Monique Green: Founder of Mo’s Parlor

So wait, how many businesses do you have?

Yeah, so I have my personal assisting business … and then I have my cosplay stuff, building props and stuff for movies and music videos. And then I have my skincare and beauty line, my anime merch, and I just started doing a lot more event planning with Daija Heyward.

Two BB Productions is the name of our little business … We’re focusing on trying to get a more diverse group in, as well as doing BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, People of Color] markets, which is something that isn’t done around here very often. We had our first one in December, and it was really successful.

Tell us more about cosplay and prop building. Do you have any favorite recent projects?

Cosplay stands for costume play, and it’s really prevalent in the convention world. So I do a lot of work for that and make patterns for cosplayers. I do a lot of weapon builds; I also have a seamstress … And then I’ve also been doing a lot of stuff for music videos and film over the last few years.

[Bellingham rapper] The Rhetorician had a music video series, and I made the props for all that: a giant cat, and hammers, and bear heads, and a pigeon, and a few other things. And I also just recently made, like, a giant chicken for some short scary film in town. It’s been pretty fun.

Why is a BIPOC market important to have in Bellingham?

We just wanted to be able to create safe spaces where other BIPOC business owners can come out and feel like they can actually succeed and thrive just being who they are, instead of having to put on airs … I think that there’s not a lot of designated spaces where we can feel safe in this town, you know, and just be ourselves.

It was such an amazing experience in December to do that — to just be in a place where there were, like, 27 Black-owned businesses. I had no idea there were that many BIPOC businesses in town until we collected everybody. So, my hope is that it just keeps growing and that we’ll be able to make bigger and bigger and bigger spaces, so it’s just like a norm.

I really hope that people seeing this will know and be able to spread the word, because we want everyone to come out and vibe. I mean, we all just want to vibe at the end of the day. And so I’m happy to be able to create those spaces where we can all just do that.

What do you do for fun?

I’m a social butterfly for sure, so I love going out to the local spots and just seeing all the friends. I love Redlight [Kitchen & Bar], I love Storia Cucina, I love Black Sheep … I travel a lot; I just came back from Japan. But mainly in town, I’m hanging out with the homies going to get some good food.