Joy Frazier spent years in boardrooms as a financial director, where she was often the only Black woman at the table, learning quickly that perception can shift the moment she speaks. Over time, she became more interested in what could speak for her before she ever said a word.
“If you have a different opinion, then you have to be this angry black woman,” Frazier told theGrio. “But I feel with the bags, it’s like you step in the room and you speak volumes without saying anything.”
That idea, that a woman should be seen fully and on her own terms before she ever opens her mouth, inspired Frazier to launch Keis to Joi, her luxury handbag line.
The brand debuted with three silhouettes and 27 colorways, blending Frazier’s personal experiences with her entrepreneurial vision. The bags were manufactured by Jean Rousseau Paris, the Parisian atelier behind goods for Hermes, in collaboration with lead designer Alejandro Guilin.
“I didn’t want it to just be like anything you can get out there,” she said. “I want it to be something that people carry and when someone sees them and says, I identify with that. I know that story. I feel that.”
To understand that story, though, you have to go back to the beginning and to the three cities that shaped her.
Frazier was born in London to a West Indian family. Her upbringing was structured and practical, with young people encouraged to pursue stability and steady work. Entrepreneurship was not something often discussed.
“Growing up in London, you get a 9-5 education,” she said. “That’s what you’re taught. I never thought of entrepreneurship until I came to America.”
Raised with Jamaican roots, Frazier grew up with a strong sense of community and the expectation that people show up for one another. After moving to New York in her 20s and 30s, her worldview shifted, and she realized she wanted to change her life.
Each city gave her something different. And that combination, she said, runs through everything she does, including a handbag line that nearly never came to be.
Years ago, Frazier wanted to design shoes. She could never find styles eclectic enough to match her taste, so she set out to make her own. She found a manufacturer and began the process before life, as it often does, pulled her elsewhere. The dream went quiet.
She revived that dream at a New York fashion event in November 2024, when she met a young designer who worked on bag hardware at Macy’s. Rather than wait until she could tackle shoes, she made a practical decision.
“Maybe I can start off with accessories before I get to the shoes,” Frazier recalled. “Let me start off small.”
She followed up. A year and a half later, she had a full collection, one that surprised even her.
“I didn’t know it was going to turn out like that,” she said.
The name Keis to Joy is a play on her first name and also a philosophy. The keyhole, a central motif in the hardware, is meant to represent the act of stepping into yourself, with courage, wisdom and the love that sustains you through the journey.
Each of the three bags in the collection represents a different chapter of that journey, Frazier said, from work to play, from ambition to wisdom to love.
“I think they’re different chapters of your beginning,” she said. “You start as a visionary — you’ve got to be a visionary of thinking ahead to take that bold step. Then you have to have the wisdom to move forward. Then that comes with your heart and your love and your lineage on the way.”
She traces the idea back to “The Wiz,” the American adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz” she grew up watching in London. The characters Dorothy meets along the way, the lion searching for courage, the tin man for heart, the scarecrow for wisdom, are not strangers, Frazier noted. They are us.
“These are the characters that we have within us,” she said. “I believe my bag line is not something that we just carry. It’s not just what’s inside of us, we carry it all along — the self-discovery, like courage, being bold.”
That philosophy extends beyond the handbag; it encompasses the nonprofit work she has been engaged in for over a decade, work that, much like her entire story, began with her mother.
Mihaela Isadora Miller was a nurse in London. After retiring, she began opening her home to single mothers and their children. She took people in, helped families get steady and watched them grow. Frazier grew up in that house, surrounded by people her mother was quietly changing.
“My mom was a nurse, but when she retired, she helped other single moms,” Frazier said. “Seeing that from my eyes, you see how those families excel and blossom. That made me think, wow, I’d love to do something like that and pave that forward.”
Miller has since died. In 2015, Frazier founded the MIM Foundation, named after her mother, to keep her spirit alive. The nonprofit offers life skills programming, health resources and a weekly baby pantry with diapers and supplies for mothers in need.
The mothers who come, she said, have become family. Many eventually come back as volunteers, giving to other mothers what was once given to them. And, in turn, Frazier said she did not see coming that they started showing up for her, too.
“They check on me,” she said. “You possibly checking on you, but you checking on me and seeing if I’m okay. And that’s what I love.”
What she has built, Frazier recalled, is not a service. It is a circle, which is the same thing she is trying to build with the bag line.
“I’m not about followers,” she said. “I’m about community.”
With Mother’s Day approaching, Frazier has a message for any mother who has been sitting on a dream, waiting for the right moment or the right permission.
Stop waiting, she said. Name the fear. Find the block. Figure out how to get around it.
“The big F-E-A-R kicks in,” she said. “We don’t feel we can, or we’re told we can’t do it.”
She continued, “You can’t want it more for the mother if they don’t want it for themselves.”
But for the mothers who do want it?
“Dream big,” she said. “The sky’s the limit. Just tell me what your block is. How can we get you to that space?”
Frazier, a financial director, nonprofit founder, luxury bag designer, daughter, and community mother, has been finding her way throughout her journey, which she continues to build with Keis to Joi.
