Beatrice Domond on her new Vans Zahba Mid
Images courtesy of Vans Skate
Beatrice Domond is someone who hardly needs an introduction.
Over the past decade, she’s been making her mark on skateboarding, from her hometown prefab skatepark in Florida to being introduced to the world in Supreme’s 2013 cult classic Cherry to now turning pro for Fucking Awesome and skating for a collection of her favourite companies. She’s made it to exactly where she wants to be and worked to be here. She was on the front cover of Monster Children a few years ago and now we are back talking to her to commemorate the release of her latest Vans Colourway on the all-new Zahba Mid, which released just last week with a launch party at Vans Skate Space 198 in Brooklyn. Enjoy the interview and buy the shoe, it’s a good one.
Congratulations on the release of the new shoe. How has the last week been, with the shoe release?
It’s been good. It’s exciting really. It’s like anything, when pressure is applied, things burst out and all come at once. We’ve been working on this for so long that it only makes sense how much we’re doing to back it.
How long have you guys been working on the shoe?
They had a low sample to look at in 2021. All of last year I was working on it, then it’s now July.
So, the shoe is a colourway of the new Zahba mid model, but the mid is quite a different shoe from the low. How involved were you in the design process of the shoe?
I was very much involved with it. I chose the colours, the laces, the toe and how I wanted to sit. I’m not sure if you saw the low, but the toe cap is way sharper, I wanted the mid to have a rounder toe because that’s what I prefer to skate. At the time I was skating in the half-cab a lot and I wanted something that resembled the half-cab.
Yeah, for sure, the toe takes inspiration from the half cab with the toe being an extra panel of suede as opposed to the low not having that panel.
That’s how I wanted it because I do a lot of kickflips. So, once you run through the top you have that extra layer to keep skating them. The shoe holds up pretty well. It’s impressive.
That’s good to hear. It’s been three years since you were on the cover of Monster Children. In that time your career has gone up and up, you’ve turned pro, travelled the world had colourways and now you’re here with another. How have the last few years been for you?
It’s been up and down, last year I tore my ACL, which was my first major injury. That was really hard it took me a while to get back and be confident on my skateboard. Other than that, it’s been such a blessing to turn pro for a company I’ve been riding for since it started, it’ll be ten years in September. I work really hard, so I’m not really shocked by things like this I’m more just impressed with myself.
For sure, hard work pays off. In that interview, you mentioned that you were a Capricorn. Are you a big astrology person?
To some degree, yeah. My friends are super into it, so I have co-star, I know my rising and that. I do think it has a lot to do with my work ethic, for sure. Sometimes I feel there is no way that one person can do this much. I check and I have like five placements of Capricorn, so it makes sense why I do so much and generally don’t really burn out. I think that stuff is kind of real. I’m not playing with tarot cards or anything. I base the psycho-ness and extremes of my personality off my sign.
That’s crazy you don’t burn out, because I am a Capricorn too, and I definitely crash heavy.
I spend a lot of time alone, so in my private time I don’t have people around me. I am a singular individual; I pride myself in being myself and I love my own company. So, when I have to go to work or be around others and do stuff like that, I have the means and energy to.
Alone time is honestly so important. You’ve made quite a few zines, what about zines draws you to them?
As much as I am on social media, I don’t like it and I am not very good at technology. I love tangible things, I read normal books, I love magazines, I have magazine and record collections. I’ve always kept things to remind myself of where I’ve been. I’m a very romantic person, I like to have things and be like, ‘I went here when I was in Paris’. Every zine I’ve made was in its own period, my latest one is about me tearing my ACL. I spent the whole six months while I was recovering working on that just to keep me sane. The one I made with Vans was very much a COVID one but there was some past work in there. I have a couple more, but they all are just of periods in my life.
It's nice having a little time capsule of certain periods too having it all in a tangible zine too.
Right! For sure. That’s why I feel like I post on Instagram too. I like to go back for myself and have the collection of it all too. So, that’s pretty cool in itself too.
I noticed from your zines is that you like writing upside down too. Where did that come from?
Me being a menace in middle school. I was just super shy, but like I would do that to my teachers because they hated it, but I’d still get the work done. One day I just flipped my page over and realised I could do it. I kept doing it from there because my teachers would be like ‘what are you doing?’. I think it comes from me having dyslexia that I can do that, but from that day in seventh grade it just stuck. It came from me wanting to be a troublemaker but too shy to actually be the class clown, or something, so I was like I’m going to do it this way [laughs].
Being a skateboarder for a living do you think it is nice to have another creative outlet, so you aren’t strictly focused on skateboarding all the time?
Yeah, definitely. At least for me, my favourite skateboarders are creatives outside of skateboarding. Those are the people who make a statement, people like Gonz [Mark Gonzales], those are the people I look up to. Even the best skateboarders can’t skateboard all the time and I think that’s okay to show kids, you know. You can do other things and put yourself out there in other ways, I think that is healthy because one day skateboarding is going to end. Growing up I never heard that, so it stresses you out when you get into other things or get hurt and you’re like ‘what am I doing with my life’. If you’re working on other things and you have purpose in other things while having a love and passion for skateboarding, it’s okay. I think that’s really important to talk about.
I think it’s just a big one where people feel lost without it, because we just immerse ourselves in skateboarding to such a high degree, I’ve definitely felt that with myself.
Yeah, I felt that last year with my knee. I felt like I lost my purpose, but it’s like when you have other things going on, healthy things going on it’ll be okay in the long run. You can still love skateboarding. I still love skateboarding as much as I did when I was fourteen, it’s not a sick obsession though, it’s a healthy obsession.
I think it’s an important discussion to have because a lot of skateboarders feel like it is their whole identity.
Right and for a long time that was me. I thought that was really cool but when you’re living the motions of life, it is not sustainable at all, not even a little bit. I just want to be real, I’m tired of hearing people bullshit. I just want people to have a genuinely healthy life. I want everyone to be happy and stoked and make it real. I grew up reading so many interviews telling me all this shit about just skating and I got to a certain point and realised that is not it at all.
Speaking of interviews, I watched BLPKosher’s interview with Nardwaur and he brought you up. What was that like when you heard Nardwaur bring up your name like that?
I mean I don’t really know Nardwaur, but I think it’s cool. Benny [BLPKosher] has been my homie for so long now. A lot of people are asking me about that. But to me, Nardwaur bringing my name up is cool, but Prod [Paul Rodriguez] saying my name would be cooler, that’s what I care about. Skateboarding and skateboarders. That is sick though, I’m pretty honoured.
Do you and BLPKosher go way back?
Yeah, he is a bit younger than me, I would see him around. He was always on his own tip, doing his own thing and I was trying to do my thing too. Then once I was established to some degree, I was like I want him to be sponsored. He was getting Alien Workshop stuff at the time, but they were being a little weird about it. I made this company called The Beatrice Company, where I made a couple t-shirts, I put him on the team. Around that time, we skated everyday together, and we filmed a shared part, that you can find on Instagram if you look hard enough. Around that time, he started rapping, I got into some weird beef with some kid, and he made a rap about it dissing the kid as a joke to make me feel better. I was like ‘damn you are good at this shit, you should keep going with it’. From there it just kept on going. He is super obsessive, once he’s into something, he is going to keep on doing it and doing it until he becomes great at it and that’s where he is at now. He’s killing it now. I am so proud of him.
He is so good at skateboarng.
That’s what I’ve been saying!
Before we wrap up, I had a question I’ve wanted to ask. Throughout everything, all the attention and even the hate you’ve received, you always seem to have stayed true to yourself on a path that feels genuine. How do you keep so level headed when all eyes are on you?
As I said, I spend a lot of time alone. I’ve had time to work on myself and I just don’t know who else to be. I have been me for so long that I can’t do anything else. If people don’t like it, they don’t like it, if they love it, they love it. At the end of the day when you go home, you go home to yourself, you have to look at yourself in the mirror and be okay with that, some people aren’t and that’s where the hate comes from. I don’t lose sleep over it, I have a shoe on Vans, I have a board on FA. Like I can see why you don’t like me. I would hate me too. The whole stuff with Gifted Hater, it’s like everyone knows my first and last name, who knows what his real name is? At the end of the day, I wish him the best, I hope he gets sponsored because it feels like that’s something he wants to do with his life too. I would care if it affected my bag or my sponsors, but it doesn’t. There was a time when I was living in a bubble because I was getting so much love, but sometimes you have to take the hit because that’s life. I needed that; it made me a stronger person. Thanks, truly. I needed that lesson in my life and it came at a good time, it happened when only good things were happening. I don’t know what to say, I just hope Sci-Fi puts him on or some shit [laughs].
Get your hands on a pair of Beatrice’ brand new Vans shoe, here.
