Meet Kells
Harlem has raised Kells Barnett to be a community leader and tastemaker in the neighborhood. He is a fashion designer and the owner of Harlem Haberdashery, “My family started our custom clothing company in 1992, 5001 flavors. And I've always been surrounded by fashion and what's dope about Harlem is everybody in Harlem think they fly. So it's like it came natural to me to get into fashion. My family was already doing it…” Entrepreneurship, education, and ownership were greatly encouraged by his family. His values in community and his desire to give back to Harlem started with his family and upbringing as well, “I've always had an aggression to me that… you're gonna be a part of my community whether you like it or not… Maybe I get that from my grandmother. My grandmother was real community heavy. She worked in P.S. 46, the school that I used to go to, up in Polo Ground Projects. I have no problem building my own community… Harlem has always been community to me. And I think that my safety and my success in Harlem was [because of the] community.”
Apart from the eight years he spent at college in Long Island to get his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, he has lived his entire life in Harlem. He says, “First, I was all the way uptown… in between Polo Grounds, [155th and 8th Avenue], and... I grew up in Delano on 142nd.” One of his favorite things to do was to hang out in the community, especially on the street he grew up on, “We started doing cookouts in my late teens and then that turned into a whole other situation for Harlem. It was great to just have people excited to come uptown to something that you put together. And our cookouts were some of the biggest cookouts ever in Harlem. So it was great to be a part of that.” His family has been in Harlem for multiple generations. He says, “When I was born, my… great grandparents, I think were deceased, but… my grandfather was very well known in Harlem. He used to work at a bar uptown, and I thought he was the coolest man in the world… My grandfather was… how I got my fashion sense to a degree. He was fly. Love seeing old pictures of him and my mother… just hanging out… My family… really inspired me to just love Harlem and be about Harlem. And I really take pride in everything that there is about Harlem. And I love businesses. I love ownership. I love events. I love seeing people set up tables and selling stuff. Like, everything about Harlem, I love. I do think that's 'cause of my family.”
“My family started our custom clothing company in 1992, 5001 flavors. And I’ve always been surrounded by fashion and what’s dope about Harlem is everybody in Harlem think they fly. So it’s like it came natural to me to get into fashion. My family was already doing it…”
His family history in Harlem has made the entire neighborhood feel like home. He says, “All I know of my family is Harlem. My family is very big, and we're all over Harlem, so I was always able to travel through different neighborhoods, and I knew someone… What's funny about Harlem is [that] Harlem is big, but it's small at the same time… My family was everywhere. East, west, up, down. And then when [you’re] on a block, those people become your family… What's dope about my childhood is I pride myself on still being friends and cool with everybody I've ever met. So that's why it seems like I know a lot of people. It's not that I know a lot of people, it's just that I always did right by all the people I've ever met. So that's the beautiful thing about having some type of integrity… I'm able to go in any neighborhood in Harlem, and that means something to me.” Everyone is connected in Harlem, he says, “What's that term? Seven degrees of separation. In Harlem it's like two, one… because everybody does know everybody. You gotta treat everyone with respect. Harlem is very small. It may seem big. There's a lot of blocks. But Harlem is extremely small.” That level of closeness creates the feeling of everyone looking out for each other, “You know, it's a myth in our community that the hood don't care. My hood always absolutely cared. They would never let me do anything goofy or stupid because they knew I was about something. Now I'm not saying that they didn't look out for everyone, but when they knew you had something, whether it was sports, music, business, or just… [being] smart… Our communities are very protective over people that got something going on, especially from the older street guys. They be like, 'Nah, you can't do this. You can't do this.' And… I always thought that was dope… I know that I was protected by my community, and that's why I pour so much into my community.”
Even if he wasn’t from Harlem, Kells believes his interest in the neighborhood would have been the same. He is inspired by Harlem as a Black mecca and its history, “I love randomly finding out information that I didn't know of. Like that Gil Scott-Heron used to be on 125th, just reciting his poems… Malcolm X used to be on a crate on 122nd [and] Lenox, in front of… my boutique, just doing his thing. And I think things like that are important. Of course, the Apollo is very important to Black culture… Harlem Globetrotters. And what's crazy, when I was younger... I thought the Harlem Globetrotters [were] an NBA team… because they looked so good… And I was confused when I found out they weren't,” he laughs. As he interacts with elders in the community, he loves to talk to them about the Harlem they experienced and their love for it, “It's almost like they're talking about a person, like an actual living, breathing person. Especially when you talk about people who remember the sixties and seventies with the Black Panthers and stuff like that. To hear them [and see] their eyes light up… I love hearing old people tell me those stories about Harlem. Not stuff you could Google…”
“It’s almost like they’re talking about a person, like an actual living, breathing person. Especially when you talk about people who remember the sixties and seventies with the Black Panthers and stuff like that. To hear them [and see] their eyes light up… I love hearing old people tell me those stories about Harlem. Not stuff you could Google…”
Kells says his ultimate goal is to “create a Harlem where people literally do not have to leave.” He says, “If I had a trillion dollars, 90% of that probably would go into opening businesses in Harlem.” He does what he can to give back now, organizing toy drives, back to school drives, as well as helping to clean the streets and plant trees in Harlem. He loves Harlem and believes that residents and businesses should pour back into the community in the ways they can, “We've got a lot of nonprofits. We’ve got a lot of community days and resources that the community needs. You got to pour into it, or the community gon' be like, 'You know what? You're not doing right.'” He aims to continue this work in building community, connecting people to each other and the greater Harlem community. He summarizes his love for Harlem and childhood experience saying, “My favorite thing about growing up in Harlem was growing up in Harlem. I don't think I was meant to be anywhere but Harlem.”