LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 08: Domo Wells attends the 17th Annual WIF Oscar Nominees Party, presented by Max Mara, with support by Major Sponsor ShivHans Pictures and Champion Sponsor Johnnie Walker on March 08, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for WIF) By Kimberly Wilson ·Updated February 22, 2026 Getting your Trinity Audio player ready…

Domo Wells will be the first to tell you she never planned any of this.

Not Dead Dirt, the design brand she launched in the middle of an economic free fall. Not her role as creative director of the Washington Spirit. Not even the version of her career that has her at the intersection of women’s sports, fashion, music and culture right now. “It wasn’t my plan,” she says, not once but twice, and she means it both times. “It’s just evolved in a way that I could have never anticipated.”

Dominique “Domo” Wells is a lot of things: DC native, DJ, designer and creative director. But unplanned seems to be the throughline. She came into this interview through a mutual, BET veteran Natasha Bryson, who Wells says gave her some of her first real opportunities and has been a constant in her world for over a decade. “She probably gave me my first big gigs. Whenever she calls, I answer the phone. Whatever she wants.” 

And I learned very quickly that Dead Dirt, the brand she’s now known for, wasn’t even supposed to exist. She was trying to be taken seriously as a designer and kept hitting walls. “The way people understood me prior to this was, ‘She’s a music girl, she’s a DJ girl, she likes clothes and makes clothes,’” she explains. “But to really formally be understood in this realm of, no, I’m designing for real and we’re creating a real business over here, that’s different.” So when the industry didn’t open the door, she built her own. The brand launched as what she calls “a record for my ideas.” It became something much larger than that, though she couldn’t have known it at the time. 

ATLANTA, GEORGIA – SEPTEMBER 22: Domo Wells speaks on stage during Day 3 of Revolt World at Pangaea Studios on September 22, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia.(Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images for Revolt TV)

Women’s sports entered the picture later. Wells was still figuring out her lane in design when the Washington Spirit came into the picture, but she knew immediately it was right. “Oh, y’all need your story told,” she remembers thinking. She’s been a storyteller her whole career, whether through music, fashion, or now design, and suddenly here was a whole world of women athletes whose stories hadn’t been told the way they deserved. It felt like the most natural thing in the world.

Her work with the Spirit is where that really comes together. The team handed her the merchandise and trusted her to tell the city’s story through it and it’s something she doesn’t take that lightly. 

Why? Because DC, she’ll tell you, gets flattened. By politics, by whoever’s in the White House and by people who visit for the cherry blossoms and think they’ve seen the city. “I just feel like we have some of the coolest people in the world, and we don’t always get the credit that’s due.” Part of the issue is that outsiders only see the monuments, the politics and the tourist versions of the city. But Wells grew up in the real DC. “You could ask a lot of natives, most of us probably never even went to the damn monument until we were grown.” She’s using the Spirit to course-correct that narrative. She knows her city too well to do it any other way. 

That instinct extends beyond design. Someone once offered her a big gig at a party centered around reggae and Caribbean music, and when she hesitated the organizers kept pointing to her follower count like that settled it. It didn’t. She knew DJs in her community who lived in that music, and deserved that room in a way she felt she didn’t, and no follower count was going to change that. She passed the gig and sent them the names instead. “They’re the better choice. Choose them.” Those DJs are still her people today. “I also feel like people support you more because of it,” she says, and she’s been proving that right ever since.

She is, by her own assessment, a builder. She figured this out during her time at Spotify, where she and a core team of three Black women built Frequency from the ground up, and those women are still her people. “I still talk to them. We talk every week.” But once the build was done, she knew it was time to go. This is how she has always been wired. “The architects don’t stay in the house once they’re finished building it, they leave. They go out and build the next house.” 

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 03: Domo Wells attends The Roots Jam Brunch Presented By Grand Marnier at Citizen News Hollywood on February 03, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Natasha Campos/Getty Images for Grand Marnier)

Dead Dirt suits her for that reason. There is always something new to build. But the early days were hard in ways she doesn’t sugarcoat. She launched during an economic downturn, where she watched people she respected shutter their businesses, and kept spending money she wasn’t sure she’d ever see back. “It was very scary,” she says. “But it ended up coming together pretty naturally.”

Part of how she made it work was paying attention. Wells learned what the market actually pays by working inside it, whether it was through consulting for Apple, watching what Spotify paid agencies, and understanding the range from club DJ rates to corporate event money. “Certain gigs, I’m not leaving my house for less than $15,000. I’m just not doing it, because I know.” Now operating at a new level, she leans on relationships with people like Joe Freshgoods for honest guidance on what to charge. “I might say, oh it’s $30,000, when it should have been 100. And I don’t know that.”

For 2026, there is more to come with the NWSL beyond the Spirit capsule she recently dropped, a Formula 1 collab she’s keeping close for now, and an independent accessory line releasing later this year. The biggest news, though, is that Dead Dirt is opening its first studio and showroom in Los Angeles on March 13th. A real home base, finally. “It operates as our workspace, but also as a showroom. We’ll have pieces out for people to see early previews.”

None of it was the plan, but talking to her over Zoom, you get the feeling she wouldn’t change a thing. “I’m grateful every day for that,” she says. “Grateful every day.”

The post Domo Wells Has Always Been The Coolest Girl In The Room. The Industry Is Just Now Catching Up appeared first on Essence.

Author: Kimberly Wilson

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