My aunt Corey asked me to do a two part blog posts about myself. As she admires my work and has been collecting fabrics and buttons for me. You see I am a clothes designer- Well let me give you a little history first…
I got my start in 2020 when I began making clothes for myself, but my passion for design and gear started when I was very young. When I was in little league I always had to have different cleats than everyone else, different basketball shoes, the gear to me was as important as the game itself. I’d spend hours looking through Eastbay catalogs, picking out all the gear I wanted for the upcoming season. My parents usually would accommodate a couple of the 100 requests after badgering them enough, which I was and am very thankful for. As I got older my focus changed, I liked shirts and jackets instead of cleats and batting gloves. I never knew it was really an option to be a designer or something I even considered I could go to school for.
With no formal training in anything related to fashion I started the process of teaching myself garment design, garment construction, pattern drafting, fabric dying, and many other tasks related to making a wearable piece of clothing. I had to learn how to take a proper photo and adjust lighting in a studio, what lighting in a studio even meant, how to edit photos, the difference in camera types, and website creation. I went to school to be a forester and graduated with a forestry degree and now work as a licensed forester in northern California. As many know, the price of going back to school in the US made it basically impossible for me to start over so if I wanted to learn I was going to have to teach myself.
My goal is to create unique pieces from high quality, natural materials from all over the world and create them in a unique way. I release my work in small drops throughout the year and that work reflects what I am into and what I am inspired by at the time of creation. The process is slow, but there is not really a way to make a naturally dyed jacket from antique linens that is then mud dyed in a quick and efficient way.
Fashion is interesting to me because it is how we express ourselves and say something about who we are to people that have no idea who we are. You can care about it very much or you can not think about it at all but we all wear clothes. By not caring and dressing like you don’t care, you are telling people something about yourself and that can also be cool.
Fashion and clothing to me is more about where the clothes come from, how they’re made, who they’re made by, what they’re made of.
Someone who likes old motorcycles like my dad and my uncles, or someone who collects antiques like my Aunt Corey or you the reader, you read this blog because you are oftentimes interested in the story of who, where, how, why. Clothes to me are no different.
The clothes I make are an expression of who I am, where I am from, and what inspires me.
As of now I cannot do this full time, I just hope to break even and keep funding the project, but someday I’d like to maybe give it a go. The economics of small, independent clothing brands are very tricky, but I guess that is the next thing I have to learn how to do.
Thanks for following me on Instagram samamaro22
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