bracelets. Its arrival struck Harris deeply, and she went out and brought a bunch of beads and started working again. She made bracelets and necklaces for friends, and, soon enough, she was selling right from her desk.
She moved toward art through an executive director role at Independent Art Fair in New York in January 2020, only to be furloughed because of the pandemic. Harris says she fell hard into beading and realized then it was time to take her longtime skill and translate it into a business. An influencer shared a photograph of one of her pieces, and Don’t Let Disco was off and running.
“I’ve worked really hard, and I’ve got the arthritis to prove it,” Harris says. “But I’m so happy.… I think of people like Serena Williams, who changed the way people played tennis. I want to approach jewelry in the same way. I don’t want to make things just for the sake of making them.”
Top: Ashley Harris debuted Don’t Let Disco as a brand that harmonizes her background in art, her love for found objects, her devotion to jewelry, and her understanding of how what you wear on your body affects your overall mood (photos: Naoko Maeda/courtesy of Don’t Let Disco).
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