Custom Shoe Design
Starting October 22 2022, I won $5000 for my shoe design concept in the Apollo Crypto x Centre contest. I moved up to the final round for the chance to win $25,000. Although I left with no money, I received a third place title. This contest brought attention to my designs, and I was shortly after hired by the livestream app EZZE to stream myself creating custom shoes 3 days a week. Two days were spent a week with hands-on deigning, while the last day was utilized for interviewing creatives in the Venice Beach area. I created four custom pairs of shoes, one a week, from upcycled clothing materials. These photos are from a 3 dimensional Venice art crawl show organized by Tobi, Co Founder of GrlSwrl, at the Emeco Chairs space on Abbot Kinny. Here, I was invited to showcase my shoe artwork from the contest, as well as my time as a livestreamer. I wrote a description for each shoe, including my process, materials, and overall experience. I auctioned off the shoes with bids starting at $100, and ended up selling four pairs all above $350.
The Rose Room Fashion Show
This show came to life after months of preparation, planning, and dreaming. My vision was to showcase my favorite handmade clothing items I had created over the years for my brand, Graveyard Garage, as well as the bikinis my mom and I have been designing for SandBornUSA. I hosted this event locally at the Rose Room and invited Ali and Akki, (Both artists with their own brands: Cosmic Demise, and Father AKKI) to show 5-6 full body outfits, and provide their own models. I also invited my other amazing artist friends Dani T, DannyBoy, and Eric to cover the walls with their psychedelic artworks. I got a local kombucha company to sponsor the event with free drinks, as well as have an open bar with two bartenders. I decorated the room with party city supplies, my own cow rug, ect. and purchased the turf grass runway at Home Depot. I reached out to my currently working model friends, and pro surfers/skaters to see if they would want to be apart of the Runway. I put together full body outfits for each selected model, and asked everyone to come hair/makeup ready. Outside of the event we had all of the outfits on racks under a canopy, and I utilized my dads surf van as a changing room. The video above shows several street wear style SandBorn Bikinis, as well as my favorite airbrushed/hand painted/hand drawn clothing pieces. I asked Ali and his crew to get video coverage of the event for later content creation. Immediately after the event I got to work with Ali to get this video and others like it edited. This video I personally cut, and put music on top for my website.
Evolution of the Fashion Show flyer graphic:
GYG Collection II
The vision behind this shoot was to capture the culture of Venice while showcasing the four new T-Shirt Graphics I spent months designing by hand, and digitizing in Illustrator.
My role: creative direction, wardrobe, location, model sourcing, as well as making final selects/edits/graphics for posting on Instagram, and adding to my website.
Location: the iconic Venice Beach skatepark, boardwalk, and graffiti walls.
Models: Kate Baum, Tai Waters, Shawn Hale, and Stephanie Wise (me).
Photographer: Kamden Kodimer.
Here are the final selects:
British Vogue
Rosie Vogel from British Vogue reached out to me to be apart of this Venice based shoot. I was referred to her by many people in my community because of my surfing/skating abilities and localism. We hopped on a zoom call and she explained to me that they wanted to have me come onto the team to help with location, wardrobe, and model scouting, as the crew was trying to make the shoot as accurate to the area as possible. I quickly sent over the profiles of several amazing and talented surfer/skater friends, as well as some areas in Venice that would be great for the shoot. The team ended up selecting my amazing friend Briana King, which couldn't have been a better decision. Rosie then asked me about what brands they should include along with their designer options, and I suggested a few local brands, as well as my own! She was excited that I had my own hand made items, so she told me to bring a few of my favorite pieces. On the day of the shoot, I packed up two bags full of hand painted sustainably up-cycled clothing items. When I got on set which was a block over from the Brick street (where I always park for surfing/skating in Venice), Dena Gia (amazing stylist), had me lay out my options on the clothing racks alongside the Gucci, Louie Vuitton, and Chanel pieces. Another stylist and I began discussing what I was to wear, which caught me completely off guard because I had previously believed I was just there to help out! Across the way, Dena Gia picked up one of my most abstractly painted pants and had Brianna King pair it with a $680 Prada hoodie. They then walked out to the palm trees by the graffiti wall, and got this amazing shot right before it started pouring down rain. When things didn't seem like they could get any better, the final Magazine Issue, "Steezy does it" created me: "Hand-painted up-cycled trousers, to order, Graveyard Garage".
Getting to be apart of this shoot and work with the amazing photographer, Craig McDean, along side six time Vogue cover model Julia Obis, and skater Brianna King was a dream come true. The entire crew listened to my creative ideas, used my wardrobe, and captured me in my element.