If you’re getting this letter, it’s because at some point, you bought a Balloon Top, and I wanted to talk to you first.

I don’t think I’ve ever really told the whole story of this top or how much y’all had to do with how it became what it is today.

The funny thing is, the Balloon Top was not an instant hit.

When I first released it in black, y’all did not come running. It didn’t sell particularly well at all. But I loved that top, and I believed in it, so I kept wearing it, styling it and creating content around it. Slowly, people started paying attention.

Then I thought maybe we needed a lighter color, so we made cream.

And even then, it wasn’t immediately the girl.

I remember sitting in my car one day listening to Solange’s A Seat at the Table, and the “Tina Taught Me” interlude came on. Miss Tina was talking about Blackness, about not understanding why people have a problem with Black people loving who we are, and about how much she loves being Black.

That message resonated so deeply with me because I feel the same way. With all of the ups and downs that can come with being Black, I enjoy my Blackness. I love who I am, and I wouldn’t pick anything else.

For whatever reason, while I was sitting there listening to her, I thought about the cream Balloon Top. I already had a styling video of me wearing it that I had used before, so I took that same video, put the “Tina Taught Me” interlude over it and reposted it. None of it was planned. It just felt special to me in that moment because what she was saying connected so deeply with something in me.

It connected with y’all too.

That Reel took off, and people started seeing the Balloon Top differently. The cream Balloon Top became our bestseller, and that was really the beginning of the Balloon Top becoming what it is today.

After that, we started having a little more fun with the colors. Green came next and did incredibly well, and then brown came along and y’all showed up for that one too.

Then I had denim on my mind. Denim was trending, but more importantly, it is one of those fabrics that is just timeless, so naturally I started wondering what the Balloon Top would look like in denim.

Here’s the part I don’t think I’ve ever told y’all: I didn’t really like the sample. 😂

I was at a shoot with my photographer creating content for other pieces when the sample came in. I tried it on and thought, Ehhh…I don’t know about this one. Since we were already shooting, though, I decided we might as well photograph it.

It ended up being one of the last things we shot that day. The owner of the studio had this gorgeous old classic car, and because I LOVE classic cars, my photographer and I decided to shoot the Balloon Top next to it.

Once I got the pictures back, I started looking at it differently. I was like, Okay...she’s growing on me.

So I styled it a couple of ways and made a video for Instagram using one of my favorite Hot Boyz songs. Instagram used to be so much fun because I could throw one of my favorite songs over a styling video, typically something very hood but still GREAT music, and just go.

And one thing I’ve learned about y’all is that when you really love something, I don’t have to do too much anyway. Y’all are basically like, “Give it here. Add to cart.”

That Instagram video went crazy.

Then I posted the Balloon Top on TikTok, where I didn’t really have much influence at the time. I did a voiceover where I said something along the lines of, “If you don’t do nothing else this summer…” and everybody immediately got stuck on the word summer.

There were plenty of comments, some good and some not so good, but either way people were watching, talking, sharing and seeing that top.

And that denim Balloon Top went on to sell thousands and thousands of pieces, eventually surpassing cream, which had been our number-one Balloon Top up until then.

Crazy to think that I wasn’t even going to sell it.

We followed it with dark denim, which is still, in my opinion, one of the chicest Balloon Tops we’ve ever made.

Then came cheetah, and even that has a story.

The mini cheetah wasn’t originally the plan. My manufacturer messed up the original cheetah tops, and we had hundreds of them sitting there. I was going to eventually put them in a sample sale, and they actually sat for probably six or seven months.

Then one day I pulled one back out, styled it, looked at it differently and decided to give it another chance.

And y’all responded.

That has always been one of my favorite things about this brand. Sometimes I see something first, and sometimes y’all make me see it differently.

Then we experimented with the Balloon Top in a lightweight poplin fabric. I actually liked the poplin, but y’all made it pretty clear that it wasn’t your favorite. It didn’t move the way the other versions did, and the feedback wasn’t nearly as strong.

So I worked my magic.

I took the ones we had left to my local manufacturer, had them cut down into crop tops, and y’all got a little bit of the poplin version that way.

The relationship I have with y’all has never just been about me making something and telling you to buy it. I listen to what you love. I pay attention to what you wear over and over again, what you ask us to bring back and, yes, what you tell me you don’t love as much.

The Balloon Top has probably taught me that more than any other piece we’ve made.

I have seen y’all wear this top everywhere. Dinners, vacations, work, events, birthdays, and one of my favorites will always be seeing one of you wear it to her baby shower. She looked absolutely adorable.

There is something incredibly special about coming up with an idea, watching it become a real garment and then seeing you take it into your actual life, especially the important parts of your life. I like that my brand gets to go places with y’all. I like seeing something that started as an idea in my head become part of a memory in your life.

And maybe that’s also why I’m so protective of the Balloon Top.

Over the years, there have been plenty of attempts to copy it. Some closer than others and some, well, we’ll talk about those another day.

But when you think Balloon Top, I want you to think Terrell Dominick.

This piece became a signature here, and if other people saw something worth copying, they saw it because y’all made it worth noticing. Every time you bought another color, styled it, posted it or had somebody stop you and ask where you got that top, you helped build the story around this piece.

And now we’re adding another chapter.

For a while, I’ve had a particular color in my head that I desperately wanted to make in our original pebble fabric, the fabric that made those original Balloon Tops so special.

Getting it right was a struggle. The manufacturer I was working with at the time could never quite get the color right, and at one point they were sending me samples with these strange purple-ish hues that were nowhere near what I had envisioned.

So I went back to the drawing board.

This time, I worked with a new manufacturer and went back to that original fabric that made me fall in love with the Balloon Top in the first place. I was skeptical because I didn’t know if they would be able to pull off what I had in my head, but when I finally got the sample, they did.

I fell in love.

And while we were working on that, I decided to revisit another Balloon Top favorite in a slightly different way, and I’m just as excited about that one.

The full preview is coming soon, but until then, I want to know what you think about what you can see so far.

Click below, take a look at the color and tell me what you think. Do you love it? Would you wear it? Does it feel like a Balloon Top color to you?

I really want to hear from y’all.

The rest is coming soon.