Foundations:

Like many fashion designers my humble beginnings began with me experimenting with t-shirts and shorts due to how easy they are to take apart and sew back together, serving as a great lesson in garment construction. The foundational skills I built from learning to make a shirt are the same skills that carried on into my ability to create jackets, outerwear, and other tops.

  • Giant shirt, 28 foot by 20 foot

  • Giant shirt before I sewed the sleeves on

How to make a T-shirt

There are a few foundational garments that every designer should be familiar with early in their career. Here I start with the t-shirt and illustrate my understanding of how to create one. The ability to create a t-shirt requires the skills we need to branch out into either womens or mens wear, outerwear, sportswear, the list continues.

In 2001 Chiharu Shiota created a collection of giant dresses, this inspired my shirt.

28x20 foot button up shirt. Making this shirt brought curiosity out of a lot of people, employees at the fabric store wanted to know why I needed such large buttons, the UPS delivery man wanted to know how much fabric I bought for it to be that heavy, and I had many questions to ask myself regarding how I would make this shirt. During covid I had a creative studio in Gowanus, when a building I was renting from was fairly new and had many vacant studios. Although I had a small hole in the wall space, directly next to me was a much larger space. I measured the room and used that as my frame for how big I could make the shirt. I would transfer my shirt over to the room at night over the course of months figuring out how I was going to make the shirt. Eventually, once it was finished, I showcased it by draping it off of my friends house.

While I am proud to have executed such a difficult task by myself and overcame many obstacles just to make this one product, in the future I’d avoid a project that is so wasteful and I am now more environmentally conscious when I create.

  • Separating coveralls turn into a multiple garments or even multiple matching sets

  • Here it is as a jacket

  • It can turn from a jacket to a shirt or even a vest

  • As a vest

  • It can also be a romper, pair of pants, or shorts

  • Illustration

My separating coveralls inspired me to start implementing zipper closures on more of my shirts and almost stop using buttons completely

Separating Coveralls

Everybody has a matching set, a top and bottom made to be worn as a unit. I explored this concept in tandem with the ideas of multifunctionality and reduced waste. Here I have a piece that can be worn as just pants, shorts, coveralls, overalls, a shirt, a jacket, or a vest. The concept behind a versatile piece like this is the reduced need for spending on multiple garments as this singular piece provides a wide selection of outfit choices. It is made from a waxed canvas.

  • Boro shirt with tonal details and meticulous boro stitching pattern

  • Even shaped diamonds throughout, all done by hand

  • Precise boro pattern stitching on pink lower back

  • Gradient zipper reveals black underneath

Gradient Boro Shirt

Inspiration:

In my studio nothing is wasted. Here I have an assortment of various color fabric scraps that I cut into diamonds to use. Seeing as I had so many colors to choose from I decided to create a gradient effect with them going with mostly warm colors to contrast the black shirt. I like to incorporate tasteful and subtle details and fused those to ideas by including zippers that have a gradient which reveal other tones underneath. I incorporated one of my favorite styles which is the boro technique to apply this patchwork. Following the traditional mending techniques relating to “boro” I decided to be intentional with my stitching as well creating a diamond pattern with complementary colors to my patchwork

Sashiko stitch pattern inspiration

Boro stitch inspiration by Kapital

  • Many of my favorite t-shirts over time compiled like a quilt and combined into one long sleeve shirt.

  • Decorative overlock stitch graphic panels

  • This shirt is a collection of many of my favorite garments throughout my childhood.

  • There is a wide array of differing concepts blended together to summarize my teenage t-shirt preferences.

  • Many materials here.

This piece was inspired by a blanket my friend's mother made for him. Growing up my friends and I were all big fans of wrestling and as we grew older our memorabilia and merch naturally stopped fitting us. My friend's Mom had the idea to take the old shirts that didn’t fit him and cement them in time as a quilt. I loved this idea and chose to apply to something I could wear that was broader than wrestling. Here I have a blend of shirts I used over time and grew out of, as well as some very wacky prints from things like blankets or patches as well.

Quilted Patchwork Shirt

Here I play off the concept of unifying a group of ideas that otherwise are unrelated to create one piece with a story.

Inspiration:

  • Shirt made from woven scraps

  • The random patterns here feel natural and take my eye throughout the entire piece

Woven Scraps Shirt

With this shirt I experimented with different elements of patchwork, here I wanted to weave all my fabrics within each other to train the eye to follow a pattern around the shirt. Fabric scraps well used and a very original shirt.

Too many garments emphasize detail on the front while ignoring the back, I have learned to incorporate balance that trains your eye around a garment.

  • Scorpion Motif hoodie.

  • Scorpion motif sewn from suede and pvc patches

  • Preserved Scorpion Zipper and Bejewled Chest crest

  • Phone pocket

Scorpion Motif Hoodie

My birthday was on the horizon and I didn’t have much money to treat myself. Being so heavy into fashion and constantly having eyes bigger than my pockets, I learned to just simply make something instead of buying it. I made reference to my birthday with this piece. I wanted a new hoodie so I chose to fuse the elements of my wants being a new hoodie, and with the frame of my current scenario being celebrating my birthday I referenced that with the Scorpion as I’m a Scorpio. I also couldn’t afford to screen print something so I simply printed a vectorized scorpion image and cut the pieces out of fabric to recreate the image. I embellished the zipper with a scorpion encased in glass and sprinkled in some other embellishments tastefully.

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Outerwear
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Bottoms