The Scoop On Tyra Banks’ Ice Cream Empire
Having turned her hand to multiple creative endeavours, legendary supermodel Tyra Banks has now entered her Willy Wonka era with the launch of her Smize & Dream ice cream brand in the UAE
Having turned her hand to multiple creative endeavours, legendary supermodel Tyra Banks has now entered her Willy Wonka era with the launch of her Smize & Dream ice cream brand in the UAE
With each click of the camera, Tyra Banks is giving the photographer shooting the images that accompany this article a totally different pose, expression or attitude. Years of experience in the fashion world have clearly taught her never to repeat herself. It’s an ethos that she has successfully carried over into her business career as well – because Tyra is in perpetual motion. Multitasking as she moves from one appointment to the next – strategising public appearances, planning future expansions… and all of it with a wide smile on her face and a ‘smize’ in her eyes.
“It’s interesting, one thing I don’t like is when I get introduced and they list off a whole bunch of different things I have done. Just because you’ve done something doesn’t mean that you deserve to be called that,” says Tyra. “I’ve written books but that doesn’t mean that I’m necessarily an author. I’ve acted but that doesn’t mean I’m an actor and I feel like it’s a little insulting to Nicole Kidman or Viola Davis or true actors. But where I put my energy now is what makes me the happiest, which is business, and that is what I want to be known for – being a businesswoman, being an entrepreneur.”
It’s clear that when Tyra puts her mind to something she becomes laser-focused on its success. In 1991 she famously booked 25 runway shows in her first season walking Paris Fashion Week by researching each house ahead of time and changed her walk and appearance to cater to the aesthetic of each brand before she went to the show’s casting call. She also spotted the reality TV groundswell early. Creating, producing and developing the reality series behemoth America’s Next Top Model, which was launched in 2003 and went on to be distributed to over 170 countries around the world and generated 40 international spinoffs. And she used her honed interpersonal and hosting skills to launch her own Emmy Award-winning talk show, The Tyra Banks Show in 2005.
Up until now many of the projects that Tyra has been associated with felt like natural extensions of her work as a supermodel. Creative endeavours like acting, singing, writing, and even launching a cosmetics line, all are part of a similar wheelhouse. But the idea to start an ice cream brand seems a little out of left field.
At first blush, it looks to be a direction that isn’t grounded in anything directly related to her. But nothing could be further from the truth. Tyra had the idea of establishing an ice cream company years ago, but other projects always ended up taking priority. Not anymore.
“Ice cream, it’s happiness for me,” explains Tyra. “No matter where I am in the world when I tell people that I have an ice cream company – it doesn’t matter if you are a head of state or the head of a school – the idea of ice cream just makes people happy.”
Tyra’s own early ice cream memories are a bit more bittersweet. “I remember on Friday nights when I was growing up, my mom and I would bond together and cry in the car and eat ice cream. So I think [for me] there is also that bit of nostalgia, of time spent with my mom talking about her dreams,” reveals the business mogul. She also recounts how years ago her own great-grandmother use to hand-crank vanilla ice cream for the family from scratch and that today she and her mother have shared their love of ice cream with her son. “It’s a family passion. My mom is obsessed. I live with my mom, and she has ice cream parties every night with my son. And they do it secretly… and I’m like, ‘we can’t have it every night!’” she says with a laugh and a shrug.
To set her Smize & Dream ice cream apart from the pretty saturated gourmet ice cream industry, Tyra has cleverly come up with a concept inspired by another youthful memory, that of digging for the prize found at the bottom of her Cracker Jack and breakfast cereal boxes as a kid. She created an edible version of that idea by placing a sprinkle-covered, truffle-sized dollop of cookie dough at the bottom of each pint. “I really wanted to connect with the kid inside each of us, that love of hunting out that hidden prize,” she explains.
It’s an experience that can now be enjoyed for the first time outside the United States as Tyra has teamed up with Brunch & Cake for an ice cream ‘residency’ at its restaurants in the UAE. “So many articles said it had some of the most beautiful locations with food that was gorgeous to the eye (some of the most Instagrammed in the region) and super tasty, too,” recounts Tyra about how she first connected with the company. “Plus, the staff was so kind to my mom… showing so much respect to her as the matriarch of our family. So when I decided to bring Smize & Dream to the UAE, I easily chose Brunch & Cake.” In honour of the collaboration and the fact that she was bringing her ice cream to the region, Tyra also decided to add a new flavour into her lineup specifically designed to cater to local taste buds and called it Chocolate Pistachi-dough.
Tyra, who will be turning 50 at the end of this year, admits that she is well aware that the milestone is just around the corner. “I keep saying, I’m almost 50!’” she exclaims with the energy of someone who sees age as just a number, not a state of mind. But there are some things she has learned about herself over the years that she is trying to work on. “I am a pleaser, I tend to get it from my mother. On TV I play characters, but in real life that’s not me. My natural thing is to be pleasing and smiling on the outside and then go home and cry or complain. But I’m trying to get better at speaking my truth. Because I’m almost 50!” she reiterates with a chuckle.
Another thing that Tyra is very intentional about is passing on her knowledge and the life lessons she has learned to future generations of entrepreneurs. She is now teaching classes to MBA students on personal branding at Stanford University. “The next generation needs to think: differentiation,” she says. “I see so many social media accounts that have a lot of followers but often there is very little that sets most of them apart. Without that element of uniqueness, personal branding is not going to be sustainable. So much is derivative… like a derivative of a derivative, of a derivative. The only way to burst through is by being distinctive.” And as for the issues of cancel culture and online bullying, of which she has been a target?
She is rather stoic about the topic and recommends that it’s better to just ignore it. “I just say to myself, ‘It’s my turn today and somebody else’s turn tomorrow.’ You just learn to roll with it.” However, when it comes to the branding of her Smize & Dream ice cream company, keen-eyed observers will note that Tyra’s own face is not on the packaging. Instead, it’s the cartoon visage of a DJ-loving grandma named DJ Splitz, who is framed by her daughter and her daughter’s son on the containers. These characters are clearly inspired by her own family tree, but Tyra wanted the story behind the brand to be inclusive and also scalable beyond her.
“People are always telling you, often women our age, that ‘you’re too old to do this.’ It’s something that we hear constantly. So I created this family that represents this idea that you’re never too old – or too young – to reach your dreams,” she declares. The three characters are going to be the foundation of a whole entertainment world that Tyra is planning to build out over the coming years (books, cartoons etc) to tell a more global message of the importance of never giving up on your dreams. Tyra certainly hasn’t.
Photography: Mazen Abusrour. Styling: Laura Jane Brown. Hair: Maggie Semaan. Make-Up: Sharon Drugan. Photographer’s Assistant: Khalid Zaben.
Smize & Dream Images Supplied
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s February 2023 Issue.