My Role as a Designer

Boa noite friends,

I write this post with my deepest sincerity and candor. ReciclaGEM is world is an open world to which you are invited to enter, play dress up, deconstruct garments, reconstruct identities, leave preconceptions at the door, and bring a mind and a heart and a fashion sense ready to challenge fashion's previous and currently destructive hegemony over people and our planet. If you ever felt excluded, if you ever felt confused in a sea of leather jackets and handbags wondering if cruelty free fashion is truly possible, if you ever wondered how fashion could answer to its history and present hand in slave labor and environmental disregard, if you ever felt alienated by monochromatic palettes, tailored shift silhouettes, and trend books conceived scientifically but without a notion of soul, this world is for you.

(Photo Cred: Kat Soutar)

While I oscillate between the business-minded "we" to refer to the behind the scenes work I do, I am writing this post to let you know that WE are together in the imaginative creation of this world.

Whether via social media or in person, I write to reassure you that you have been given the keys to the city of ReciclaGEM with the opportunity to help craft a world where fashion is a prominent, self-reflexive, and dynamic vehicle for social balance, image activism, environment justice, peace and love.

(Photo Cred: Kyra Frierson)

 

Each collection, post, encounter, and interaction reflect a chiseling away at a vision of what recycled fashion, culturally inclusive fashion, cruelty free fashion, and people and earth conscious fashion can do to add to the creation of more beauty and harmony in this world.

(Photo Cred: Stephen Elliot, Mud Productions)

With that, I will see you breakfast,

Peace, love, and collectivity,
T*

Mahogany Mudslide

Mahogany mudslide

into the rhythmic flow of energies between red and blue,

oxygenated and without,

there lies a prism of mahogany,

showered with sunflowers,

and scintillated by seeds.

Mama Earth's shine has a chasm,

because she's waiting to speak.

Presenting gem, "Mahogany Mudslide," a medium ring adornment embedded with fair trade red quinoa and lentils, a mahogany tinted mix of water-based acrylics with a water-bed of red and blue, end to the finger by a sinuous interplay of golden, silver, and copper-colored metal wire, which can be adjusted by the slight bending of the ring shank.

Dedicated to all those who heed the call of Mother Earth. Some of us saw yesterday in Zuccotti, and many more of us see daily in the revolutions that continue to happen in our world the need for reassessment, re-growth, and renewal.

Mama Earth's shine has a chasm,

because she's waiting to speak.

Chicago Thrift | Quinoa on Ice

Last week, reciclaGEM got a taste of Chicago. I was there on some other business, but of course got to hit up the thrift shops. One of my favorite picks was a dress hidden in a rack of beat-up North-Face jackets and pilled-out wool sweaters. After passerbyer by impatient passerbyer passed over the dress, only visible from its unattractive hang on the hanger, I knew the oceanic-psychedelic floral print had more of a story.

And happily I discovered it did:

This beautiful turquoise, plum, and plum-pink mid calf, 3/4 sleeve dress made by "Shannon's Fashion California" is shaped by an hour glass dirndl waist-closed in by four exterior and 1 interior plum-pink plastic buttons. I added my own waisted belt just to add another "umph" to the hour :)

Equipped with two shoulder-pads, as was customary during the 1980s power-shoulder period (i.e. the temporal love of my life), this dress is both chic and defiant. And let's not forget the knee high slit in the back. Although 100% polyster, it is quite breathable and comfortable to wear.

I love love love it! If I ever decide to recycle this gem, you'll be the first to have it! :)

And what else can you wear with such a print, other than my Quinoa-on-Ice gem, a frosted resin decorated with Fair Trade red quinoa seeds and a copper wire shank.

reciclaGEM- it's a movement. Stay tuned for more :)