Selling online by early 2021, the line put rhinestones on safety goggles and periodic tables on tees, aiming to show that scientists can be vibrant and loud
Rhinestone tees, safety goggles, face masks, hair clips and a name necklace from the line's catalog. Baxter is not pictured. Photo: Smarty Pants Clothing Co.
Dr. Raven Baxter's science apparel line, Smarty Pants Clothing Co., took the name Smarty Party on November 26, 2022. That day, its online store replaced its header with a SMARTY PARTY logo, in which an atom, a strand of DNA and a planet burst from a party popper.
The line was selling online by early 2021, when its tagline promised "the best trends in fashion for smart people who love to shine." Over the next two years, shoppers found rhinestone safety goggles, rhinestone face masks, word hair clips reading STEMINIST and DOCTOR, and tees for adults and children.
The line's pink rhinestone safety goggles. Image: Smarty Pants Clothing Co. video
The store opened while the scientific workforce still looked much the same as it had for years. In April 2021, the Pew Research Center reported that Black workers made up 11 percent of all employed adults but 9 percent of STEM workers. That share had not changed since 2016.
Baxter described the line's purpose to The Washington Post. "I talk a lot about being yourself and not being afraid to be vibrant and loud and fun," she told the paper in September 2021.
The designs came from her own science communication. By July 2022, the store sold an Antibody-ody-ody tee named for her viral song, a BLaCK Periodic Table tee and a "Girls Just Wanna Have FUNding for Scientific Research" tee. Its October 2021 catalog added a Halloween collection around a Pumpkin Pi tee and a Mole Day collection for chemistry's October 23 holiday.
The goggles also appeared on her YouTube series. In the first episode of Nerdy Jobs, in May 2023, Baxter wore pink rhinestone goggles at the lab bench. "Who said scientists can't have fun?" she asked.
By October 2023, the store called itself Smarty Party Clothing Co. By 2024 the name also headed her newsletter, Dr. Raven's Smarty Party. "This is your ticket to the science party. I call it the smarty party," she said on the first episode of her podcast, The Science of Life.
Baxter in the Titanium Tennessine shirt, April 2024. Photo: Dr. Raven Baxter
The podcast premiered on April 16, 2024, the same day the line released a rhinestone shirt reading Titanium and Tennessine in periodic table squares. In her newsletter that day, Baxter tied the shirt to Clarice Phelps, part of "the Tennessee team at ORNL that first synthesized element 117, Tennessine (Ts)." Phelps, a nuclear chemist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is recognized by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry as the first African American woman involved in discovering a chemical element.
Loose-cropped and regular cuts followed on May 3, 2024. "Can you imagine running into someone else with this shirt? It's like we're in a secret club," Baxter wrote in her newsletter.
Baxter shares science online as Dr. Raven the Science Maven, a platform she started in 2016. The University at Buffalo had conferred her Ph.D. in February 2022, for research on science communication through hip-hop.
The store's pages from 2021 and from the week of the new name are preserved by the Internet Archive.
Dr. Raven Baxter closed a three-reel Instagram series for the Partnership for Public Service on Sept. 27, 2026, telling the stories behind federally funded science.
Dr. Raven Baxter posted two Instagram Reels for Bayer's Science Delivers campaign in March 2026, sharing her own postcard to science and urging viewers to speak up against misinformation.
Dr. Raven Baxter hosted the sixth season of Pfizer's Science Will Win, five episodes on cancer that ran from Feb. 19 to April 2, 2026.
