About Foliage
Crafted by Creative director and founder of Foliage, Joede Brown. Her design ethos is a commitment to a year round fall aesthetic with chunky knits and bright colors to rival the show in the White Mountains or the Kancamagus in New Hampshire. Joede spends a lot of time curating new fibers and materials giving her inspiration to design her collections. Passionate about colors and textures, she understands perfectly how to integrate them into each piece,
Do you really want to know?
I had a realllyyy long post here about how Foliage came to be. It has since been erased. It's more about me than Foliage but can a person's story really be posted on a short "About Me" page and everyone understands their multi-dimensionness (yes, that is a new word)? No, you can't. You won't know of the struggles to not only create Foliage in a space that not many black women are seen but to also sustain it. All while taking care of a child with different abilities, maintaining an A average in graduate school and running Foliage as a one-woman show.
Foliage is an ever evolving business as its owner, me, evolves. I am constantly learning and it makes sense that the business ebbs and flows. And that's why the story of how Foliage came to be is not static.
No, Foliage wasn't borne from me sitting at my grandmother's knee and wanting to learn how to crochet. She was born when I realized that scarves in New England were almost a status symbol and I had to start it because my mom took the gift I made for my dad, sold it, sent me the money and told me to start a business.
Foliage was restarted after my cancer treatment when I knew that life was more than sitting in an office making money for someone else.
Foliage was rebranded when I realized at 50, I was still pretty cute and so were so many other women my age. We were not the Golden Girls. (Did you know they were in their 50s in the show?) When you look at a leaf transitioning in the fall from the green to the reds, oranges, yellows and purples, did you know that the leaf is going through her aging process? But yet, that is when the leaf is at its most beautiful stage of life. Just like us. I create statement staples that allow that gloriousness to shine.
I started the business in 2001 and she is still standing in 2022. Foliage is enjoying her new name, new look and new mission: to create statement staples for the new Golden Girls.