So You Want to be Friends with Friends Who Earring
Graphic by Meher Yeda. Images via @friends_who_earring on Instagram
You heard it here first, folks: the new official unofficial slogan of Friends Who Earring is “Earring Our Way Into a New World.” At least, that’s what the account’s creators, Cate Durudogan and Claire Koster, produced in the 30 seconds I gave them to come up with one.
The creators of Friends Who Earring, Cate Durudogan and Claire Koster. Courtesy of Madison Smith
From spotted yellow hoops to dangling polka-dotted snakes (a personal favorite), third-year students Durudogan and Koster create every earring Piercing Pagoda only wishes it could for their Instagram shop, Friends Who Earring. Making around $1,000-$2,000 a month in sales, Durudogan and Koster give 100% of the profits to community organizations working toward radical worldbuilding and the abolition of the prison industrial complex.
Their shop wasn’t always so coordinated, however. In the beginning, Durudogan and Koster made earrings as a fun Friday night activity, joking over whether the name for their Instagram account should be “Claire’s Ear Party” or “Smiling Ear Party.”
It was only when Durudogan’s brother called that the two realized that they could market their earring creations.
“I get a call from him and I'm like, ‘Hey, what's going on?’ He was like, ‘these earrings are very good. And if they're going to be really good, and you keep doing this, the name cannot be Smiling Ear Party,’” Durudogan recounts, laughing.
Thus was born Friends Who Earring, a transparent name for a transparent shop. Coincidentally, Durudogan and Koster became friends in the process, learning together how to make earrings and growing community by giving their creations away. As they practiced, the pair tested out different clay types and styles, and often the earrings would break.
“We were forcing them on people because they weren’t good,” Koster jokes.
Durudogan and Koster hold their earrings. Courtesy of Madison Smith
Koster in Friends Who Earring. Courtesy of Madison Smith.
Slowly, as they began to wear their earrings around, Durudogan and Koster’s skills gained attention on their own. Durudogan’s coworkers at Jenny’s Ice Cream –– “a wildly queer company” –– requested that she make rainbow-themed earrings for them to wear at Pride. And they wanted to pay her to do it.
Durudogan was happily surprised by her coworkers’ response, but immediately she knew she didn’t want to profit off of kitschy queer-themed products. Koster and Durudogan talked and decided that they wouldn’t participate in rainbow capitalism, devaluing the struggle of LGBTQ+ folks for their own monetary gain. Instead, they decided to donate their first month’s profit to the National Queer and Trans Therapist of Color Network in Oakland, California.
That was June 2019. Almost 18 months later, Friends who Earring has donated to Chicago-based abolition networks including The Chicago Freedom School, GoodKids MadCity and Assata’s Daughters, as well as organizations across the country and the world such as The Solutions Not Punishment Collaborative based in Atlanta, Amá Dóó Alchíní Bíghan healing shelter in the Chinle Agency of the Navajo Nation and Floresta Protegida in the Amazon, to name a few.
Koster and Durudogan have also worked to create a community with their Instagram followers, sharing their beliefs on abolition and resources that helped found these opinions. They’re excited to offer resources and have conversations through their account, but admit that, as two white women, they shouldn’t be the first people to listen to about abolition. Instead, they want to lend their platform to Black and Brown organizers already doing the work of abolition in their communities.
“How can we work with NU Community Not Cops to throw two grand at them? How can we work with SOLR to throw money at them? How can we work with our community and with the people who are doing this incredible work and throw the power and the money this gives us in their direction?” Koster explains.
Despite the shop’s apparent investment in abolition, their account’s followers range from Northwestern students already involved in abolition to older white women across the country interested mainly in the earrings themselves. The pair tries to take advantage of having an older following by promoting mutual aid funds and encouraging their audience to redistribute their wealth.
Still, just the purchase of one pair of earrings supports an abolitionist future.
“Our politics are on the table. They're everywhere. They're a huge part of it and you kind of need to agree with us because that's where your money's going,” Durudogan says.
Durudogan in Friends Who Earring. Courtesy of Madison Smith
Koster in black and white hoops. Courtesy of Madison Smith
To assemble the earrings, Koster and Durudogan have transformed their basement into an earring-creating room, with a making station along one wall and a sanding station along the other. Though they used to create exclusively together, the two now often go down to the basement alone when they have free time, or in the case of Durudogan, sometimes during class as well.
“I make while in class frequently,” Durudogan said. “I’ll be in a discussion, they see me, I'm clearly doing something with my hands, but they don't know what it is.”
Yet even when there are restock deadlines, Koster and Durudogan say earring creation is never stressful. Because of COVID-19, making earrings together is a social event and a time to catch up on podcasts, music and, for Durudogan, episodes of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
Friends Who Earring is self-described as “an act of radical relaxation,” and there is radical love in the process too: love for the community and the future of our world, and love for each other. During our interview, Durudogan and Koster argued over who had more artistic talent, each arguing the other’s case. Finally, they agreed: “I guess we are both just kind of good at it.”
Radical relaxation, radical love, radical worldbuilding –– it's all beneficial to abolitionist work and to the mission of Friends Who Earring. Durudogan and Koster want to promote their skills and give to organizations building outside of and against the current carceral system, but what’s most important to them is remaining communal instead of capitalist. In growing, they never want to involve a middleman, sell to a larger store or outsource any of their products.
In the end, it’s not that complicated.
“It's all just art and four hands,” Durudogan says.