S. Samuel
With her "Can't Knock The Hustle" T.I.T.S. t-shirts flying off shelves, SOHH decided to reach out to actress Esther Baxter to find out what she has in store for the future.
Keeping details to a minimum, Baxter said fans can expect a follow-up to her Two In The Shirt collaboration.
“The slogan is ‘Can’t Knock the Hustle’ and we’re not stopping,” Baxter promised SOHH when asked if fans can expect another Two In The Shirt campaign. “We don’t stop and take a break. We’re always thinking about something new to go with. We’re already in the works of our second shirt already. [My manager] Jennifer [Horton] just showed me one of the images right before this interview. We don’t take breaks. We’re constantly, constantly working. Jennifer is constantly working with me to see what else I can do to make the Esther Baxter brand bigger. We do enjoy this success and say, ‘Oh my God, this is great,’ but then it’s ‘OK, so the next thing is…’ That’s how we work.” (SOHH)
A couple weeks ago, Baxter gave SOHH a few reasons readers should buy her line.
“The shirt is really great for men and women. [We have] some really cute baby tees [in our line]. That’s one of the main things that I definitely requested. I’ve noticed within the last few years, I’ve got a lot of female fans. Just looking on Twitter and all of that, I’ve been seeing there’s so many females that are either into my cooking or want to get my recipes and things like that, then there are some are just fans of me who are really interested in what I’m doing and what I’m going to do next. So I requested that we make a baby tee made especially for the women as well. In addition to the white and black t-shirt, we also have a blue t-shirt and I actually like it a lot. It’s a very nice color.” (SOHH 5 Reasons)
Her manager Jennifer Horton also opened up on the “Can’t Knock the Hustle” slogan.
“A big reason is because of the “Can’t Knock the Hustle” theme. That came about because Two In The Shirt wanted to go with a 1990’s furs look and we kind of flipped that because we were like, “Let’s make it [resemble] Jay-Z, Reasonable Doubt [album cover],” or even Lil Kim but with that boss chick element so that it wouldn’t just be Esther in a fur. I think the other thing about Esther is that she’s always been very hands on with her shoots. One of the ways we flipped the whole fur idea was to give it that little context. T.I.T.S. were saying their male buyers really like to relate to the hip-hop culture, so when they came up with a few [slogans] and we picked, “Can’t Kock the Hustle”, it all kind of came together with that feel of when hip-hop had that edge. So you’re seeing Esther with the boombox and the cigar like Biggie was [depicted] in those images [in the 1990’s]. If anyone can be that boss chick, Esther could be that boss chick. We wanted to make sure the image reads that as opposed to, “Oh, I’m just a sexy chick on the couch with my fur in a mink.” (SOHH 5 Reasons)
Recently, Baxter talked about stepping away from her video vixen days to take acting more seriously.
“I haven’t done urban modeling for six years now, or videos, and yet I’m still a household name. A lot of people still know who Esther Baxter is and they still know, “Oh yeah, she was one of the top ones a lot of girls look up to.” They know all of that and so I’ve been able to keep that name and image even though I haven’t done the modeling or music videos like I used to for awhile outside of recently doing the KING magazine cover. The reason we ended up doing that is because there was such a high demand of people from the fans that wanted to see me. They really wanted to see me on the cover of KING. Other than that, I’ve really fallen back to focus on my career, my family and my son. I have a four year-old son now and my focus is really getting into acting.” (SOHH Guest Star)
Check out some recent Esther Baxter footage below:
