Meet Rosie D’Apolito and Kristina Spinosa of Valid Vibes

We had the good fortune of connecting with Rosie D’Apolito and Kristina Spinosa and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Rosie and Kristina, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
We launched Valid Vibes May 1st, 2022 in honor of mental health awareness month. We started designing the clothing and working on the brand in January of 2022. We have been going on photoshoots, filming content and everything to get us ready to launch our brand in May. Both of us know and unfortunately, knew people that struggled with mental health. Particularly men. We hate the stigma around men and mental health in general. We want to help people and make the world a better place. After 2020, we realized that mental health is not talked about enough. At most times, mental health is much more important than physical health. The mind is insanely powerful and we want people to look at life in a much more positive light. We also came to the conclusion that therapy is expensive and hard to get. We want to give people free mental health care by simply watching our podcast, reading our blog, following our platforms and signing up for our emails. We also came to the conclusion that there is no “in between” when it comes to mental health. There is a really dark side of mental health and then there is the mental illness side of mental health. Most people struggle to lay in between. We include all forms of mental health in our brand and we NEVER exclude any one for any reason. But we want to focus on the relatable , every day life “in between”.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
We both went to the Fashion Institute of Technology as Marketing Majors. We knew our entire lives that we were always meant to work for ourselves. We came up with Valid Vibes after having a heart to heart with one another. We have daily conversations about not only our personal experiences with mental health, but our loved ones as well. We both came to the conclusion that many people struggle, but not many are open to talk about it unless it is being brought up, which is very rare. We agreed on how frustrating the stigma around mental health is. Our business is not like any other business. We are two young entrepreneurs at age 22 from a town that is so afraid to spread awareness on something that has a strong stigma to it. Mental health is important for people of all ages and it needs to be focused on more. We donate a % of EACH product we sell to NAMI (the National Alliance of Mental Illness). We launched Valid Vibes on May 1st, 2022 in honor of mental health awareness month. Before this date, we have been working behind the scenes since April. We came up with our brand name, the logo, shirt designs and staying with the color green. The color green represents mental health. We went on a photoshoot with people all around our age. When we were looking for models, photographers and people to shoot with us, we were shocked at how many people were interested in coming on board. We realized that mental health means A LOT to A LOT of people. It made us feel good walking along the high line of Manhattan with people wearing our merch that spread positivity. We created merch that has inspirational quotes on them so that when our customers wear their valid vibes shirt out in public, they make someone’s day. We are up late nights creating content, hand making our shirts and products and filming our podcast. We film our podcast once a week. On our podcast, we go on and tell our viewers our “VALIDS” and “INVALIDS” of the week. We open up ourselves and our life problems in hopes that others do the same. We push people to be their real and authentic selves. We want to be their safe place. We want to be their friends.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
We always encourage our viewers to take some mental time off from work and toxic people and just enjoy! We encourage people to travel and see the world. Rosie talks about how her experience of going to Italy twice in one year has changed her mindset on life forever.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Valid Vibes is a mental health brand that keeps it real and authentic. We donate a % of each of our proceeds to NAMI of Staten Island. In honor of September being Suicide Pervention Month, we had a Suicide Pervention Fundraiser in which 100% of those proceeds were donated to NAMI Staten Island. The National Alliance of Mental Illness is a great organization for you and your loved ones that are going through a mental battle. NAMI educates us on mental health and gives us plenty of resources to give out to our customers. We love spreading Valid Vibes through out our community.

Website: www.validvibes.org

Instagram: @ValidVibesCo

Youtube: Valid Vibes

Other: A link with all of our links : https://linktr.ee/validvibes

Image Credits
We took them ourselves!