Amabelle Aquiluz

A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Milan program, in collaboration with the Politecnico di Milano, Amabelle Aguiluz graduated with a specialization in knitwear. Her debut collection for spring summer 2013, is being produced with support from kickstarter, the crowd sourced, grass roots funding initiative. The concept behind the collection, started through collage crafting, drawing, stream of consciousness writing, and visual journaling on Tumblr. Ideas soon translated into a mini collection of eight pieces, all beginning from a single, simple shape. Aquiluz’s artistic values, commitment to the environment, and her social responsibility, forms the foundation of the brand. Exploring new forms in order to create innovative, functional, and transformable designs, the collection is ecologically conscious and made entirely in the USA. Produced from natural fibers, the collection includes vegetable dyed organic cotton and alpaca, all handmade by artisans in the Los Angeles area.

Born and raised in LA to Filipino parents, Amabelle Aquiluz was drawn to create and draw from a young age, inspired and influenced by her grandmother, who constantly created something from nothing, using recycled materials, and collected clothing. Aguiluz’s creative journey lead her to New York at nineteen, where she worked at Barney’s Co-op, followed by a position at Diane Von Furstenberg, and a design internship, also working and interning for Nathan Jenden, Tuleh, Philip Lim, Volang, Malini Murgani, and Heather Lawton, leading to a range of experiences in different areas within the fashion industry. Moving back to Los Angeles, she now creates innovative clothing that values art, utilizes natural materials, and is locally sourced and produced.

Aquiluz’s series of work has complex and deeply personal themes, combining diverse sources of inspiration ranging from technology, art and ideas about existence. The Superstition Collection stemming from the dictionary definition of the term, as a belief in supernatural causality. The word itself is derived from the Latin verb, super-stare, “to stand over, stand upon or survive”, its original intended use however, is interpreted as “standing over a thing in amazement or awe”.  While the Hybrid Nomads collection is based on the concept of an adaptive, parallel Universe. Aquiluz’s designs express movement, form and transformality in function. The shapes are pure, interpreted through the merging of separate elements, leading to unified techniques and patterns.

Amabelle Aguiluz’s work was recently featured on Elle.com, and worn by Alejandra Deheza, the lead singer of ‘School of Seven Bells’.

You May Also Like

Featured Video - Amabelle Aguiluz

A fashion film from Amabelle Aguiluz - Nature Embodied

Zaida Adriana Goveo Balmaseda

Goveo Balmaseda’s knitwear collection is a craft led exploration of the concept of transition and hybrid evolutions reflected in moss and critical weathering. The knitwear collection was produced using only recycled, and ethically responsible methods and materials, and explores her personal journey into biomorphic design in knitwear.

Mona Luison

The sense of joy, playfulness and pure artistry in Mona Luison’s work embodies Picasso’s understanding of art as being innate and childlike. Her sense of worlds imagined, of naive creation, and of possibility, is palpable, through the depth and texture of her work. As Picasso himself said “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artists once he grows up.”

Hibrida Etno Urbano

Art house accessories label Hybrida, transforms recovered and discarded materials through design and craftsmanship, to produce a contemporary, avant garde collection of body accessories. Motivated to create beautiful objects, full of symbolic meaning, Hybrida infuse discarded materials with new value, prolong their life, and divert them from landfill.

Gibbous Fashions

Gibbous creates one of a kind creative men’s and women’s wear from a myriad of vintage sources, working with discarded, forgotten, shredded and stained pieces of history form the recent past, through to Victorian times.

Odette Picaud

Odette Picaud is a jewelry and clothing collection that acts as a conduit on an esoteric journey into the past, through adornment, memory, connection and history, as seen through the eyes of Odette.