With a baby on the way, Desi Perkins is also giving birth to something else: a brand.
The YouTube star, who has amassed more than 3 million subscribers to her 7-year-old beauty channel, took fans by storm when she launched her own brand, DEZI, in July. The brand’s introduction to fans centered on a wide-ranging line of sunglasses, but as the mom-to-be explained to E!’s Lilliana Vazquez during an exclusive interview in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month—popularly known as Latinx Heritage Month—this is just the beginning.
“It is an ‘everything under the sun’ brand is what I always tell Steven [Perkins],” she told Lilliana, referencing her longtime husband. “It’s just my dreams in one. When I was growing up, my mom always told me, ‘Mija, you know, you really gotta focus on one thing that you really love and get really good at that one thing and that way, you’ll be successful.’ And I was like, ‘Mom, I know, but I just love so many things and I’m just bursting with all of these creative ideas that I’ve always wanted to do.’ And I said, ‘But, I’ll listen to you and I’ll do that.’ I think for a long time that was my art and I found that in makeup. That was like what I had focused everything on because to me that’s such a beautiful form of art as well. But, there’s so much more that I have to offer artistically and I’m still bursting to do it all.”
As a result, she made the decision to start a brand as a way to bring her own visions to life. “When I decided to start DEZI, I thought that one, I want something for myself that is my own and I want to be able to really maneuver that exactly how I see it without anyone else’s brand identity to kind of have to work with and just work out the visions exactly as I see them,” she explained. “I said, ‘This will be a brand and it will have a bunch of umbrellas and everything that I love and want to do will live under this brand.’ So, that’s how I see it. I want it to be this big empire.”