My Colour is Gold: Following the Call of the Disco Ball

Today, Most Curious is welcoming consummate professional, Aisha of the freshly-launched prop company, My Colour is Gold, out of the shadows and into the spotlight! Aisha is a daughter of London, as well as her Jamaican dad and English-Armenian mother. She’s a wife to a wonderfully support husband who is both Chinese and Irish and a mother to a 20 month old, living, thriving representative of her diverse history and background. And for the first time in an expansive event production career, Aisha is finally the superstar of the show.

“My background’s in events; I’ve always worked in event production, specializing in lighting and sound in unique venues.” As Aisha humbly, but enthusiastically tells me some of these venues by name—the Tower of London, the Natural History Museum, Kensington Palace—I can’t help but be impressed. “I’ve got a unique talent for making very pretty places even more special,” she tells me with a grin. Having spent the morning gazing adoringly at the exhilarating aesthetic of this old-timer/newcomer’s props, I can only imagine that Aisha speaks nothing but truth.

Aisha’s one of the lucky few who was able to use the pandemic to her advantage; her 20 month old lockdown baby is in the next room. She would have been on maternity leave during lockdown; I get the impression that she was planning to take the time to reassess even before the pandemic forced a reshuffle of priorities, leading to a shift that produced her greatest works yet—her first child and My Coulor Is Gold.

I’ve been curious about her company’s name since I first heard it—and aren’t you? The story’s a good one, hold tight! Though initially unnamed, Aisha’s prop company was a long-seeded idea. With experience in high-pressure environments working for clients such as the BRIT Awards and Grammys, creating celebrity-fueled afterparties, as well as several high-end, luxury weddings in beautiful locals, like Tuscany, she knew that someday she’d like to have a production company of her own, but done in a more sustainable, forward-thinking way than she had previously witnessed. “Throughout the years I’ve done some really cool, big events and seen first-hand how we can spend ridiculous amounts of money producing the most amazing things, used for three hours and then chucked in the bin—horrifying to watch them go into the crusher.” She tells me how her friends and family would only see her work through photographs, the actual products of her production already relinquished to the trash compactor before she could glory in their construction. These were the same people who encouraged her baby steps towards her own prop hire company. Then came the actual baby and a big leap: she would not return to work, instead she would pursue an events career under her own name. But first, she had to figure out what that name would be!

“There’s a little story behind that as well,” she says, cheeky, knowing the good stuff’s coming. Adamant that she wanted to hit the ground running—this company wouldn’t be a dalliance, or a trial, but a real shift of priorities in her and her family’s life—she knew the name had to make an impact. Hyper-aware of branding and aesthetic, Aisha knows perception is everything. “This is how I want to be; this is how I want to look,” she tells me, reminiscing about her thought-process. Given her background and association with the music industry, she wanted her props company to have a wide appeal, for her props to be “…slick, cool and accessible for all matter of people, companies and events.” She didn’t want her name to limit her to just one kind of event or to just doing one thing—Aisha loves working with props, but she’s done the whole shebang before. Who’s to say one day her company name won’t stand for production as well as prop supply?

She turned again to her friends and family, asking a friend of her husband—a copywriter—a very simple question, “How do you come up with really cool words and names?” Aisha gathered like-minded people around her, “my most gobby, fabulous friends who have opinions,” she tells me and they began to play word associate games. “There were some corkers in there—some really inappropriate ones as well,” she tells me with a laugh. She’d been advised by the copywriter friend that her name should be in some way relatable to her as a person—it’s all in the branding, and Aisha is as much the brand as the name soon would be.

“What’s your favorite color?” a fabulous friend asked. From there the group brought up how black is every color, all at once, all the time. Every color is black because of the way it absorbs every light and pigment on the scale. Every color is black, she later told her mother. “But your favorite color is gold,” her mother replied, a bit confused perhaps as to why it would matter than someone else’s favorite color was black. Aisha’s favorite color was gold.

“My color is gold,” Aisha replied.

Ta-da! “It’s a bit of me, a bit of the brand—all glitz and shiny and if it could be any more fabulous I would make it more fabulous.” But it really can’t be, can it?

Not only is Aisha’s color gold, but her props are too! They also pay homage to a bold classic: black, but done in such a way that even my wedding-weary eyes (I’ve been planning my own day for over two years!) felt my heart skip a beat at the sight of a series of props so loud and demanding and awe-inspiring as Aisha’s. I tell her as much as we bond over our love for black and gold, the combo and all it represents when it comes to branding. I am only too excited to go through each of her debut pieces, one by one, and learn the names of the two Disco Queens who’ve caught my eye.

“Their names are Chaka and Donna; they are my fabulous ladies.”

“They can have silver or gold disco balls for heads; they’re fab and currently my most popular!” She’s already seen the benefits of marketing My Colour is Gold to a wide events field—the requests for the Disco Queens have come from all sorts: product launches, parties, runway shows, the list is endless!

“How can you be pissed off with a glittering LOVE in the middle of the road?”

The LOVE letters—each a sturdy, oversized piece with a gold-to-black gradient on their mirror-disc surfaces—have already, literally, stopped traffic. While photographing her pieces ahead of the recent website launch, Aisha watched as Londoners—yes, you read that right—slowed traffic, rolled their windows down, and called to her—everyone in agreement: they loved the love.

“How can you be pissed off with a glittering LOVE in the middle of the road?” Aisha asks with a grin and a laugh. People got out of their cars to snap their own photos. I ask if the letters were designed to encourage people to sit on their sturdy surfaces, “I designed them to be big and chunky so they had some clout to them—didn’t want them to be flimsy.”

“LOVE letters—everybody loves them at their weddings and festivals. Love itself is a universal love—love is such a lovely message, isn’t it?”

It is! And the inspiration for her other big pieces come from the love in her own life.

Her Wild Wall was test-piloted at her own wedding as a living wall constructed by friend and florist, Chantal Flores London, and can be vamped however you like; she’s seen it feature logos, couples names, dates—some done in acrylic and others in neon.

The Wild Wall, along with all of her props, come with their own, bespoke flight cases; her technical background has helped her prioritize the presentation and protection of her pieces. Her props, inspired by her past, will be around for a long, long time because of it.

I have to know more about the disco…mirror…well, either way, you can’t really call it a “ball,” can you? Aisha’s take on the classic comes heart-shaped.

“For my wedding in the drinks reception I had the biggest mirrorball I could get in the venue—if I could’ve had bigger I would’ve!” Inspired by the work she did on the 2017 Brit Awards afterparty hosted at Freemasons Hall, as well as the joy her giant disco ball brought to her wedding, Aisha wanted to put her own stamp on a cult favorite. “Why not have a heart shape? Because it’s fabulous! And who doesn’t love a bit of love?”

“…it doesn’t matter how big or small, everybody loves a disco ball,” she says, a poet, though she doesn’t know it—her branding is really that authentic.

“From a design perspective, disco is and will always be an inspiration for me—just how it makes you feel! Not all of my props will be disco-tasctic, [but] the vibe [disco] brings—fun, outrageous, dancing, glitz—I want to give people that with all of my props.” She’s also found massive inspiration in Jason Morais, a creative and former co-worker; “He taught me to go with what you think is best because it is best—don’t dilute anything.”

“Why do things by halves when it can be done times a thousand?”

One of the most important aspects of her business—sustainability—is one of those things Aisha refuses to do by halves. As she speaks about implementing her low-waste business model as a direct result of her soul being previously crushed, alongside her temporary, mostly un-recyclable event installations, I think she’s definitely doing things times one thousand now.

“Our industry can be the worst for sustainability—can be so ‘throw-away’ it’s criminal—it’s amazing everyone is taking a step in the right direction,” she tells me. Not only did Aisha want people to have the same access to the glitzy, afterparty world she inhabited a few nights a year, but she wanted to keep the party going! “I’ve spent more money to make sure everything can last for a very long time,” she explains, detailing the way her custom flight-casings have been molded to each element of her prop business (you can see them in the promo video on the homepage of her website!) No need to overindulge in excess wrapping—buh-bye bubble wrap!—she’s making sure her precious cargo arrives at your event looking exactly as it did when it left its last party. She encourages other event companies to follow suit—she’d love to work in a field in which every piece was cased for longevity, reducing the need to repair or replace decor at the expense of the Earth. Her husband recently suggested that in place of cable-ties she work to create custom, reusable velcro ties; needless to say, she’s cut her last cable.

“With sustainability in play that’s going to throw up some interesting ways people move forward with things—a massive thing at the forefront with younger couples; people finding creative ways to do fabulous things while also thinking of the environment will be on the top of the list,” Aisha tells me on the topic of trends in the weddings world. “People will be braver and bolder with whatever their choices are. Before, there was a softness and a shine and now more and more people are going to be brave enough to put their own stamp on something—to do a bit more out-of-the-box thinking. Maybe the trend is going to be being a bit braver,” she muses.

Follow the call of the disco ball!

So what’s next for My Colour is Gold? Aisha’s waiting on her matte black van to be delivered in March. “On the side it’s going to say ‘follow the call of the disco ball,’ she tells me gleefully and I am STUNNED. Aisha has managed to surprise me. As a member of the weddings world, both personally and professionally, I am many things on any given day: inspired, over-joyed, enthusiastic, motivated, and educated, but never surprised. My mouth hangs open for a good ten seconds. “Follow the call of the disco ball,” I repeat, loving every syllable. “I love that,” I say and really, really mean it.

She’s also looking forward to the A Most Curious Wedding Fair, also in March, as it happens! Most Curious will be her first wedding show as My Colour is Gold, but a few years ago she was attending as a bride. “I went to Most Curious when I was getting married—the coolest people, varied styles. A friend took me to another, more traditional wedding fair—it wasn’t scary, everyone was lovely, but it was all a bit done,” she says. However, she’s looking forward to seeing the ways things have changed since then: “Even when I got married in 2018 the style has changed from then—even the alternative style,” Aisha says, and she’s right. It’s a new day, people are motivated by different things, and styles come and go. Bravery is definitely on the menu, along with a devotion to making sure the weddings world is seen as being open to all, as well as bespoke to all—out with a homogenous style, even in the alternative weddings world—and in with inclusion. “I love the stance Most Curious are taking. I think it’s just amazing and the content it inspires is amazing—I love learning about everybody and what they’re up to and what they’re about—everybody is the same, but different. I’m very open to everything and everybody,” Aisha tells me with enthusiasm.

Aisha’s first-ever styled shoot—the one that represents her most important step into the brand identity of My Colour is Gold, named so to keep herself from being pigeon-holed—features a dark-skinned, black bride. Is this a sign that inclusivity is hitting the mainstream, or else permeating some layer of the weddings and events world in an authentic and effortless way? The model’s name is Anita, and casting her was a no-brainer for Aisha. “You’re my vibe, you’re channeling my energy,” Aisha says of working with Anita. I feel it is important to note that, due to chronic, colorblind racism in the weddings world, Aisha’s choice of brand representative is as bold as her props, even if Aisha didn’t set out to make waves or change the optics of wedding marketing during her selection process. Her hope is that those who view her website will feel represented by the spirit of My Colour is Gold. “I hope people think of it that way,” she says.

At the A Most Curious Wedding Fair, March 5th & 6th at the Truman Brewery (a favorite venue of Aisha’s—get your tickets by following the link!) she hopes to find her people amongst the suppliers and the attendees. “You want people to walk into your wedding and for people to see what’s possible. You have to have the vision, but you don’t have to have an enormous budget,” promises the professional. Listen to her, she knows what she’s talking about, she’s been here and hopefully soon she’ll be at your wedding or event, Disco Queens in tow.