In this episode, we speak with Isabella Lalonde, founder of New York-based brand Beepy Bella, about celebrating the subconscious, translating personal vision into collective reality, and approaching a commercial brand as an ever-evolving art piece.

Podcast produced by Ryan Leahey
Original theme music by Kasper Bjørke
Photographs by Clement Pascal

Isabella Lalonde:
Hey.

Landon Metz:
Hi, Isabella!

IL:
How are you?

LM:
Good. How are you?

IL:
Good.

LM:
Do you prefer Bella or Isabella?

IL:
I actually don't mind. I just use Bella when I feel like it, and Isabella when I forget to use Bella, so whatever you want.

Christopher Schreck:
Was Beepy part of a nickname you had growing up?

IL:
No, it actually came from a really early morning, where I woke up at 5:00 A.M. and had to go to the airport, and instead of saying "sleepy," I just started to say "Beepy" for some reason. I was with my partner at the time, and we just used that word a lot after, and I made my Instagram handle that, and it just took off from there. When I had my jewelry brand, I was like, "What should I call it?" And people had been calling me Beepy, just because I guess it resonated with them for some reason, that word. It just happened accidentally, I would say.

LM:
Organically.

IL:
Yeah, exactly.

LM:
Do you go by Beepy, too?

IL:
Yeah. A lot of my friends call me Beepy, or Beepy Bella. They call me by my brand. I'm not mad about it. [laughs]

LM:
The spot that I dropped the mic off at, was that your apartment or your studio or both?

IL:
Yeah, it's like a home studio. I think about it as a tree house in the middle of the woods and I just work where I live, which is nice because I can go into the studio at any hour and create art, which I tend to make at 2:00 or 3:00 A.M. sometimes. But yeah, that was my home studio.

LM:
Cool. And who is Eve?

IL:
That's my assistant.

LM:
How long has she been working with you?

IL:
She's been working with me for about a year now. Her full name's Eve Moon, which I think is really cool.

LM:
That's her real name?

IL:
Yeah.

LM:
That's so crazy.

CS:
Well, how has that been? I know that from the outset of the brand, you were handling everything on your own.

IL:
It's been really good. I mean, there's only so much one person can do, even if you are very ambitious and can handle a lot of different tasks. You get to a place where it's going to hinder your own growth if you don't outsource help. So it's been really nice, because it's almost like I have an extension of myself that I can use whenever I feel overwhelmed with certain tasks, or I can't switch my mindset going from wholesale accounts to posting on Instagram to making a piece of art. There's a lot of different mindsets you have to be in. So, I would say more than anything, it's been beneficial towards being able to accommodate more mindsets on a daily basis.

LM:
It's also a form of self-love to acknowledge that you need help, right?

IL:
Yeah, I know. It's hard, because I really enjoy working alone, too. I'm definitely a loner in that way. My art practice, I need it to be nighttime, and I feel like I'm the only one in the world, and I'm creating from this weird—I don't know—freedom you have from feeling like you're one of the only humans on the planet, and you're there to make art, and it's like this ethereal experience. So to go from that to working with other people on a daily basis for my brand, it was a learning curve for me to figure out how to still be able to be myself in those ways. But yeah, it is a form of self-love. Agreed.

CS:
You've been talking about it in terms of your art practice. I think one of the things that we were both interested in was that you're primarily known for these wearable pieces that you're putting out through Beepy Bella, but your formal training is actually in studio art. I think we were both interested to hear about that background and how that's informed your current practice. Maybe just to start at the beginning, you did your undergrad.

IL:
At Parsons.

CS:
And so, what work were you making at the time?

IL:
So, towards the end, senior year for thesis, I was making a lot of performance art and video art. I would basically build sets, weird set design, like Blue's Clues-inspired. You'd feel like you're in this weird surrealist world, and I would film myself acting as a character within that world. Often I'd do things like green screen myself onto the same set. So, I'd be interviewing myself as different characters dressed in different ways: I was a plant interviewing myself as a witch and talking about anything from my first period to fashion, to fine art, to how it feels being a girl in this world, and stuff like that. So it was very autobiographical, I would say, and experimental.

The reason I got into jewelry was actually because I had this idea where I wanted to test my limits as one person. I wanted to see how many things can I do myself. Can I make the clothes for my characters? Can I make my own set design? Can I film myself? Can I grow the mushrooms that I use visually within my video? I also wanted to make my own clothes for my performance-art characters, so I started to make jewelry as a way for my characters to wear weird objects around their necks, and it just evolved from there—which is cool, because it happened really naturally and organically through my art practice.

CS:
So you even though Beepy Bella obviously has a commercial function as well, you would consider this an extension of your art practice?

IL:
It's a hundred percent that. I mean, if I wanted to be more commercially minded, it'd probably be better for the business long-term, but for me, it's only about the art. Even the way that I look at things—for instance, posting on Instagram—I think about it as if I'm hijacking that space as an artist. I'm really interested in the business model as an artist that's trying to hack it and see how much of my own creative practice can I bring to these things that are completely opposite of it, like emails or business relationships or websites. And that's why I think people gravitate towards my work: because I look at every single opportunity within business as a way to challenge myself as an artist to overcome the very mundane base of it and see what I can do to make it more interesting and turn it on its head and make people have a second look at what I'm doing within that world.

LM:
It becomes an idiom in its own right.

IL:
Exactly. Exactly. I always think about that. Even for Instagram, as an example, you have a four-by-five ratio you can post in. So, for me that's a blank canvas, and as an artist, I'm like, "Okay, what can I do with this, knowing it's going to be received on Instagram, on a phone, usually? And what can I do to make people think twice when they see an image that pops up?" It's very interesting, and I have a lot of fun with it, because I'm not holding myself to any standards of commercial success.

LM:
Or even boundaries within certain hierarchies of "art" and "design" and whatever. I think there's a real flexibility there.

IL:
Yeah, there definitely is, and it's like an uncharted territory, because where social media blew up. I didn't learn about social media in college, which I think I should have as an artist. It's extremely important. Your relationship to it, even if you hate it, is a relationship to something that you know is important as an artist to have or to not have. You have to make that decision. And I think there is a lot of room for flexibility and experimentation on that platform, even through a behind-the-scenes conceptual thinking that people might not know about.

LM:
But there does seem to be a consistent form of storytelling, too, that's happening, like a relationship to mythology or something.

IL:
Yeah. I don't know, it's always been like that for me. I've always loved mushrooms, and I've always loved fairies and frogs. I used to write essays about frogs in elementary school, and those symbols helped define me to other people as a little bit of a weirdo. I always use mushrooms and frogs as a way to let other people know that I, like, maybe think about energy in a different way or magic in a different way. I do believe in fairies, and nature is a really important part of my inspiration and the way that I root myself to this planet, even as a person who's existing on it. So I always think about ways that I can, in a very inviting and approachable way, bring people into my own belief system as someone who finds it really surreal to be alive on this planet, in a galaxy. I'm always mind-blown by that fact, and so how do I portray that emotion in a way that's tangible and maybe a little bit more easy to get into from an outside perspective?

CS:
The connection to natural environments is an interesting one, I guess, for two reasons—the first being that you've talked elsewhere about your appreciation of Plantasia, the Mort Garson album, which is one of my all-time favorite records.

IL:
Nice.

CS:
I've always loved this idea of making something that's intended for plants as much as human listeners, the equation of the two, and I feel like that extends to the work that you've done as well. I would say also in the context of your work, this larger interest in exploring and connecting with natural environments, I wonder what your experience has been living in New York, and how you've sought that out—whether that's something that has to be literal versus imagined—and how you've navigated that side of things.

IL:
So, growing up, I was raised for the first part of my life in Switzerland.

LM:
Where in Switzerland?

IL:
In Lausanne. It's like a French speaking—

LM:
Okay. I know it kind of well. One of my friends is a professor at Ecal, so I've been there a lot, actually.

IL:
Cool! Yeah, I mean, there's tons of mushrooms there.

LM:
Oh, yeah. I also know the Alps well, too. I spent a lot of time in the upper Engadin Valley.

IL:
Oh, really? Yeah. That's where I learned how to ski when I was young. It's nice. But whenever I go back as an adult, I realize, "Oh, this is why I love nature, and this is why I believe in mushrooms and fairies," because everything's moss-covered and very "elf gnome energy," and you just feel the mysticism of life and the natural world when you go.

It's funny you mentioned living in New York, because it's quite literally the opposite of that: it's very concrete and there's not a lot of nature, especially wild type of nature and less curated, not just a park that's a few blocks wide. But I do get inspired by a lot of different things. One thing that I do get inspired in New York by is when I see a little plant that's coming out of the crack of a sidewalk. I think that's such a beautiful moment, and no one is talking about how special that is, that even though we've paved over all this soil and completely built a man-made situation in this city, there's still moments where these little sprouts of green plants can come through like cracks! It's just such a beautiful small detail of life, but so important, and I think there's a lot of symbolism there for me, that nature always will thrive no matter what. I just really look up to that as a person, because I feel like life is like that: you get thrown a lot of things your way, and you just have to keep showing up and keep being present to your own life, and that's how you get over obstacles, and that's how you build yourself as a human being. I think we're a lot like plants like that. People have planted this idea that we're not the same, or there's this idea that humans are more intelligent than plants, and I actually don't feel like that. I think plants are just as smart as us. I think we're all in an ecosystem and we're all on an equal level of existing. There's just this respect I guess I have for mother nature, and that really inspires me as a person, and as an artist, too.

CS:
There's this Frank O'Hara line where he says, "One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery that one wishes." And for me, I've always felt like you, where the appreciation for nature, on one level, you can gain it from being immersed in it. If you're in some really lush greenery, it's easy to be overtaken with how beautiful it is. But there's also the opposite end of that spectrum, seeing, as you mentioned, a plant growing out of concrete, or a patch of moss growing on the side of a building, or the way that trees can integrate into street signs if they're around each other long enough. That's something really reaffirming, I think, and in both cases, they speak to presence, ultimately: an appreciation for what's in front of you.

IL:
Yeah, exactly. Even if you think about it in terms of color, I feel like plants are usually mostly green or vibrant colors. And something I'm really inspired by too is just the idea of perception through our own eyes, the fact that we're perceiving. Even this Zoom call visually, on our computers—you are both looking at your own devices, I'm looking at this device, and then we're meeting in the middle, and we're all able to have this conversation. I just think it's such a wild thing that no one really talks about. The way that plants fit into that for me is they're these bursts of beautiful, vibrant colors that subconsciously, I think, are very meditative and spiritual and cathartic to see in your own visual perception. So even if it's one tiny dandelion at the side of a street, the fact that you've seen that in your day, or in your current perception, is healing. That's what I think. It's healing for me, and just to see those colors in my own eyesight brings out something that is very harmonious.

CS:
We were talking about your experience studying art, but maybe we can talk a little bit about how you transitioned from the performance and video work into jewelry-making as a point of focus. It seems that a major turning point as far as that goes was the course that you took at Central Saint Martins. Can you talk a little bit about that experience?

IL:
Yeah. So, I had just been curious, because I went to Parsons and loved it, and I always thought about Central Saint Martins as a school, because I knew it was the equivalent version in Europe and I really wanted to test it out. So I found this short intensive class for experimental jewelry—it was like five days long—and I was like, "This is perfect! I can go do my first solo trip and have this new experience." I got there, I took the class. Basically, we only had two or three assignments for five days, and I ended up making twenty different things because I was just loving working with my hands and experimenting with all these different mechanical tools that are intimidating to look at. And something about also being a girl in this environment, where it's not about how you look, it's not about what you're wearing, it's about what you're making and that's it—it was very cathartic and very freeing. So, I really fell in love with the process of it. And honestly, I didn't think about it after. I was like, "Okay, I guess I did that." I'm not planning to make more jewelry. It was basically my mom that told me I should keep looking into that as something that I should do, and I was like, "Why not? If someone else is seeing something and what I'm doing, I might as well explore that and see if there's something there for me as an artist that I can latch onto," because I had been trying out many different mediums as an artist and I hadn't found one that I felt like other people really understood me in.

So I was in this place where I was looking for the "it" medium for myself, and basically, I had this idea later on, after that class, about making weird pearl necklaces, because I had purchased a vintage fake pearl necklace with a giant cross, a very heavy one, that I still wear every day for the past five years. That necklace just transformed my entire closet—like, every time I would wear it, no matter if I'm wearing it with a white shirt or with a fancier top or with something more eclectic, it was as important as a haircut. What I mean by that is if I had a mullet right now, how you would perceive me and how you perceive my personal style would be very different than the current haircut I have. I think jewelry's a lot like a haircut, where if you have a really powerful statement necklace, you perceive the entire self-expression of that outfit and that person's energy in a very different way. So I saw it as maybe a tool that I could give to other people to help express themselves in ways that they wouldn't usually do so. So I merged that concept with this pearl necklace idea. I broke apart a few old charm bracelets that my mom gave me and collaged basically all these beads together.

I used to work at Vogue—that was my first job out of school—and I had quit Vogue by that time, but all the old editors bought them overnight when I posted them on my story on Instagram, and that just made me understand that there was something there to what I was doing, where people were understanding it. It felt like the first time as an artist that I didn't need to explain my work for people to get it. So, I liked that immediacy with it.

LM:
There's a transfer of energy there. You're giving something to someone that is visible to them, that they understand on a very intuitive level.

IL:
Exactly. It's related back to what I was saying about the idea of perception, and just seeing a plant and it's green, and having that one moment where you consume something that's that hue of green that makes you happy. It's the same thing that I'm trying to do with my necklaces, where it just changes your perception of yourself—even if it's a subconscious reaction, it's not something you need to confront within yourself. Subconsciously, the fact that you're wearing maybe something chunkier than you usually ever would, or something more colorful, or slightly more eclectic, deep down will bring out different energies in you and bring out different mindsets, and maybe make you realize more about yourself in an area that you wouldn't usually explore. That's really powerful for me, and that's why I still do it to this day.

LM:
What was that moment like, when you transitioned out of having a formal job doing your own practice?

IL:
It was so scary. Basically, I was working at the time at Helmut Lang as a graphic designer, and I had started my brand the same day I had started that job a year back. I had been there for one year and COVID happened, and then I got furloughed—and low key in the back of my mind, I was just like, "This is it. This is the one opportunity I have to prove it to myself that I can do this brand full-time." The world gave me space and time to finally prioritize it and work full-time on it. I think I'd started the first quarantine with... I had 3,000 followers on Beepy Bella, and it had been a very slow growth, and I think it was two months into being full-time, I already was at 12,000, and was quickly spiraling. Opportunities were coming with that. My team had asked me to come back to Helmut, and even though I loved that job, and it was a dream job for being creative and working in fashion, I quit during that time—which felt really crazy, because that's when a lot of people were getting laid off. I didn't know if I could really pull this off and if there's any l longevity to what I was doing, but I figured it was now or never, because I'm 25 now, I think I was like 24 at the time, and I'm young enough where I don't have a family to feed right now, so I can take more risks, and I was just like, "I have to do it. I have to try and take a leap of faith." And here we are now. So, it's definitely paid off.

CS:
That's amazing.

IL:
Yeah, it was scary, though.

CS:
I'm sure. It's been fun to see, just through Instagram and whatever else, how the brand has evolved—but I think one of the things that I found interesting is that from the outset, it really did seem like a cohesive presentation and a really self-realized, not just a brand, but an entity that was evolving in real time. I know you've spoken elsewhere about Beepy in terms of world-building, which is a popular catch phrase in brand marketing, but I think in this case, as I was saying, it does seem to be more of a literal intention, where you're using the brand almost as a conduit, as an embodiment, a means of accessing something else, this other place with its own visual language and embodied values. How would you describe the world that you're trying to cultivate with the brand?

IL:
Imaginary worlds have always really inspired me, and that's part of where I see fairies coming from, and mushrooms and frogs. All these symbols are from the world, and they're just the language of this world. But the world exists within myself, and it's a very personal thing for me, because it's something that's been my whole life. It's been a—I don't want to say a coping mechanism, but it's why I'm an artist, is because I have this inner utopia that I participate in just as much as I participate in my own reality, I do in this intangible world. Whether I'm posting on Instagram or not, whether people are watching me or not, I'd be making the same exact thing if I had zero followers right now, and that's the truth. It doesn't matter. I don't care that there's an audience. I care about what I'm learning as a human that's growing and existing and aging and learning more about myself as the day goes on. And I think that's been a really interesting thing for me, the transition from being a child into an adult, because often, I feel like you're supposed to lose that childhood curiosity, lose the idea that maybe fairies could exist or unicorns are real, or maybe you saw shooting star—and to me, those are some of the most magical, fruitful moments of life and some of the most creative moments of life. I think the reason why it's such a personal relationship I have to the way I make my work is because nothing else is depending on it, other than the fact that I want to feel the same way I felt when I was five years old about creativity and about life's boundlessness.

Part of why I like nature, and going into nature, is because you can really roam free in your mind. You can look at a tree and think about what it's seen and get lost in the abyss of layers of nature and all the details, every color on leaves, every smell, every sound. It's so sensory, and I want to create an environment like that for people. When they look at my brand, I want them to see a world that is inviting and friendly, and that they can place their own perception onto, and have freedom to roam around and be themselves in it and add to it, and maybe just enjoy something that someone else is making because they just simply love to make it. I think that's why it's funny that I happen to be in a commercial space, and that's why I say I "hijack" it: because what I'm doing is nothing to do with business. It just happens to be operating as a business. So, world-building is that for me.

LM:
Do you think there's a relationship of that generosity on your part, this desire to share something that is so meaningful to you with an audience, correlating to the amount of immediate success that you've had? I think that people can sense that genuine authenticity, and also the generosity that comes with you sharing something so personal, and something that comes from a place of... I think there's a lot of hopefulness. You want to give people something that makes their life better, or more beautiful, and people are connecting with that.

IL:
Yeah. It does feel like I'm trying to give something and it's a form of love. I think that's my love language, is giving things. Even to friends, I love giving them gifts all the time. I love making people feel heard and understood and loved unconditionally, because I think a lot of us have insecurities, a lot of us have anxiety and reasons why we act certain ways, even in social friendships or relationships, and I just feel like if I could just help someone feel more seen or understood or loved for one second, you never know where that's going to lead for them. Maybe you smile at a stranger and it makes their day, and it could change the whole energy of their entire trajectory of that day without you even realizing it. So I think moments like that, where you can share and you can provide something that you find beautiful, it's really important to do, because it can help other people feel excited and loved, which is the best feeling ever.

CS:
Yeah. I mean, I love this idea of channeling an internal world and manifesting it externally, and physically, and building community through that process. But along similar lines, I feel like your brand has also given me an opportunity to reevaluate my sense of what the word "escapism" means. I feel like there are connotations to that word that would suggest avoidance, or distraction, or a willful detachment from what's in front of you—but I think through your brand, you've been putting across a different suggestion, which is that exploring one's imagination, staying in touch with a sense of wonder, can be a great source of pleasure and of presence. It can bring new ideas, and it can even be a source of healing. To me, that's been a really reaffirming and actually eye-opening thing.

IL:
Yeah. I mean, word for word, that's exactly it. That's how I feel about imagination and creativity, and why I mention when we're children, we're encouraged to think beyond the lines, and we're constantly being told that our imagination is endless, we can believe in anything we want and make our dreams come true. I don't think that should all stop just because we age. I feel like it can age with us, and we can keep that basis of that foundational thought of creative freedom and creative liberation in our daily lives as adults. I think it's important to have those curiosities and don't limit yourself, because who knows what you find once you look around the corner and it's not somewhere you would've usually looked? Maybe there's something there waiting for you. You never know. So, I think life is very mysterious, and I think the more that we can be open and embrace that aspect of it, the more we can learn from it and about ourselves.

LM:
Do you think at its core, this, I don't know, this foundational energy that you're talking about—this thing that is consistently running through, whether it's the plant life that you're engaging with or the community that you're engaging with, and of non-hierarchical relationship to mediums, and there seems to be this ecological openness and oneness to the way you view the world—do you think there's a way to articulate that singular thing? Or, is it something that can only be known by being felt? You had said in the beginning of our conversation you have this different relationship or a way of looking at energy or magic, and I think that maybe that's a way of touching on it. What do those things mean to you? Is there a way of putting that into words, or is that something that you've only found through experience and knowing and being?

IL:
I mean, I think it's what I find through self-expression. The way I know that I can try to communicate these types of thoughts is through different art forms, whether it's poetry or words I'm writing while I'm taking a walk, or, for instance, different colors I use, the way I bead my necklaces, or maybe the language I use on emails, including weird text art, unicorns on art, customer feedback page, things like that. It's all in the details. But to answer your question more literally, the whole concept of creative freedom, for me, means that also it's also really subjective. Anyone can place their own meanings and their own interpretation of what the world that they imagine in their inner head, as with childlike curiosity. It can all vary, and it's all very different, so that's why I make sure to keep my definition and my perception of that very open-ended. I always mention that anyone can place their own visions onto it, because I don't think it's a one-sided or a one-word answer. I think it's anything that anyone feels is important or special to them. It's what makes their life magical, and anything that makes anyone's lives feel a little bit more magical, to me, is what that that is—that feeling, if that makes sense.

LM:
Yeah. No, totally. I think you're making space for people. I think that comes back to the notions of unconditional love. You're allowing people to exist on their own terms, and you're bringing your personal experience, your narrative, to the table, but also making space for them to meet you halfway. Again, it comes back to being a very generous artist.

IL:
Yeah, that's exactly it. I'm not going to define anything. I'm not going to say just because this works for me, it's going to work for you. I think the best thing about life is that we all have our own individual mentalities and our own brains that have experienced our own unique experiences. Someone's utopia in their inner world could be super-inspirational to mine, and vice versa, and I think the more the merrier. It's an open-ended book, and we're all writing it together. You can quote me on that. [laughs]

LM:
Cool. [laughs]

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