For Wisconsin and NYC-based fashion designer Elena Velez (@elenavelez), rising up within the Midwest and exploring industrial areas left a long-lasting impression, influencing the artistic identification she brings to her eponymous model, Elena Velez. On this episode of In The Know: Style Changemakers, Velez shares how she incorporates parts from her non-traditional childhood and the historical past of Midwestern craftsmanship in America by her work as a designer.
“I consider myself extra as a historic archivist,” the CFDA award-winning designer tells In The Know. “I feel it’s actually cool to have the ability to share allegorical tales of my encounters as a lady immediately.”
As the one daughter of a single mother who works as a ship captain on the Nice Lakes, Velez describes her childhood as non-traditional, which feeds into her design aesthetic. “The excellence between fairly and sensible [was] at all times very blurred to me,” Velez notes. “My work incorporates an appreciation for the artisanal heritage of the American Midwest, which is obvious in among the metalworking that we incorporate into the work, which could be very a lot a historic, quintessential trademark of my hometown,” she explains.
Relating to Velez’s design course of, authenticity is “paramount to the success of the work.” Velez develops this impact by her model’s collaboration with native artisans from the Midwest “to recontextualize American craftsmanship from a high quality artwork perspective.” For that reason, Velez approaches her work “from the headspace of a maker who actually tries to prioritize performance over perfection and beauty.”
This “linear and pragmatic strategy to design” is obvious within the many historical references influencing Velez’s clothes. “Time journey actually performs a vital half in contextualizing the work. I like to riff with caricatures of bygone Americana like prairie wives, Western harlots, Rosie the Riveters, [etc.],” she mentions.
Historical past and storytelling additionally play an enormous function within the particular supplies and development featured in Velez’s designs. “I repurpose quite a lot of site-specific materiality,” Velez shares. “One thing actually particular occurs when you possibly can bridge the wearer to the supply of inspiration in a tangible manner,” she elaborates, noting, “It actually lends an artifact-like high quality to the work that claims ‘luxury’ to me in a really transcendental manner. Carrying the work ought to really feel like a continuation of the story.”
Regardless of the clothes’s heavy and industrial aesthetic, the ideas of femininity and matriarchy are embedded in Velez’s model. “For lots of designers, their mother is their first muse, and for me, I had rather a lot to work with,” Velez explains, noting that her definition of femininity has developed all through her experiences beginning a enterprise and turning into a mother herself. “A variety of the model focuses on paradox and contradictions inside femininity and womanhood,” she says.
As for the model’s future aspirations, Velez is shifting her consideration to larger targets, comparable to constructing a cut-and-sew manufacturing facility within the Midwest along with providing employment alternatives and schooling sources to in the end “restimulate American design.” With these targets in thoughts, Velez is nicely on her approach to remodeling the Midwest into the following large fashion hub.
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