Mary J. Blige Recalls Fashion Boutiques That “Rejected” Her

Mary J. Blige boasts luxury shoe partnerships with Giuseppe Zanotti. But the music icon remembers a time when fashion boutiques “shunned” her business.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee and Her Longtime Stylist Misa Hylton Are Starring in a New Hulu Series documentary and the layoffs they experienced after they were starting out. They recall going to a department store within the early 90s and never being hired.

“We went to a boutique and did some shopping,” Hylton explains, caught by . “When it’s time to pay, the salesperson keeps telling us. ‘Card declined.’ They keep trying.”

“We call the credit card company. The card doesn’t decline. They don’t even call. Like, ‘Oh, OK. You don’t want us to buy this stuff.’ It’s because we were young and black and they couldn’t understand how we were spending that much money. They didn’t even know who Mary J. Blige was, so you see the luxury fashion brands didn’t really value us or respect us. They didn’t see their brands on us.”

“They were rejecting us,” Blige added. “They were treating us like little street kids. They didn’t want to — they probably didn’t want to take over our business. They didn’t treat us the way they treat us now. Absolutely not.”

Blige has sold tens of millions of records, won nine Grammy Awards, been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and secured partnerships for her luxury footwear that sold out in a single day. In one other segment of the documentary, Mary J. Blige and Missy Elliott reminisce about their iconic 1998 Vogue photoshoot with Lil’ Kim.

“It was a lot of work to get into Vogue,” Elliott says. “The power of showing three black women in that particular article—that was a huge deal.”

The documentary also stars Tommy Hilfiger, Naomi Campbell, and longtime Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. The film is now available to stream on Hulu.