Beyonce’s Grant Recipient: Designer Kimberly McGlonn

Beyonce’s Grant Recipient: Designer Kimberly McGlonn

Image Courtesy of: Grid Magazine

Beyonce recently awarded fashion designer Kimberly McGlonn, founder of the brand Grant Blvd, with a small business grant of $10,000 as part of her BeyGood campaign.

 

Who is Kimberly McGlonn?

 

McGlonn is an entrepreneur with lofty goals in mind. From a young age, her parents taught her the importance of service.

On the Grant Blvd. website’s about page, McGlonn writes, “My parents always found time to volunteer in service to other Black folks. They came from struggle and lack, and they understood the obstacles other folks, particularly Black folks, faced. I was a kid who watched my mom drive on weekends to give emotional support to female inmates in a correctional facility.  And I listened to my dad who was engaged as, essentially, a food activist.”

 

What is Grant Blvd?

 

Grant Blvd. was founded in 2018 and is named after the street McGlonn grew up on in West Philadelphia. An all-women team operates the brand with garments whose materials are upcycled and sustainably sourced.  The brand offers a variety of screen-printed tees and sweatshirts, button-down shirts, dresses, and matching sweat sets.

On the brand’s website, McGlonn writes, “Grant Blvd is a response to slavery, to leased labor, to Jim Crow, to persistent economic injustice and marginalization … it’s about designing radically inclusive pathways that pursue the long term plan of progressing our collective good, and let’s not ever forget, the good of our planet. Grant Blvd is about intersectional design. Grant Blvd is about the only way forward.”

McGlonn was inspired to start the brand after watching Ava DuVernay’s 2016 documentary “13th” on Netflix.

“The film changed my altitude (for) looking at the landscape. It elevated my understanding,” she said in an interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer.

“The film made me think about what the real core issues are and how to ask questions like, how do we create and build new solutions that are tied to the future and the fate of the planet? Hence this effort.”

 

 

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