Name:
Courtney Jefferson
School:
North Carolina A&T SU
Occupation:
Residential Design
Real Job:
The Red Carpet Society
“Cultivating a new lifestyle by promoting diverse social relationships, exclusive fashion, current events and cutting edge technology. Encouraging individualism while sharing a common culture, that is The Red Carpet Society
Who is Courtney Jefferson?
I am the son of Robin and Albert and I was born in the Bronx, NY. I lived there until elementary school and then my mom moved us down to North Carolina. My two brothers and I have what I like to call a dorm/fraternity house. Two of us go to North Carolina A & T while our youngest brother will be transferring in from Guilford Tech and we all live together. My main business is a small residential design firm, building houses and things like that, and then on the flip side, I have Red Carpet Society. The other day, one of my homeboys was telling me that it’s kind of like being Superman; you go to the Daily Planet everyday but when you get off work, you get to do whatever you want. You’re Clark Kent all day and then you get to be your other personality and that’s where RCS came from.
What is one word that would describe you?
Diverse. Getting to live in different places on the East Coast and being around friends who are from different places, I’ve become a sponge. I try and take in a little of everything that I can, anything that I can find.
What is Red Carpet Society?
RCS is a for-profit organization that I started, focusing on artist development, guidance, mentorship, philanthropic pursuits anything we can do to help our community and enrich what’s around us.
It started out as just a platform. We spent a long time trying to find blogs and other venues to support what we were doing…I realized we needed our own soapbox to stand on and RCS came from there. It’s a real society! If you took A & T and sawed down to its core to find out what was going on, that’s what RCS would be. We’re a representation of all of the different parts that make up the whole.
We also have BLVD, an online store where we sell custom New Era fitted caps and t-shirts. I grew up on Southern Boulevard in the Bronx and you can go to that boulevard and buy anything from sneakers to music to iPods. You can buy anything from all of these different merchants and it was the inspiration for our business. I keep meeting all of these really talented people and eventually, it starts to resonate like, man, I wish we could all combine forces and really make a difference. We are all strong individually but together we can really affect change. It’s like that movie Soul Food, where the five of us apart are strong but together we can strike a mighty blow.
How has college prepared you to helm Red Carpet Society?
I’ve been in a lot of meetings and when you start showing people what you’ve accomplished, a lot of doors are opened and people take you even more seriously when they realize that you’ve gone to school and you know what you’re talking about. I’ve seen people go from wavering to saying “Okay, I see exactly what you’re saying”. When you go to college, people see that its not a game with you, and that two years from now, you aren’t washed up and you’re still doing your thing.
A lot of people think, I have my dreams and in order to pursue them, I don’t necessarily have to go to school. Why do you think higher education is an integral part in pursuing your goals?
My parents both started college but neither of them finished. They always intended to go back and finish but the next thing you know, they blink and its three kids and its thirteen years later. They always worked really, really hard to be able to support us and to make sure that our dreams were able to come true. Growing up, my brothers and I all had our favorite museums we wanted to go to; I loved the Guggenheim, my brother always wanted to go to the Museum of Modern Art and my little brother wanted to go to the Museum of Natural History. My mom used to always take us to the museums to show us that our world was bigger than the Bronx. College is kind of like that. I don’t think you absolutely have to go to college in order to pursue your dreams but it is a great help. They say college is all about getting your degree but to me, it shows that you took four years to focus on something and that you were able to get to a certain level or mastery of a subject…It would be a slap in the face to my parents if I didn’t fulfill my commitment to college. They worked hard and sacrificed so that I could have and I’d be damned if I didn’t honor that and make them proud of what I’m doing.
Where did the concept for RCS come from?
My brothers and I were sitting around two Thanksgivings ago and with one of our future co-founders, Doe, he does all of our fitteds and he’s really in with the New Era reps and is really good at picking out colorways, logos and he coordinates them with the newest sneakers coming out. He always had this idea of having a society. We used to chop it up about it all night long and we always said if things ever come around, we gotta do this. I used to work for an engineering firm and as with everyone else during the financial crisis, I got laid off and went back to school. It was my first year as a grad student at A & T and I started doing freelance work, building and remodeling. We had some projects and a few of the investors I was working with owned clothing and fashion companies and would ask me about the things I was wearing. They couldn’t believe I was wearing certain fitteds and sneakers and it surprised me that they didn’t know about it already but now I see that I do the same thing. I ask people, where did you get your shoes from? That’s dope, I haven’t seen it before. Being around those people and seeing how much they respected my style gave me the confidence to start up RCS. It started up as a WordPress blog last year and I just kept posting things that I found cool or interesting and posting links on Facebook. A fellow A & T graduate, Jason Troxler, set up the website and I’m eternally grateful for that. We launched the dotcom around Thanksgiving this year and ever since then we’ve been trying to get our online shop poppin.
Big Props to Courtney and the whole RCS Movement. They are the definition of NO CEILINGS. Click here for part 2 of the interview!
Feeling Courtney? Add him as a friend on FB, follow him on Twitter and check out RCS at www.redcarpetsoc.com
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Yo! Do your thing brutha, you’re doing a great job!