Talk to us a little bit about how you got your start as an artist and creator… I’ve always been wildly into aesthetics and clothes.
Growing up, I spent a lot of time reading my mom’s Vogues. My favorite way to pass time was to go through each spread and ask myself which outfit I’d rather wear and what I’d wear each outfit to. During my childhood, my mom spent a lot of time getting dressed up for something, and I spent a lot of time on her closet floor advising and dreaming. I am a Pisces, so innately I am a dreamer and a creator.
How did you know you wanted to make clothes and what is your work process like?
I knew I wanted to do something in Fashion, but wasn’t clear which part of the process I wanted to be a part of, so I did a million different fashion internships and ended up in PR. Ultimately I quit because it wasn’t creative enough and I ended up enrolling in the Fashion Design program at Parsons and the rest is history. My work process is tricky because it has to come naturally or it feels bad and inauthentic to me. I’ll have ideas floating in my head for a period of time and make random notes and sketches here and there and at some point those ideas incubate enough and I can produce a mood-board or a theme and then tie them to other things I’m feeling at the moment.
Where did you grow up, and what was your childhood like?
I grew up in San Marino, California right outside Los Angeles proper. It was an interesting town to grow up in because while it is historically conservative white and has so much history (General Patton used to live there and his home still exists) it’s placed right next to cities like San Gabriel and Monterey Park where there was a huge influx of Chinese immigrants. Neighboring cities sometimes called our town Chan Marino because there were so many Chinese people. I had the best childhood honestly – my dad made us ditch Chinese school on the weekends to go skiing with him and my mom and I were always driving to Robertson Blvd on the weekends to go shopping. I owe my parents everything.