Sipping YOLA Mezcal: Wild Agave

February 19, 2022

Through a uniquely expansive outlook, centering art and design that emphasizes social impact, YOLA Mezcal is more than just the beginnings of a great night. Founders Yola Jimenez, Lykke Li, and Gina Correll have mastered the widely popular spirit created from a 1971 recipe from Jimenez’s grandfather. The brand continues to stimulate divergent minds through meaningful acts of support, a business run by women, with a process mirroring the history of women in mezcal production.

In Spring 2022, YOLA Mezcal presents Wild Agave, a limited edition run of 400 newly designed bottles by an array of eclectic artists. These collaborations speak to the importance of art evoking cultural influence and positive change. In addition, a percentage of the proceeds will be donated to organizations supporting women and girls in Oaxaca.

Text by Michael Hall
Photos by Jesper Lund

The first transformation of YOLA's iconic bottle was through multidisciplinary artist and fashion designer Barbara Sánchez-Kane's free-hand, bridging moments of remembrance swathed in powerful utterances. "It was very important to me to maintain the fluidity of the drawing – this means the extraction of a loose line sketch that I did with oil sticks. I think at the end, it looks like you're in a place you don't know, but you're familiar with, you know, like when you have this ambiguity of somebody you remember, but you don't know where you remember them from. That's what I want people to see in the bottles, even when the bottle is by itself. I wanted the bottle to give this idea of immersion within nature," Sánchez-Kane explains.

A developing relationship with YOLA, influenced by her dynamic craft, it only made sense that Sánchez-Kane was the first to be tapped for YOLA Mezcal: Wild Agave. "Barbara and I knew each other previously, and I'm a long-time admirer of her work. I always knew that she was someone I wanted to work with, so when we began planning around Wild Edition, and the opportunity to collaborate with an artist came up, I knew immediately that I wanted to get Barbara involved," says Jimenez. Celebrating this exciting launch, YOLA showcased the new bottle rendition among friends in ZONA MACO, Mexico City.

In an exclusive interview with office, YOLA founders Yola Jimenez, Lykke Li, and Gina Correll discuss uplifting artists and offerings of social change.

Can you tell me a little about your relationship with mezcal?

Lykke — Mezcal represents my lust for life and celebration. Whenever I need a pick me up, or I want to get transported into a high vibration place, I have some.

Gina — I met Yola, and I met mezcal, and they both changed my life in the most expansive way. Mezcal is magic...bonding and opening people and is a pure exhilarating natural high. It's so complex; it has the range and elegance of the finest wine and the simplicity and common quality of the bottom of the barrel whiskey – two things I love deeply. An earth juice that takes you somewhere else. Yola has these qualities as well, both cosmic and grounded.

Yola — My relationship with mezcal started early on in my life – some of my very early memories are of being at my grandparents' house and seeing my grandfather go and come back with bottles of mezcal that he'd made. Then, as I got a little older, he would take me with him to see the town where he had a little farm where he was making mezcal and where he had friends that made it. He grew up in the town next to it, and he would explain the importance of mezcal for that region and for himself and how it was something that he felt was essential to the way Oaxacan Indigenous communities interacted as a family and with friends and how it's something that they've been making for hundreds of years and very much part of their everyday life. He would often have friends over who were also from different regions of Oaxaca who now lived in Oaxaca city, and they would drink mezcal and chat, so it has always had a special connection to not just where I come from, but this idea of happiness and connection and interaction and, for me, a great fondness to one of the most important people in my life.

What's the ethos behind YOLA?

Yola, Gina & Lykke — Strong women, Strong drink – encompassing our mission for progress, equality, freedom, and a celebratory spirit.

An essential aspect of YOLA is that you are stimulating Oaxacan women and shedding light on the power of women and their impact during the process of creating mezcal. Since your brand is run and bottled by women, can you speak to YOLA's mission?

Lykke — It's a natural continuation of our friendship and how we like to treat each other and all the women around us, we always want to empower and give respect and credit where it's due. I want our success to be circular.

Gina — It happened naturally and was instinctual, the mission was bred out of YOLA's vision for a brighter future for Oaxacans and our bond as women and what we could do to expand on it.

Yola — For me, I always had the connections of Mexico being my place of birth and my grandfather – because of those two things, the ethos of the brand has always been how we can make this something that works for people in Oaxaca and how we can make it something that works for their everyday life – specifically women. It was after my grandfather died when I started working on this and trying to bring it to Mexico City that I was working with the people that he had worked with, and I discovered that women were really such a huge piece of every part of the process of the production of mezcal and how integral it was for every member of the family, yet they were rarely recognized. You would have to speak to one person who was usually the elder member of the family for any final decisions, and that became something that I wanted to try to change – I wanted to include every possible woman and make them feel like they had a name and a position, and they were part of the process, both unofficially, and officially. So we started implementing, trying to employ as many women as possible, and would pay them directly – that became our main focus. We asked ourselves how we could really include women in positions of power and change something that had been structured in a different way for so long. From that moment on, our mission has been to create something that is culturally inclusive and respectful, primarily to women, but also to everyone involved, and from that to create a product that can be exported in a way that is sustainable and is something that we feel proud of.

While the bottles are being transformed and Mexican culture continues to be recognized, not through a monolithic lens, YOLA is donating a portion of sales for women and young girls in Oaxaca. Can you speak about this cause and how it came about in this way?

Lykke — We want to honor this sacred tradition and its roots, so this was the most obvious choice. These young girls are our future.

Gina — We have always found ways to give back throughout the entirety of the brand's life, it's innate to our origins, and this is just an extension of how we've chosen to work within the realm of a for-profit commercial business. Mezcal is such an important aspect of Oaxacan life, and this is a way to recognize that significance.

Yola — With the launch of our first wild addition, we wanted to focus on having a small production and making most of the profits go to specific costs in Oaxaca – that is close to our heart. As I mentioned in the last question, creating job opportunities for women in Oaxaca is our main focus, and I think it provides a big difference. We are firm believers in not having this version of charity that, but to create job opportunities and equality and to provide a sense of pride and dignity, that comes with showing someone that you value their work and their time and show these Indigenous women that their time is of the same importance as a man or as a foreign product or, in Mexico, as a white person's time. So we believe in equal and just pay for women's work. We want to create and help support more opportunities for situations like this to happen in Mexico, not only through work but through education and healthcare systems. We're going to work with different organizations to do this, and we will also continue to have a percentage of our profits from all of our special editions go to various associations in Oaxaca that support different aspects of education, safety, and/or health care for women and education for younger women in Oaxaca. We want to grow our company there and have a Palenque, which is a farm where you make mezcal, be something that not only produces mezcal but is inclusive to many other aspects of interest for the women there – different things that they choose they want to be part of such as gastronomy, educational lectures or other programs. Essentially, our main goal is that we're able to grow not only in the number of women that can be part of the brand but in the number of different activities they can engage in besides just work and mezcal production methods.

Wild Edition centers the power of art, allowing for connections to happen, visualized in reimagined bottles. These collaborations speak to the expansive landscape of Mexican culture. How has it been working with Barbara Sánchez-Kane, and what can we expect in the upcoming bottle partnerships?

I think it's wonderful that Mexican culture continues to be recognized and is having such a big recognition around the world. I think it's very exciting – but being Mexican is also something that I hope is done with respect and something that won't be a trend or a temporary fad. I feel that growing up in Mexico in the 90s, the things that were considered very Mexican or very Indigenous were valued in the country, mezcal being a great example of it – tequila, which is a type of mezcal, became famous internationally because it was done in the white part of Mexico in Guadalajara, and mezcal, which had been made for longer never had any value because it was done by Indigenous hands. So I hope that this new recognition focuses on the value and work of people that haven't been recognized before, particularly Indigenous women. So I am very much looking forward to and am excited to be part of this recognition of that work and that long tradition, and how, hopefully, it will be in the forefront of a whole new generation of women that are proud of their work and that it can expose it so that it's recognized and can help them to receive fair pay and respect for it.

Mexico has always had a very rich culture and many different forms of art, and the power of art feels very tangible, too – and now there is this whole new generation of artists that are being recognized internationally. These young female artists are doing wonderful work, and we really want to focus on that with the Wild Edition and the various versions of that through different collaborations while also trying to express a new and unique idea of what Mexican female culture is – something that, for us, is a lot more complex and interesting and we're able to talk about gender notions in a dynamic way, and I feel that Barbara Sánchez Kane's work really speaks about that. Barbara has this idea of a strong woman and the Mexican macho and the sentiment behind that, and she portrays it through her art in such a powerful and direct way. We really wanted to communicate the same message as Barbara, and by collaborating with her, we were able to speak about a new version of a Mexican woman that can combine all of these aspects – a woman who is strong and dynamic and sensitive but also very Mexican and vibrant and wild. Barbara's approach to her design was very, very beautiful and showed how everything in life is always a work in progress. Everything is a sketch that we keep working on and returning to, and that sketch is ourselves. As women, through history, we've had very limited time and space to draw that sketch, so now we're trying to find different ways that can increase that canvas and make it about all of the things that we are at once. This is something we will continue to do as well – we won't have a static period or feed into this idea that a woman can be bought. I'm very proud of what she did with the bottle and very, very excited about the collaboration, and in the future, we want to work with people in different industries that are also interested in this idea of womanhood and wildness because what Gina, Lykke and I value the most is the collaboration with this very talented group of women that we've been able to work with since the beginning of the brand. We see this as a great opportunity to expand on the many different aspects and the richness of the culture that Mexico has – both culinary and artistic – so we are very excited to grow these programs and collaborations and to have them based in Mexico and to involve the women of Oaxaca as much as possible but to also make them International. We want this to be an example of the many different possibilities that exist within collaboration and to use it as an opportunity to expand the dialogue of what Mexico is and can be and to change the dialogue of a developing country and a country torn apart by violence and corruption to a dynamic country that's based on beauty and love and hope.

Culture

Mowalola x Miss Sixty Launch with H. Lorenzo

I swing my legs over the ropes that guard the VIP entrance. Always over (I’m 5’10), never under. I’m late to the H. Lorenzo x Mowalola event, and the line wraps around the block. I don’t want to be an asshole, but I hate waiting in lines; it just ruins everything.

“Hey, my friend is DJing right now. My name should be down,” I say.

The youngish security guard looks me up and down. I have made an adventurous choice for this type of crowd. Neon pink hoodie, bright orange vest, my Raimundo jeans, and Jeremy Scott animal print sneakers. I let him take me in and look over his shoulder. Hmmm… I will be swathed in darkness when he lets me in. Dark night, dark clothes, dark makeup, furs, hoods, leather accessories, and sunglasses. I don’t recognize anyone, but it’s hard to tell who anyone is because I can’t see after 8 pm without my glasses. Night blindness. I can still catch a vibe though.

“She’s in the bathroom,” Mr. Guard says, interrupting my squinting.

“Who?” I ask.

“The woman in charge of the list.”

That’s a drag. I want to dance. Lately, I’m going out in the name of music.

“So…can I go in?” I ask.

“Just wait for her to get back.”

That sounds fine. I wait. The outdoor smoking area is packed. I hope the inside mirrors this, maybe with people dancing instead of blowing smoke in each other’s eyes.

“You got instagram?” The guard asks me after about ten minutes of flirting.

“Can I go in?” I said.

He laughs. He lets me in the event without a wristband.

Inside, I understand why the other guard was gone for so long. I make a mental note to not drink too much liquid; the bathroom line is almost as long as the line to get in. The party is popping, far from a flop.

I push through the crowd solo, following the speakers to the DJ booth. The immersive visuals provide me with enough light to make out Mowalola in a gold bikini and her low rise denim. My pulse races like the horse printed on the front of her coochie. That’s the point of the collection, obviously.

I spend a good thirty minutes grinding my hips before swaying to the open bar. I smile to myself, noting that it’s a mezcal forward menu. I see a drink that disgusts me, so I order it without hesitation. It’s a mezcal coffee concoction. My heart ’s ran through already, why not go all in? I hear Shigecki’s set start so I head back to dance. I’m jumping around, sweating, and I yelp when I pause for a beat. Strippers have materialized and are working poles opposite and behind the DJ booth. Good. Events should be sexy.

I end the night smoking my friend’s Korean strawberry cigarettes taking in the air of cool- when a man comes up to me wild-eyed exclaiming that we look just like one another. I look at him- no, not at all. I turn slowly, remembering what I should be doing: listening to DJ G2G’s set. Back inside, she is playing reggaeton type beats with lasers beaming out of her headphones (I want these). A rave in it of herself.

Too bad all the events end at 2 am in LA.

Culture

Vans Pipe Masters 2024

On the first night, Steve Van Doren and the Vans team hosted the heat draw for the competitors at a casual backyard barbecue. The son of Vans’ co-founder Paul Van Doren, Steve has worked in the family business for decades, and is now known as the Ambassador of Fun. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a cowboy hat made out of old shoes, he was definitely dressed for the part. The surfers, along with family and friends gathered in a relaxed setting as 40 men’s and 20 women’s names were drawn from a shoebox. The competition would run in 3 rounds, the top 4 men and 4 women with the highest scores moving onto the finals. When asked about their strategies, most gave answers along the lines of “get waves.” Refreshingly simple.

After waiting a few days for favorable conditions, the first day of competition kicked off with Women’s Round 1. It was finally time to see Pipeline in action. Banzai Pipeline is known as one of the most dangerous places to surf due to the powerful waves breaking over shallow and sharp reefs. With the potential to crash into the rocky edges or have leashes caught in caves, it takes a ton of skill–-and even more courage–to surf here. No stranger to these risks, the first heat included favorites Caity Simmers and “Queen of Pipeline” Moana Jones Wong, who showed off exactly why they’d been successful here in the past. Midway through the heats, Mother Nature decided to throw in another element as a light drizzle turned into a proper downpour. Rain or shine, the athletes went out unfazed, focused on getting their first points on the board.

After another short day’s break, the competition continued with the women’s second round and the men’s first. The beach was filled with spectators, locals and tourists alike, as the competition was free for all to attend. While fans rooted equally for the women and men, the most popular were the local Hawaiian athletes, which made up about half the competition. The women started off the day again, hyping up the crowd with incredible rides. One ride by Bettylou Sakura Johnson earned the first Bag of Cash of the day– a cash prize (of undisclosed amount) awarded in a brown paper bag to any surfer that pulls off a wow moment, excites the crowd, and pulls off something spectacular regardless of what the conditions might look like.

Winds picked up as the men’s competition began and two strategies quickly emerged: an aggressive approach, targeting any decent waves to build small scores; and a patient approach, waiting for the perfect wave to chase a high single score. Even the waves that were unrideable were a spectacle in itself. The sheer size, illustrated by the length of surfboards riding up and over, and the following crash of white water spray was hypnotizing. Then imagining having to experience it out on the water, duck diving under or being lifted over, brought a renewed respect for the surfers.

After watching these early rounds, it was time for office to head back to the cold. With the competition officially spanning from December 8-20, it seemed the forecast was gearing up for some massive waves— and it didn’t disappoint. Following from afar through Vans’ Instagram and live updates, we saw the full extent of what it means to surf at Pipeline. After a series of electrifying and daring surfs, the 2024 winners were crowned: Erin Brooks and Nathan Florence.

The thrill of watching top athletes compete at the highest level of their sport, even remotely, never fails to inspire. Few sports surrender so completely to the forces of nature as surfing does. And at its core, surfing is all about having a deep respect for the ocean—its unpredictable whims, its immense power, and its ever-changing moods.

Culture

The Cost of Queendom

December 17, 2024

One summer afternoon in New York, a few days after their New York premiere of the acclaimed documentary Queendom, office met up with documentary filmmaker Agniia Galdanova and producer Igor Myakotin at a tattoo parlor on the west side of Manhattan. While Agniia received a tattoo of the portmanteau “DOCU CUNT” across her fists, she — unfazed by the needle on her knuckles — answered our questions alongside Igor about the making of the stirring story that has traveled around the world.

One of the opening scenes of Queendom depicts a ritual many of us are all too familiar with in the 21st century. Jenna Marvin, the documentary film’s central subject, takes her friend along with her to take photos for Instagram. When she finds a suitable backdrop, she poses, poses, poses, and then reviews the photos. Dissatisfied, she gives her notes, and then returns to pose, pose, pose again.

By Brook Aster
Photos by Liv Solomon

The ritual may be familiar, but nothing else about the scene — from its setting to its stakes — is ordinary. The backdrop behind Jenna is a sweeping expanse of ice and snow in a small Russian port town called Magadan. Jenna is dressed in drag, but not drag of the Rupaul’s Drag Race variety; her drag has been referred to as “creature drag.” Her signature white face paint, platform heels and surrealist costumes, with their exaggerated sculptural proportions and use of duct tape and repurposed items, catches the ire of her neighbors and the love of online admirers alike. Jenna eventually accrued a following on social media for her public and technically illegal drag performances, which often involved little more than her walking or being in public spaces but nevertheless were often met with abuse and threats of imprisonment.

But when Agniia first encountered Jenna, she hadn’t yet reached the level of virality that would eventually come in the years to follow. The filmmaker was researching different drag performers in Russia for her sophomore project, which she thought would be a docuseries, when she heard from a friend about a young drag queen from Magadan. “I was like, this is impossible. I have to meet this person,” Agniia remembers. “And I could not actually go meet her because I was in Moscow and she was in Saint Petersburg, so I sent a friend of mine with whom I’d been studying with in film school, and she went and filmed the sample.” The simple video, showing Jenna and her friend getting dressed up for a party, struck something in Agniia. The drag was an earlier, more prototypical version of the style Jenna is now known for; less duct tape and ornamentation, but still that signature striking makeup. “Something sparked. I knew I just had to stick to this feeling,” Agniia says. She decided to turn the docuseries into a documentary solely focused on Jenna.

Around that time, the entire world came to a grinding halt: the onset of COVID-19 pandemic had just led to lockdowns around the globe. With only a couple thousand followers on social media at that point in time, Jenna had tried to branch out and connect with other drag artists in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, but faced rejection; her drag was extremely unconventional, and not even other drag artists quite understood it. “I think we found each other at the right moment, because nobody knew what to do, how to cope with all this,” Agniia says. “Jenna was saying that she was lost, and she also didn't know how to develop her art next.”

Unlike some of the other artists Agniia had initially researched, Jenna didn’t need much convincing to allow the camera into her life. “[Especially] after COVID came, there wasn't really [any] drag in my life,” Jenna recounts when I speak to her later over Zoom. “I realized that what drag is for me is not just a costume, a dress, something that you leave, that you take off and then in the dead of the night you put back on. Later, I understood that this is who I am, that I am art and I am drag, and that this is way bigger and more important than just clothing or costume.”

[LEFT TO RIGHT: Agniia Galdanova, Jenna Marvin, Igor Myakotin]

When it came time to move into production stages, Agniia sent a clip to Igor, who had been referred to her by a past colleague. When Igor saw the footage, he was similarly struck by Jenna — and even more struck to find out she shared his small hometown of Magadan. “It was just so fateful to know that I also come from this town, and I've never seen it through this cinematic lens, through the vision that Agniia has,” he says. “I was mesmerized by the footage, mesmerized by Jenna. I thought to myself, I have to do everything I can [for us] to work together, whatever the collaboration is gonna be.”

The two followed Jenna for over three years; Agniia first relocated to St. Petersburg, where Jenna had taken up residence after leaving her grandparents’ home in Magadan, and later Jenna moved in with Agniia in her home in Moscow. All the while, Igor and his team worked remotely from the United States to meet Agniia’s production needs. Inevitably, with all their time spent together, Agniia and Jenna became close.

“There is an unspoken rule in documentary filmmaking that you have to keep this line, and you can’t overcome certain boundaries,” Agniia explains. “In my first film, it was not an easy subject [to do this with] as well. I was following a family for seven months, and [we became] close, but I always was trying to keep my distance, and was constantly thinking about it. How much should I say? How much should I give?” But as she got to know Jenna, it became clear that this time, that distance wouldn’t be possible. “With Jenna almost from the very beginning, I was like, fuck it. That’s not going to work with this one. I'm going to break this rule 100%. I never regretted it, because that's actually what built up the trust that is there.”

As Jenna's public performances continued and began to garner more public attention, her online audience multiplied. Among her virtual admirers was French fashion maven Michèle Lamy, who would eventually sign onto Queendom as an executive producer. Lamy's discovery of Jenna led to an invitation to walk in the Rick Owens show in Paris — her first time modeling, and her first time leaving Russia in her life. Of course, Agniia and her camera followed. But most of their excursions were not so glamorous; many of Jenna's performances shown in the documentary were undertaken at a real risk to her physical safety, and by extension, to the safety of Agniia. But neither of them were daunted.

I remember who I am. And this is what carries me through this life.

After all, Jenna was used to both taking risks and documenting them well before she was the subject of a film; she and her friends long filmed the often impassioned, sometimes violent reactions of strangers and policemen to their mere existence in public spaces in drag. And after a protest performance in which she wrapped herself in the Russian flag, Jenna was kicked out of beauty school, her last attempt at a practical route before pursuing her drag as a full time venture.

The only time Agniia tried to dissuade her was on Paratrooper’s Day, a Russian military holiday often characterized by the drunk soldiers roaming the streets. The risk for violence was especially high. “On Paratroopers Day, people say you can't come out in skinny jeans or with nail polish,” Jenna describes. “[I think] you should do the opposite. You should really make a statement and come out wearing what you want to wear. I think that clothes, what we wear, is really at some point beyond our psyche, our mind, our understanding. It is as if it's a certain kind of spice that is enticing you and you follow the scent of that spice and you don't see anything else except that scent and you follow it. That's how I see it.”

“I was like, ‘girl, maybe we should not do that,’” Agniia says. “Igor was stressing out and she told us, ‘well, you don't need to follow me. I'm gonna go and do it. I don't care if you're coming or not.’” In the end, Jenna ventured out for her performance anyway, protesting the then-recent invasion of Ukraine. Agniia followed. Not shown in the film is that the two were arrested, and managed to talk the police out of their arrest.

Not too long after, she would have to leave Russia again, this time moving for Paris for good; the film follows her struggles to get a visa in time to leave the country after the onset of the war. “It's already been three years that I've been in France, and it is important for me to understand and remember who I am, and to remember that pain, those moments when we were back in Russia doing drag, fighting with the police and law enforcement,” Jenna says. “It is important that this resistance continues and that those voices are not being silenced. Yes, here there’s much more freedom, there are pride parades and queer people can get married, but this is an illusion because there are also places where you cannot get married and you cannot enjoy the same freedoms. I cling to who I am, who I was from the very beginning. I remember who I am. And this is what carries me through this life.”

“Meeting Jenna gave me hope for the future of the country, because governments come and go, people in power come and go, but the generations change at the same time,” Igor says. “So it warms my heart to see that someone like her came from somewhere like that. If I saw her back then at a similar age, it would be even more personal. I think I would’ve accepted myself as gay quicker, and I wouldn't be nervous or closed and not open to the world or myself… Working with this project also meant that we were amplifying the voices of many, many people who couldn't speak like Jenna could.”

For Agniia, the honor of telling Jenna's story is only paralleled by the honor of having her in her life. “We found each other,” Agniia says. “And what I learned from Jenna is so precious; about life, about art, about surviving. And I appreciate it a lot. This film grew so much larger than just a documentary, because I have a family now, a working family.”

Queendom is now available to stream on Apple TV.