Welcome back to our fourth and FINAL instalment of our Women’s History Month Series! From literacy to community to storytelling, this week we are wrapping up this series and showcasing what empowerment through pleasure looks like!

We are so excited to have made it to the last instalment of our Women’s History Month series! Ultimately, our goal with this series over the past four weeks was to highlight some amazing women I’ve worked with and share the unique ways they inspire their clients and community. 

For our final highlight, we wanted to go out with a bang! This week, we are putting Joy Asibey-Gabriel, the founder of Black Lady of Leisure, in the spotlight! Through the art of intentional personal styling, Joy creates a space for women to find empowerment through pleasure by giving them permission to step into the fullest expression of who they are.

3 Words to Describe Joy 

Lady of Leisure

Much like her brand’s namesake, Joy is a Lady of Leisure, a woman who finds empowerment, joy, and confidence through the process of slowing down and finding pleasure in the moments that are typically rushed in our everyday lives – like getting dressed. It is Joy’s philosophy to see these moments as what they truly are: opportunities to adorn and celebrate our unique, beautiful bodies and use fashion as a form of expression and empowerment. 

Empowering 

At the heart of everything Joy does in her multi-faceted business is empowerment. From personal experience, Joy knew the feeling of defeat and low self-esteem that comes from feeling stuck and frustrated with not being able to express who you are. After rediscovering the confidence and joy she felt by finding pleasure in dressing herself again, she knew she wanted to help other women find empowerment through pleasure too. 

Inclusive

Joy and Black Lady of Leisure’s personal styling method centers around rebelling against the narrow-minded and exclusionary societal standards of the fashion industry that we are all too familiar with, Joy offers women of color an inclusive space where they can feel seen, safe, and empowered to become their boldest, brightest, and highest versions of themselves through finding their personal style.

Joy’s Journey and Milestones

With an untraditional start to her career, Joy pursued an education in Anthropology and Public Relations, which led her to work with leading fashion and beauty brands to craft high-impact campaigns. Even at this stage in her career, she knew she loved to help others show up as themselves in the world in interesting, unique, and impactful ways. 

While she was taking some time off work, she found in her downtime that she felt incredibly stuck and frustrated with the state of her wardrobe, and how it made her feel; like her “radiance was turned all the way down, and [she]’d lost touch with what looked good on [her] and what [she] desired.” When the inevitable moment of returning to work came, she felt that the vibrant and bold woman who lived for color, feminine silhouettes, and statement jewelry was aching to come out and play. 

It was at this point that Joy decided to look at dressing herself as an opportunity to find empowerment through pleasure, to let her inner child run free, and find pleasure in intentionally adorning her body. Honoring herself and learning to view getting dressed as a pleasurable experience led her on a journey of reclaiming her shine, and having fun while doing it! 

This newfound joy and empowerment was something she knew she wanted to help other women experience too. When she moved from London to Toronto, Joy decided to further her education at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where “in learning more about the fashion industry, [she] felt disconnected from the rigid and formulaic approach to styling that we so often see from runways and retailers.”

This inspired her mission for women who felt disconnected from the fashion industry, just as she did, to have a space and resources where they could feel seen, represented, and confident in clothing again. 

Since the time she started her business to now, Joy has accomplished some incredible things with her visionary brand and approach to personal styling! 

Here are some of Joy’s most notable accomplishments! 

• Becoming the official Pleasure Dressing Expert at Cityline TV! 
• Being featured on several major media outlets, such as: WSJ, The Strategist, and Byrdie, to name a few. Make sure you also tune in to her amazing episode on the Power of Pleasure on the Slowpreneur Podcast!
• Was a keynote speaker at the Zen at Home by @OMNoire Live Launch & Virtual Retreat
• Personal styling celebrities such as Serena Ryder!
• Helping women of all kinds unlock their radiance and boldness through pleasure and empowerment!

How Joy Empowers Through Pleasure

As a multi-faceted woman in business, the way Joy empowers others effortlessly branches out into various aspects of her business. 

While she centers the empowerment she instills in others around finding pleasure through personal style and in everyday moments, along the way, she has naturally integrated empowering others through inclusivity, visibility, and diversity into her business and as a presence in mainstream media.  

→ The PEACOCK Process

Inspired by the vibrant, bold, and confident tropical bird and the show-stopping women seen at Carnival celebrations, the PEACOCK Process stands for Pleasure, Energy, Alignment, Creatrix, Outrageous, Context, and Knowing. Joy’s styling process encompasses her mission to teach others the multifaceted and intentional ways women of all kinds find empowerment through pleasure, and to grow into their most confident, authentic, and radiant selves. 

→ Inclusivity and Diversity 

Joy has made a point to create her business on rebelling against the rigid and exclusionary standards of the fashion industry, and instead, foster spaces that allow women of all kinds to feel seen, understood, and have their needs met. Joy has created various spaces that empower others by keeping inclusivity and diversity at the forefront of everything she does.

→ Visibility in Media 

Joy has cultivated a mainstream media presence as Cityline TV’s Pleasure Dressing Expert! In this role, Joy has shared her styling philosophy in mainstream media, providing women with free access to resources to help them feel empowered through finding pleasure in their personal style. The visibility Joy has created on mainstream television for women of color and teaching them how to incorporate a unique method of empowerment into their lives is a huge win for women everywhere.

→ The Peacock Club

The Peacock Club is a daring and synergetic online space for co-creating and elevating artistry, femininity, and confidence. The Peacock Club will be home for all things empowerment, community, and confidence, offering “homeplay” resources, group session coaching, a community of like-minded women, personal shopping trips and more!

Enrolment for the Peacock Club Spring 2024 Cohort launches in mid-April, and provides members with a 10 weeks group coaching program to empower women through pleasure and community to become their most authentic selves. 

Our Takeaways From Joy

Through her work at Black Lady of Leisure, Joy teaches us that pleasure is for everyone. She spreads the message that pleasure can not only be a powerful tool in discovering ourselves and letting our authenticity shine, but finding empowerment in unexpected and untraditional ways. 

Finding pleasure, sensuality, artistry and adornment in everyday life can be just as empowering and needed as traditional methods of empowerment!

One last takeaway from Joy’s incredible work as a business owner, personal stylist and media personality is to not be afraid to be a rebel. Rebels are needed in today’s society more than ever before, and being a voice and visible presence that stands against industry and societal norms creates space for everyone to feel included, seen, and worthy of empowerment. 

Ultimately, this is what each woman we have highlighted in our Women’s History Month series has done, empower and inspire others in untraditional and rebellious ways. 

I am so honored to have worked with these incredibly strong, courageous and intelligent women along with many others, and give them the spotlight they each deserve for their amazing work and impact in their communities. 

That wraps up our Women’s History Month series! Thank you for following along with this series, we hope it empowered and inspired you the same way it did for us. 

If you’d like to keep up with Joy’s work at Black Lady of Leisure, be sure to check out her website and Instagram, and stay tuned for the launch of the Peacock Club!