How 'Blanc' Founder Teneshia Carr Is Building a New Kind of Luxury Media Company

Born in South Philly, she now distributes her quarterly magazine to 25 countries. And that's just the beginning.

In our long-running series "How I'm Making It," we talk to people making a living in the fashion and beauty industries about how they broke in and found success.

"It's absolutely a Trojan horse," says Teneshia Carr, with a laugh, of the story behind the name of her quarterly luxury fashion publication, Blanc. "I purposefully adapted that name and this idea of building, as a Black woman, this magazine and media company, literally called white."

The Philadelphia-born creative launched Blanc — which today prints 100,000 copies per issue — 10 years ago. Now, Carr is expanding Blanc Media to be more than a magazine: In partnership with fashion magazine veteran Stefano Tonchi, the company is introducing Blanc Space as the next iteration of the business, producing fashion content for major luxury brands while hosting experiences and building community amongst creatives of all sorts.

"It's so much bigger than a fashion magazine," Carr says. "It's figuring out how to really change the world, to be honest. I want to change the world so my two-and-a-half year-old daughter can have it easier, so she doesn't have to feel like uncomfortable in her skin and worried about who she is."

It's been a multi-decade journey for Carr and she has pushed to create new narratives through fashion every step of the way. Ahead, she tells us about how she found her purpose, transitioning from photography to publishing and much more — read on for highlights from our conversation.

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What was your relationships to fashion growing up? Was there a point where you realized this could be an avenue to pursue professionally?

My fashion idols were actually my brothers, who were immersed in '90s hip hop — that culture and how they dressed. Anybody who grew up in Philly or New York or Baltimore, you had your Polo shirt and jeans... All of that is how I saw fashion. Fashion, for me, was always focused on Black culture. I didn't realize that Tommy Hilfiger wasn't specifically designed for and by Black people, because all the Black people I knew were in Tommy and Polo and Nautica.

It wasn't until my sister brought home a Vogue magazine when I was about 15 that I realized the scope of what fashion was... It was like "Pleasantville," where everything was black and white, and then everything turned to color. It wasn't like I wanted to be a model or like those women — it was that I wanted to create those worlds, those stories. I wanted to do what Grace Coddington did. I wanted to make this dream world on paper.

It's such a beautiful thing, to find what you want to do, where you feel connected to your purpose.

The flip side of that is: I found within myself, at a very young age, that this is how I can make my place in this world. But I had to fight against the fact that I was a Black woman born in Philadelphia to an immigrant mother in poverty. The odds of me escaping my current situation to get to that place was damn near impossible.

What steps did you take to build your career? Maybe at the time, it seemed like a world so far away, and yet here you are today. 

It was hard. When you're doing something that really hasn't really been done... like, sure, people make fashion magazines all the time. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about this idea of a real, authentic celebration of all of us, of otherness at its core. This idea that we can find beauty on the street corner, just like I did when I was a kid. That thing means that you can't be rigid. You want to tell stories that make a difference. You want to go completely against the grain. It means you have to be flexible. You have to bend with the road that you're on.

Going from flipping through that magazine to going to university, moving to London, living there for 10 years, working in fashion, shooting runway shows, helping to produce runway shows across Europe, working with big brands — my career spread out all over the place because I had to figure out how to get back to the thing that I wanted. That meant I had to figure out visual communication, photography, how to put together stories, how to market. I had to figure out how to explain to people how much real, authentic, diverse storytelling matters.

At one point, I was consulting for a Japanese lingerie brand. My career has taken me everywhere, just in the idea that I needed to figure out all of these life experiences.

Was there a major milestone that led to the creation of Blanc?

Moving to London was the biggest milestone for me. Before then, I was just a chubby Black girl from South Philly, and that's all I was. That was my destiny, my fate. But when I moved to London... I built a family, a community of artists, and we uplifted each other. That was when I felt like an artist. I felt like a photographer.

Anytime I wasn't shooting my work, my doors were open for my friends and their friends, 'Come shoot for free. Hang out, tell your stories.' This community of creatives formed. It wasn't like a competition thing. This idea [for Blanc] came from that. We were shooting our friends, our trans friends, our 350-pound Black friends. We were shooting people that would not really, at that time, [see] themselves in fashion magazines.

I felt like I did all the things — I went to university, I did the internships, I studied. I did what I was supposed to do, and I still wasn't allowed to tell my stories. So I saved up some money, and I spent about a year and a half figuring out how to put together a magazine and what that meant, in every aspect. That was maybe 10 years ago.

It was really slow at first. It was one, two issues a year. It was very much self-funded at the beginning. I had a really good distributor, which was great, because that meant that the magazine went everywhere. But I didn't have advertisers. It was still almost impossible for me to get haute couture or luxury clothes from the PRs and the big brands because no one knew who I was. I was the cousin of no one. I was the daughter of no one. I was this fat Black girl from Philly with bad skin and a little Afro. And I'm not the 'belle of the ball' person at all.

Were there moments when you felt on the verge of giving up, where you needed to find faith and purpose again?

I think a lot of people treat fashion as this airy, fairy, dreamy thing that's not based in reality — and that's true, we create some crazy shit. But at the end of the day, it's still a business. It's a business that you should be able to step away from, that should not be your life. A business that you should be focused and motivated and goal-oriented about, but it's still just a business.

I was producing 15, 20 shoots myself. Sometimes I was picking up the clothes myself — the owner of my business, the editor-in-chief of my magazine, going to showrooms and picking up stuff for the shoots for other photographers that were shooting for my magazine. I did that for years. I had fake assistants, because I couldn't be editor-in-chief emailing all these people.

The way I've been able to maintain razor-sharp focus on my goals and the things that I want my business to be and what I want it to represent is: I have been able to treat it like a business — a puzzle to figure out, to win, to succeed, to expand. That's what's helped me from spiraling. I was hitting so many walls. I was getting nothing. So many no's, all the time, from PRs, from brands, from talent, from photographers. But I knew that this idea of us being together, I know this is the future.

Can you take me through the steps of going from being a photographer to being an editor to then launching a magazine?

This is for anyone, seriously: You don't need anyone to fucking tell you who you are. You can decide. You can wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and decide that day. No one told me I was an editor. I fucking made myself an editor. I made myself a publisher. I made myself a media owner. I made myself those things. Nobody gave anything to me. No one decided my fate for me.

I'm not saying the role is easy. You can't just say, 'Oh, I'm an editor,' then tomorrow be the editor of a Vogue. But you can decide the person that you want to be.

There was no path for me through the big publishing houses — because I applied for hundreds of jobs at publishing houses. I don't know if it was the algorithm that saw Teneshia, the ghetto-ass name and was like, 'No, girl.' But after applying for so many jobs, I couldn't wait for them. I couldn't wait for someone to decide that it was my turn, or that I was worthy of a position.

When you're getting these no's and people aren't accepting you into their space, how can you sharpen yourself and build yourself up?

Having really good people around you. I had a really good community of artists and creatives around me doing the same work that I was doing, so I didn't feel like I was alone. I did try to break into other spaces where I didn't feel welcome... I applied for those jobs because I wanted to be in those companies, you know? So I did try, but sometimes, the path of least resistance is the right way to go.

I know editors at top magazines that have had really hard roads and suffered abuses working at publications, coming up along the way as an intern and a fashion assistant — that road isn't an easy one, either. But I think having the community of people that made me feel like I was doing the right thing, that's what kept me going.

How has your journey uniquely shaped how you look for business partners and contributors for Blanc?

How I look for a contributor is pretty easy. If you're talented, if you can tell stories, if you can tell luxury stories — even if you don't have access to luxury, but you have an eye, an idea and an elevated point of view — then I want to work with you. That's how I built Blanc. I found people from all over the world who were super talented but may not have had access to the right stylist, the right model, the right teams to be able to create the shoots that I needed.

For partners: ethics. It was super apparent after 2020 and the bringing to light of the obvious police brutality towards Black people. When I started seeing those black squares, I said to myself, 'Either I'm going to get some money or get mad.' And mostly I got mad, because I saw a lot of brands who ignored us for years before now wanting to take meetings, to talk to us, to pretend collaborate with us. The ones who really worked with us are the ones that you see keep showing up in the magazine. Our first partner was Gucci. The brand really saw the vision of what Blanc could be, if I had the right support. And it wanted to support me by giving me ad money. That's how I grew.

What helps see a brand's true intention?

A brand who really isn't riding will, quite frankly, waste your time. Take your ideas. They'll have you pitch, and they'll say, 'Oh, that's fantastic. That's wonderful.' And then they'll come back to you and give you a budget. And the budget is such a joke that it's offensive.

Why luxury? Why did you want to create a magazine in this specific space?

Because for a long time, it was so exclusionary. It was so fucking boring. The same clothes doing the same bullshit. And it wasn't like the fashion itself was boring. It wasn't that the collections were boring, or the designers or even the houses were boring — it was just that the storytelling was so stale. It was so one-dimensional. It even treated white people like a monolith.

It was like, 'Luxury is not for poor people. Luxury is not for people of color. Luxury is not for fat people.' These were all the messages that we were hearing from storytelling, from the images that we were seeing every day, from the videos, from the advertising. The idea of it is enraging to me. So it just felt like it was a problem to be solved, to be honest.

How do you define luxury?

I would define luxury as a feeling. It's the way you feel when you put on a really well-made pair of pants or a soft leather that was treated well. Even luxury experiences — it's just about how you make someone feel when they're wearing their clothes.

Having a heightened experience, that's what luxury is, right? To say that that underrepresented people or that all of us don't deserve to be a part of that experience, I wasn't going to stand for that.

What have been some of the biggest achievements for you and Blanc since its launch?

Going from $5,000 and a 500-copy print run to being sold in 25 countries all over the world. We featured some incredible artists before they exploded, like Rosalía, Summer Walker, Tobe Nwigwe, Chloe x Halle.

I met Stefano Tonchi a few years ago through mutual friends... Getting a chance to meet him and him liking my magazine...it started with him politely taking a meeting because a dear friend of his asked him to.

We opened up a creative agency together called Blanc Space, which is focused on this idea of the next iteration of storytelling, working directly with brands to optimize their authentic storytelling to our community. We're going to do experiential. We want to create Blanc Spaces...where our community can all come together and celebrate.

Another huge milestone was my partnership with Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana, the Italian fashion federation. We worked on so many diversity and inclusivity initiatives. We're working on a Blanc Space initiative with them, where we bring designers of color from around the world to Milan to present their collections to the global press and global buyers during fashion week.

What's the best piece of advice you have ever received?

Just start something. No matter if the iteration that you start is smaller and nowhere near where you wanna be.

Whether it's about Blanc or your career journey, is there anything you haven't been asked lately?

I want to hear more stories of triumph. More stories of, 'Yo, I worked real hard, and yes, I went through a lot of stuff, but I did this thing. I did the impossible thing.' Like, you can get my magazine in Tokyo right now, and it's dope as shit.

I don't want someone to focus on the fact that I'm Black and that I'm a woman or my start. That's the start of so many other people. Like, focus on the triumph and the strength of what it took to get here.

I'm hoping that Blanc can do that: help you think about life and luxury and circumstances in your community in more of a celebratory way.

It seems like you've become the dream person you wanted to be, maybe at 15 or before.

Not yet. To be honest, I think I'm just getting started. It's just getting good. The dream that I had at 15 is minuscule in comparison to what I see is possible for me ahead.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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