× Party Noire
An invitation · May 2026
An invitation to be founding
For the rooms you've already built
You built the blueprint.
She & HER has been paying attention.
Party Noire10 years on the dance floor · 17.5K @partynoire community · 7 named event series · A·L·C·H·E·MY 9/1/26 anchor
She & HER8 brands committed pre-launch · 3 Pride markets locked '26 → '27 · 145+ brand + funder pipeline
Recognition, first
"An inclusive cultural hub celebrating Black femmes, QWOC, + Black womanhood along the gender spectrum + holds space, especially for queer, trans + genderqueer, and gender non-conforming Black people."
— Party Noire, in your own words
Ten years on the dance floor. A community + a vocabulary you built in Chicago for Black queer joy — and carried on tour to Brooklyn, to wherever the work needs to go next. Black Joy. Black Joy BK. Avant Black. Black Eutopia. Black Metropolis. Black Pride. The names land before the room is even set up.
She & HER isn't here to hand you a title. We're here to ask if we can come into the orbit you've already built — and bring the platform, the audience, and the capital to help carry it forward.
You say "Welcome, home."
We're asking to be welcomed.
Photography: Party Noire
The hands that built this
Two practices, one collective.
Party Noire isn't an institution that hires curators. It's a partnership between two people whose individual work outside the dance floor is what makes the dance floor what it is. Worth knowing who they are.
Co-founder
Rae Chardonnay
IG: @raechardonnay5,974 followers
"DJ, Artist, Bridge Builder."
Chicago-based DJ + cultural producer. Founder of Black Eutopia, co-founder of Party Noire. 2025 inaugural DJ Scholar-in-Residence at Chicago Public Library. Affiliated with 3Arts and Lookingglass Theatre Company. Her booking note from her own bio: "Offline-Email only. No DM's for booking please." The work happens on her terms, in her language, on her timing.
"Bridge Builder" is the self-description that matters. The dance floor is one bridge among many — between communities, between sounds, between Black queer joy and the institutional spaces that don't always know how to host it.
Co-founder
dr. nick alder, Ph.D.
they/themme
IG: @word2drnick9,011 followers · also on Threads
"creative worldbuilder + third-space designer."
Black queer non-binary femme. From Queens, NY with West Indies (🇬🇾 Guyana) roots, now Chicago-rooted. PhD in Counseling Psychology (Loyola Chicago). Pre-licensed psychotherapist; writing focuses on Black millennial womxn, identity, and digital spaces. Member of Affinity Community Services Board of Directors. Roots in BYP 100. Co-founder of Party Noire; founder of radhealinglab + digitalhealingways.
From wordtodrnick.com: "creativity and possibility making is central to our healing + collective action to worldbuild outside of capitalism and oppression." The dance floor is a healing modality, not just a venue.
Asking to be welcomed
The founder making this ask.
She & HER isn't a brand entity making this ask. It's one founder, with a small team building alongside her. Worth knowing who's actually behind the page you're reading.
CEO + Founder
Desirée Mayon
IG: @vonneMayonno follower flex — receipts run elsewhere
"Empirical ML practitioner. Founder of what didn't exist for sapphic humans."
15+ years shipping ML + data systems at Google (Sr. PgM, Fuchsia & Privacy/Security — designed Google Cloud's pre-launch privacy/security scoring system), Microsoft / Xbox (Principal PM — $80M ML-driven gaming expansion across UK, India, Brazil, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya), University of Cambridge (Head of Product, SupTech Lab — 10M+ regulated records on Databricks Unity Catalog), Etsy, Nordstrom. Contributor to Black ChatGPT. Product + Data Lead for Pregnant & Black (maternal healthcare advocacy app). MS Bioinformatics + Epidemiology, Texas A&M. Backed by Google for Startups.
No follower count to flex — receipts run elsewhere. 15 years of shipping ML systems used by billions of people, in domains where the values mattered as much as the math (privacy, healthcare, representation). Now building one room small enough to be sacred for sapphic humans across all the rest.
The lineage · scroll →
A decade of intentional rooms.
The math, on paper
What each side actually brings.
- Original event IP: Black Joy, Black Joy BK, Avant Black III, Black Eutopia II, Black Metropolis, Black Pride — anchored at The Promontory in Chicago
- Two co-founders, a decade of consistent voice — Rae Chardonnay, DJ + Artist + Bridge Builder (@raechardonnay) + dr. nick alder, they/themme — creative worldbuilder + third-space designer (@word2drnick)
- Living digitally as @partynoire — top reels reaching 12K+ views; #BlackJoy + #BlackQueerJoy as the gathering language
- A 10-Year Anniversary anchor on the calendar — *A·L·C·H·E·MY*, September 1, 2026 at The Promontory
- Curatorial trust that travels — when the work tours, the audience comes
- Pride lineup confirmed: NYC '26, Amsterdam + UK Pride 2027
- Founding capital + sponsorship runway: 8 brands committed pre-launch, more in motion
- Houston team + Pearl Bar (Houston's only lesbian bar) as on-the-ground affiliate
- Backed by Google for Startups; founder ex-Google · ex-Microsoft · ex-Cambridge (15+ yrs ML/data)
+ Together
What stacks when these two land in the same room.
- International Black queer joy programming. Your decade of curatorial trust + our confirmed footprint (NYC '26 → Amsterdam + UK '27) = the work travels with intention, year over year.
- Activations bigger than either side could do alone. Your room-making + our 145+ brand and funder pipeline = co-sponsored programming with real budgets behind it, not gigs at the bottom of someone else's flyer.
- Year-round pulse, not just event nights. Your curatorial voice + our digital platform = a sustaining home for #BlackJoy between the IRL moments — distribution that lives where the community actually scrolls.
- Equity in each other, not for each other. You keep the autonomy of being independent producers. She & HER gets a cultural anchor that makes the platform feel earned, not built.
Party Noire as our founding partner in cultural and experiential direction. The exact title is yours to shape — Founding Cultural Partner, Founding Curator, Cultural Anchor, or language we haven't thought of yet. We'll write what you call it.
Brand dynamics, by room
Two registers, one partnership.
She & HER is a platform for all sapphic humans — across race, identity, place. Party Noire's standard is what makes it feel intentional, not just inclusive. Here's how that plays out across the kinds of rooms we'd build together.
The all-sapphic room
Mixed-company sapphic gatherings — across race, identity, and geography. She & HER carries the platform, the audience, the capital, the production runway. Party Noire leads the curation: the standard for what "intentional space" feels like, the taste, the room-making. The reason a She & HER room reads as more than an activation is because PN's hand is on it.
You lead the room. We carry the platform.
The Black sapphic space
Black femmes, QWOC, Black queer joy — the dance floor on its own terms, your terms. Party Noire's name is bigger on the flyer. PN sets the tone, the guest list, the feel. She & HER shows up as a platform partner — visible, supportive, present, never leading. The autonomy of the room you've built for a decade stays yours, fully.
Your room. We carry the quiet support.
The exchange
What lands on each side.
What this brings to your table
- A founding seat in a sapphic platform built with the same intention as your dance floor
- Capital + production resources for activations that align with your work
- National + international visibility into She & HER's ecosystem (NYC, Houston, Amsterdam, beyond)
- A platform partner that funds the work, not extracts from it
- Equity in the room — not a logo at the bottom of someone else's flyer
What we'd want from you
- Your name, your tastemaker eye, on how She & HER shows up in physical space
- One co-presence for NYC Pride 2026 to see how working together actually feels
- Honest feedback when we bring you the work — what lands, what doesn't, what to change
- The right to define your own title — whatever language honors what you actually carry into this work
The shape over time
A door, not a multi-year contract.
We're both traveling. You from Chicago, She & HER from Houston — meeting in NYC for one weekend together. Not host vs. guest. Two co-investing peers showing up in the same room, both putting our names and our audiences on the line to see how it feels. Low-stakes on paper, high-signal in practice. If it lands right for both sides, the rest of the conversation opens. If it doesn't, no harm done, no public commitments outstanding.
When She & HER goes public, Party Noire is named — by whatever title you've chosen for yourselves in this partnership. On the record. Co-branded launch moment, joint content across both platforms, and the partnership goes from internal language to public-facing shorthand for what She & HER feels like in physical space.
Amsterdam. Beyond. Where Party Noire wants to take the work, and where She & HER's ecosystem can carry it. No fixed roadmap — these stages are opt-in at every step. The Q1 2027 checkpoint is built in, on purpose, so neither side is locked into something that no longer fits.
The near-term ask
NYC Pride 2026 — June 28. Chicago + Houston, meeting in NYC.
I'm not asking you to host me. I'm inviting you to come with me. NYC Pride is one weekend where the audience is already gathering, your name carries weight whether you're touring or at home, and She & HER has a seat at NYC PrideFest's table. Travel + lodging + an honorarium that reflects what you actually bring is what we're pitching NYC Pride to underwrite — funded by the Pride ecosystem, not by you, not directly by us either.
What we'd build together, exactly, is yours to shape with us. Format, venue, headliner energy, run-of-show — your call. We bring platform, audience, sponsorship runway, and the NYC Pride logistics. You bring the lineage, the room-making, and the standard.
Twenty minutes of your time, on Google Meet or in DMs, and we can sketch out whether this lives or doesn't.
Open the door, on your timing.
20 minutes — Google Meet, DMs, whatever you prefer.
Or just DM @vonneMayon on IG.