Haven

I am a young woman who enjoys going out with my friends, dressing up, enjoying a drink, dancing, and experiencing nightlife, and because of that I know what it feels like to constantly be on alert for my safety. I’ve carried pepper spray. I’ve shared my location. I’ve texted friends “just in case.” And I’ve felt frustrated trying to fit bulky safety keychains into tiny purses when I just want to feel cute and carefree. I don’t want my safety tools to feel like extra baggage. All I want is to feel safe when I go out to have fun. That is what inspired my brand.
My research focused on women’s safety in nightlife spaces, specifically drink tampering, harassment, and the adjustments women constantly make to protect themselves. I was especially interested in finding new, more discrete ways women can feel safer. I came up with a brand focussed on protecting women when they want to have fun. Some of my ideas include cute wearable jewelry with built in safety features, like a “Life Alert” kind of necklace, or earrings that act like a dash cam, or a color changing nail polish that can detect drugs in a drink. I also thought that my brand would partner with bars who would put up my brand’s flyers in women’s bathrooms offering help to them if they feel unsafe and developing an app to alert bar staff of an unsafe situation. To add onto my app idea, I thought of more safety features like pre-written messages to trusted contacts, a daily/nightly itinerary to share with trusted friends and family, a button that triggers a phone call with an actor giving you a perfect situation to get out of a bad date, a map guidance that provides the safest route and shows the safest bars or clubs, and an SOS button to make it easy to contact authorities without having to speak or do anything obvious in a scary situation.
My goal was to design safety accessories that look like jewelry or beauty products first, and act as safety devices second. My other goal was to create something that could connect you directly with bar staff, friends, or police to make sure women can feel safe wherever they go without feeling like they have to bring a bunch of extra stuff with them everywhere. Overall, my brand focuses on the fact that girls just want to have fun, but we also want to feel safe.