Jeanine Hays

AphroChic began three years ago -- the brainchild of Creative Director and Founder, Jeanine Hays. Originally taking shape as interior design blog, AphroChic became a place for Jeanine, a policy attorney, to escape the stresses of legal work and share her passion for design.

AphroChic became a means of looking at design from a new perspective. Highlighting artists and designers from around the globe as well as all that was interesting and new within modern design, Jeanine set out to prove that ethnic heritage and culture could go hand in hand with the luxurious and the modern. She coined the phrase, “Modern, Soulful, Style,” to embody her personal vision of a new kind of design -- one that embraces culture and the unique admixture of the traditional and the contemporary that helps to define us all.

By the beginning of the blog’s second year, Jeanine was ready to go beyond writing about design and started to create designs of her own. In partnership with her husband, Bryan Mason, an academic pursuing his Ph.D. at the University of California Berkeley, the two began to develop a business that would specialize in small but impactful pieces.

The journey from law to design has been an interesting one. Since the company's launch in 2009, AphroChic pieces have been featured in the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Elle Decor, Lucky Magazine, California Home + Design and various interior design blogs. The pillow collection made it onto the 2010 California Home + Design Hit List, celebrating the best in California design. Jeanine also has a weekly feature on color and textiles on HGTV's interior design blog, Design Happens, participated as an online guest judge for the 2010 season of HGTV’s Design Star, and is a featured blogger for Houzz.

Jeanine and her husband Bryan currently reside in Philadelphia, PA, where they are penning their first book, AphroChic: Modern.Soulful.Style., which will be published by Clarkson Potter in Fall 2013.