If you're ever at a loss thinking of women who run the world, look no further than a deck of cards. Julia Wilson, a local designer, has come out with the #badbitch card collection, a bunch of playing cards that all boast pictures of female badasses - past and present.
Wilson, formerly the CEO of Northeastern’s student design studio Scout before graduating last December, has her own design company called J+ Studio. Currently, she independently works out of Accomplice’s office and several of her clients have been within the VC’s portfolio.
Having her own company at such a young age is a pretty #badbitch move. But it has come with a price, according to Wilson. “I was getting burnt out at 23,” she told me.
Let’s do a deck of cards and make them all queens
To ensure she was still doing design work that she found satisfying, Wilson started to do her own side projects. And one of them was building out this deck of #badbitch card collection, eventually taking on her friend Claire Dufournier to do the illustrations.
Why adorn playing cards, of all things, with female role models? “I didn’t want to make a website because I do that all day,” Wilson told me. “I thought of cards because poker is stereotypically a male thing. And after I did some research, I found out most original decks of cards didn’t have queens. They were all male. So I said, ‘Let’s do a deck of cards and make them all queens.’”
Speaking of research, there was a lot of legwork that went into making the #badbitch card collection. Wilson didn’t want to make all of them with Beyoncé - although that’d probably sell, too - so she and Dufournier first compiled a list of 200 badass female role models. From there, they narrowed it down to 52 women.
The women featured on these playing cards purposefully represent a diverse spread of careers and cultures to comprise the deck. You'll see female pop icons like Rihanna and Madonna, political legends like Condoleezza Rice and Margaret Thatcher, fashion leaders like Anna Wintour and Diane von Furstenberg, and notable writers like J.K. Rowling and Maya Angelou. And those are just a handful of examples. (You can find the full deck and bios of each #badbitch on its website.)
For the jokers, they threw in a couple of quotes that are pure gems. One of them features Gloria Steinem’s words, “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”
The initial plan was to release the cards once Hillary Clinton was elected president. Not to rub salt in fresh wounds, but we all know how that went. Wilson ended up re-writing much of the content they had done to promote the #badbitch cards in light of the unexpected election results, posting it on her Facebook soon after.
In a matter of 10 hours of putting the link to her website on her personal social media, Wilson said they received 350 orders for the cards. She was shocked.
The deck of cards will cost you $22. To date, Wilson told me they’ve sold about 450 packs, without doing any marketing. “I wasn’t expecting it to turn into this,” Wilson said. “But we’re trying to nurture it now.”
They’re working with a manufacturer in Florida that makes only playing cards, and Wilson said, “My apartment has turned into a fulfillment center. It’s hilarious.”
At least 50 percent of the profits from #badbitch cards go to Vital Voices and Girls Inc., two charities that focus on leadership development among girls.
