Black Business Month: ‘Mess in a Bottle’ [Video]

BALTIMORE — A woman-owned apparel company that’s all about turning a “mess into a message.”

The conversation that inspired her to start the business came from one of the darker times in Baltimore’s history: the controversial death of Freddie Gray, a black man who died after being injured in police custody in 2015.

“While I was trying to experiment and figure out this Freddie Gray uprising and what that was making me feel inside, I was like, ‘This is a mess’,” she recalled.

That’s when Kalilah decided to turn the “mess into a message.” Going forward, she wanted the messages on her t-shirts to touch on love, life, career, and current events.

As a CEO who once had 16 employees and is now wearing multiple hats to keep her business going, she talked about how the ups and downs of …