A Conversation with Alexis Stiteler, Part One.
The defiant act of crafting a slow brand and lifestyle in a world that insists on urgency.
My next guest is artist and apparel designer Alexis Stiteler. Her collection of small-batch, organic and botanically dyed apparel has quickly garnered a cult following for its hauntingly beautiful aesthetic that straddles a dual identity, both garment and artifact.
As Stiteler says of her collection:
“there is a quiet longing for home in everything i make, a desire to reclaim the places and moments that once felt anchored. i work towards a visual language of remembrance by ‘clipping’ objects i have seen in my day to day. a common cement cemetery planter, a mosaic from the house of the tragic poet, lemon tree branches — each one a piece of somewhere i’ve been, or somewhere i wish to return to. while these objects hold significance for me, i hope that when someone encounters my work they feel a warm sense of deja vu, a peripheral thought of something from their past. i think i’ve seen this before, it was a little different but i’m glad i’m here now.”
Currently based in Minnesota, Stiteler’s clothing is rooted in her fine art practice, drawn from memory, reimagining the iconography of everyday life. The artist and designer also sees her collection as an opportunity to platform the work of other passionate, independent artisans across the country, working with a natural dye house and domestic textile mill using heirloom equipment—both based in Pennsylvania, and a cut and sew facility based in North Carolina.
For natural and plant-based dye nerds (like me and Alexis), you may also enjoy a deep dive that we go down about living and working with, as well as being a steward of, this complex medium in episode two. If natural dyes are foreign to you, I hope that you will enjoy this intimate knowledge about a formerly commonplace practice.
You can learn more about my takeaways from this conversation in last week’s sketch, released here on Substack as well as the Creativity in the Time of Capitalism Podcast (available on Apple podcasts and Spotify). And a gentle reminder that this project is audience-funded. If you would like to support this work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to the Creativity in the Time of Capitalism Substack. A monthly subscription costs less than the going rate of an oat milk latte :)
Now onto our conversation.
MB: I'm so excited to speak with you today, Alexis.
AS: I'm excited to be here and speak with you too. Thank you for having me.
MB: You are just outside of Minneapolis currently?
AS: Yeah, we're just outside of the Twin Cities. We're in a bit of a small suburb area. We are renting a house right now. It's actually a pretty lovely little house that was built in the 1940s. And the same woman lived in it from the time that it was built until she died. And then her daughter lived here for like another 20 years before our landlords bought it. But it just feels like we're in somebody's home. And I think especially with the move back to the Twin Cities, it's felt really like we're held here by this space, which has been really nice. It feels really safe and comfortable to be here. Just for myself and to be coming back to something. It's really special. I feel really grateful that we get to be here.
MB: It's so beautiful. And do you work from home as well?
“In 2025, I'm trying to channel that things can take time and I don't have to make a decision right away.”
AS: Yeah, I do. Right now I'm working from home. I'm working on finding a separate studio space with a storefront component to it, just to get out of the house more and have a space that people can come and see what I'm working on and talk with me about it. I think I've realized over the last year, or especially even since I released the clothing line last April, how important it is to have that space for people to come and hear about the process, hear about what I'm working on, and engage with it. So I'm trying, I have a few different spots. I have one that I was like, “This is the one,” but now I'm trying to slow myself back down because I have a tendency to just jump into a thing. In 2025, I'm trying to channel that things can take time and I don't have to make a decision right away. And that I get to see how things feel and wait until it feels like it's the right space with the right timeline and everything. I don't need to rush. I guess that's why I'm trying to slow things back down.
MB: I envy that awareness, because I similarly always was someone who would just kind of jump in and throw all of my cards on the table. That is something that in hindsight I reflect on a lot, because I wish that I had given myself permission to just take a little bit more time before acting at some key points in my past. So I commend you for having that self-awareness. It's definitely an everyday practice.
AS: I know that feeling—like, “We gotta go!” I think it's also just thinking a lot about the fact that the work I do isn't seasonal. It isn't something where I need to be coming up with new designs all the time. It's something that I want to be slow and intentional about, and to make sure that I'm supporting the people that I'm working with and not stressing anybody out too much. And I need to bring some of that to myself as well. I think that I'm always like, “alright, you gotta go, gotta do this, you gotta do that.” I still, of course, wanna make the moves that I wanna make, but I think I'll also give myself the grace to understand that I can take my time, and it's okay to take my time. But that isn't in my instinct, so it's hard… Every day I've got a whole new idea of the thing I need to commit to now.
MB: Yeah. Just like burning a hole in your mind, right? That's always how I have always felt, just that urgency.
How did you come to form a livelihood from your creativity?
AS: It's been kind of a long process. I went to college for ceramics, and after I got out of school, I didn't really think that I would ever be able to just do this full time. And so I worked a variety of other jobs. I ran a small gallery with some friends for a while with a residency program component. And then I worked house cleaning jobs and service industry jobs. And all the while in the background, was always the maintenance of my practice and creating work where I could and making sure that I was carving out some time for it. And I think over the last five years, beginning around COVID, I just had more time because I was working in the service industry and then all of a sudden everything shut down. And I had also stopped drinking at that point too. So it was like, I wasn't really going out. None of us were, but I wasn't doing a lot of drinking. So it was a lot of reflective time for myself and what I wanted things to look like. And that's how I then kind of shifted into doing more of my practice and doing a lot more drawing. And I've always had an interest in clothing. It was when I was looking at going to school, I actually wanted to go to fashion design school and my parents kind of pushed me to get a general art degree, which I'm grateful that they did. But I've always had that interest and for a number of years, like three or four years ago, I was living in an RV with my boyfriend. And just to kind of document our time in the Southwest and that moment in my life, I started transcribing my drawings onto clothing and onto sweatshirts and things like that. And that's kind of when people got interested and my following began to take off. And then from there, I was kind of like, “I think that I can do this full time. How do I make that work?” And at that moment in my life, I wasn't really sure what the next steps were for myself or what I wanted work to look like, because I was kind of tired of working for other people. So it just came at a good moment of like, I think I can figure this out and make this my livelihood, as well as like my creative practice. And it's just been kind of like a snowball from there ever since. It's always like progressing through it. Yeah, I got really lucky.
MB: That's amazing. I read on your site that your art is speaking to transmuting memory and these ephemeral moments, and that's the inspiration of your prints. Allowing the memories to transform in the process, and having that understanding that once you've documented them, they naturally change from that original memory and become this universal totem.
What was the format that those first drawings were released in? Was it always on apparel or was it on paper?
AS: Yeah. So I was doing them on paper before I started doing the clothing. Well, I was doing kind of a combination of things. I had been doing some printing on clothing with a friend of mine. I was inspired by these MC Escher t-shirts. I don't know if you've seen them—
MB: Yes, yeah, I'm an 80s baby, so I totally have, haha.
AS: Yeah, I've invested in one and it's well worth it. But that was kind of where it started, I was doing these really abstract drawings of shapes and things like that at that point. And I had gone to Mexico and stayed with my abuelita and my aunt who moved down there. And at that moment, I was kind of doing all these abstract drawings to commemorate my time while I was there, and I was sewing with my 91-year-old grandmother and my aunt. And when I came back, I decided that I really wanted to put them on t-shirts the way that those MC Escher ones were. And then that was kind of when I started dipping my toes into doing clothing. And I started recording my own work on them by hand, when I didn't have the capacity to have somebody help me. It was kind of like I have to do this myself. I'm not a printmaker. I was living in an RV. What I do have are my own two hands and materials that I can work with and very limited space. Just like on a tiny little table is where it kind of all started. And the transcription of the drawings. I'd been doing those drawings before I shifted to more actual objects rather than just abstracted shapes. After my grandmother died, I had gotten a set of fake fruit from her and I've never been particularly good with death and dying or grief. And it was kind of a moment of how I was thinking of her and remembering her and remembering these things that I had from her that were all in storage somewhere because I had packed everything up and just kind of hit the road and left.
And so it was thinking of like my abuelita in Mexico and thinking about these different people that I have in my life and these different moments that I've experienced and recalling them from memory, and then kind of translating them onto a piece of clothing and then allowing that to kind of shift and evolve over time because it's all coming from my own mind. So those things, while they're kind of tied to each other, they do become different and change. And I liked playing with that a lot. And it was also like we were staying at my parents place for a little while on and off, and it was kind of like this big confusing moment in my life and I was just kind of recording all of those things onto this clothing, and it was just like a nice surface to be able to work on too because it was really packable. So it worked really well for that moment and time. And I ended up drawing on a lot of things like ceramics and ancient artifacts too, because of the time I spent in college and thinking a lot about process and the time we spend on things and how everything just kind of takes time. So I was thinking a lot about that too, as I was working at the beginning stage.
MB: I love that you can feel the emotion in your renderings. There's such a, I don't know, you really feel the hand of the maker and the charge in the objects themselves. I really feel that that's conveyed.
Can you walk me through what your process and supply chain looks like today? Because that was something I was really struck by, is how thoughtful and considered your supply chain is.
AS: Thanks, I appreciate that.
Yeah. So I kind of hit this moment where I had been working on other people's clothing. And I started thinking if I'm investing this much time into drawing on everything and investing so much of my past and my history, I want to honor the whole line of the clothing. And I want to know every hand that something goes through.
I also wanted to have a connected element to my history as well, because I grew up mostly in Pennsylvania. I was there until I was around 12, that's where my whole family is. Then we relocated to Dallas, Texas, and I was there through middle school and high school. I began working with a cut and sew studio in North Carolina, which is kind of what kicked it all off. Then I sourced all of the materials myself. So then it was like, well, if I'm going to be investing into a living wage studio, I also want to make sure that everything that is getting made and all of the materials that we're using are also going through hands where people get paid and I can go and I can meet them. So I located some weavers in Pennsylvania who are really incredible and also felt like a connective tie because where they're weaving is in the area that my family used to have a farm in Pennsylvania. My family has really deep roots in that area. It's where my grandfather is buried. It's where we had a farm. It's near where my grandmother is buried. The weavers were using organic cotton grown in Texas, which also felt really connective. And they're really thoughtful about their sourcing. So they were really easy to work with. And they're using all, like, 1940s looms. It’s all of this equipment and machinery that was kind of kept as the textile industry was leaving the United States and leaving Pennsylvania. So many of these objects and these looms were getting thrown away, and the guy who owns this weaving facility, his dad was a mechanic and just couldn't bear to see these things get tossed. So he began collecting them. And that's how they have all of these amazing looms that don't otherwise exist in our country anymore.
So I went through them to get fabric and then it just kind of kept snowballing from there. I was like, well, I'm going to be doing all of this work with the fabric and with my cut and sew facility. I want to make sure that I'm using dye that's also thoughtful and I want to invest in places that I believe in. So I found this natural dye house in Pennsylvania as well. So we use collected rainwater in big cisterns under the building so there isn't a lot of water waste involved in it. And they also compost all the byproducts. So it's like through this process very little gets thrown away, very little gets wasted. And then we're also using natural materials to dye the clothing, which feels really good. And then down to, like, the buttons, I sourced some buttons in Colorado, like brass buttons or copper buttons. It's one of the last manufacturers in the country who's doing that. And then I've been sourcing a combination of the antique buttons and Corozo buttons. I knew that I didn't want to use plastic in anything. So I found some button collectors in Pennsylvania who usually work with Civil War era stuff that they collect, but they also just love old buttons. They had a lot of Corozo buttons that were made in the 30s and the 40s through Pennsylvania up into Massachusetts that they had gotten from factories as they had gone out of business. And they've just been kind of stockpiling. I'm still trying to figure out how to incorporate those because they're all beautiful and unique and different, but because they're all different I don't want it to feel disjointed or like they don't make sense together. So I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate those in and then I also have the newly made ones that are from South America. And that's about as far as anything travels. I try to keep things as localized and within our own economies as possible.
MB: That's incredible. What you're describing with the weaving mill and how the owner is carrying on this legacy of his father collecting and reviving the utilization of these machines kind of feels like a beautiful parallel with you recalling these objects from your grandmother as you were beginning to develop this iconography. It's like this lineage of preservation and reflection.
AS: Yeah, that's a lot of what I think about is like, we have all of these techniques that were so important to our economies that are now kind of gone by the wayside. And so much skill. And I think that this probably comes from my ceramics background, like, the hand is so involved in everything in ceramics—
MB: It's such an ancient medium as well.
AS: Such an ancient medium. Yeah. And like we've been doing it for millennia, you know? And there's so much preservation involved in that technique and that work, you know? And I've been thinking a lot about that the whole way through with clothing as well. It's like, I want to create something that when somebody gets it, like it feels really different from what you buy at a store now. Because of all of the intentions from all of the people through the process, as much as it is me putting it all together, it's like everybody I work with is incredibly thoughtful and coming at this with their own expertise. And I'm just so grateful that they exist because then I get to incorporate that into my own project. And without them, I wouldn't be able to do it, you know? And so it's just people the whole way through who love their work.
MB: Yeah, and feel passionate and driven, and have a real purpose behind what they're doing. I feel like even with the buttons, it just speaks to the way things used to be made, you know, that you can actually be utilizing these goods in a practical way still to this day because of the materials and the quality of how things were crafted. And I just admire anyone who incorporates a dead stock element into their collection as well because that's one of the big things that when you start researching sustainability you quickly discover that we kind of have enough right now to last us like a few more hundred years.
AS: Yeah, we don't really need to be making more.
“if we're not thinking about how a person has made every single thing or has been involved in the process of it, then we're not worried about what those conditions are like.”
MB: Right. So sort of this negotiation because when you want to bring in these things that do already exist, especially if you're going a little further back decades-wise, you find that the quality of the goods is more than still applicable and completely available to be utilized today. But then there's this education that has to happen with the customer. As you're describing, for example, not all the buttons will be identical, but that’s okay because it's more about pulling from an era, pulling from an aesthetic. From there it is about getting people on-boarded with that to really understand that approach because it's so different now, everything now has been all about this uniformity and hegemony and, within that, I think it's increased the sense of disposability of goods because there's less of this sense of it's a relic or it's something very unique and precious and, you know, different from what someone else might receive from the same order, you know?
AS: Absolutely. Well, I think that's so much of what I've even learned in figuring out this process myself, in the way that we manufacture clothing now, especially with fast fashion and all of that, we've removed the person element, like the human element, which I believe is also intentional.
Because if we're not thinking about how a person has made every single thing or has been involved in the process of it, then we're not worried about what those conditions are like.
MB: Yeah. When you have a supply chain that's that exploitative, you have to remove the awareness of the individuals that are exploited by it.
AS: Exactly, exactly. Because if you don't, that's what you're going to be thinking of while you're purchasing the thing. Yeah, I was talking to one of my weavers about that recently, because she was explaining like, in the like, 40s and 50s, when you go to a department store, they would describe to you like, every step of the process of how something is made. And it was like, this is just like, it is an investment. If you're investing in this piece, this is something that is going to last you, and here are the hands that everything has gone through. And we just don't do that anymore. Like it's better. It's all very secretive and hush-hush. And it's hard to know where things are produced or how they're produced. And so I think that that's a lot of what I've been considering is like, how do we bring that back into the conversation and share that in a way that's also not shaming if people can't afford it. The way that I'm creating clothing isn't inexpensive. People are getting paid the whole way through and it does add up. But I’ve realized that there’s an educational process to all of it. And that's where I'm thinking that having a physical space to be able to share that with people would be really valuable.
MB: Yeah, so much of what you're doing is in the storytelling, really. Have you found resistance to your price point? Is that a conversation you find yourself having to have a lot?
AS: It is and it isn't. I think that when I meet people in person and they go through the whole process with me, they really get it. Where they're like, this is a big project. And I'm like, it is. But it is like, I would love to figure out some ways where I can bring the price down a little bit to make it a little bit more accessible. So I'm working on some of that right now. I'm looking at relocating the cut and sew to Minnesota where the living wage is just a little less expensive and things like that. I don't want to cut corners. I don't want to shift the way that I do my production because I think that it's really valuable and important to make sure that I'm sticking to what I believe in. But I would love to find some ways to create a variety of price points for people. So the buy-in doesn't feel so big right off the bat. Especially being a brand that exists mostly on the internet. I understand being a little hesitant to get something online that you can't try on in-person. So when people come and see things and feel things, they totally get it. I think so much of the work is like the fabric and the physicality of it and how things are produced. And a lot of that is something you have to experience more in person, which I'm happy about because I would love to move off the internet more and have more things in person if I can.
MB: Yeah, it's such a catch-22, the internet at this stage. Because on the one hand, it's likely why you're able to have this line based in Minnesota. And then on the other side, it's like, we've lost that tactility and we've lost that capacity for the passive storytelling that happens when you're in person. And I certainly don't have an answer. I think there's a perfect world where somehow you can achieve both. And I think it's so beautiful how the option to exist so virtually as a brand has opened up the playing field for so many more people to participate in a variety of creative industries, but certainly in fashion. When you combine that with social media and now we have an appetite for process, an interest in how these things are done that is no longer gate-kept by just a few fashion publications that are deeming what deserves to be spoken about. But then on the other side, you do sort of miss that human touch sometimes. And when you're trying to penetrate an algorithm or get into marketing and ads, I think that's another trade off. It's like what we've been able to experience and enjoy in terms of access has also meant marketing is everything now.
What is your experience of that? I know you have a really great following on social media. I think your process is clearly exciting and interesting and really novel to people. There's so much heart and soul in it as well that I think really is conveyed. But what has your experience been of having to rely on the digital space, or how do you navigate that?
AS: Yeah. Well, it's like pros and cons, of course, with it. I feel really grateful because like the reason my work took off was because of Instagram and I had caught the algorithm for a number of years in a way that it wanted to push me on people, which I feel really grateful for. I didn't really do much. I've had people approach me, ask me advice, and I was like, it just happened for me, which I am so grateful for. I know that's not the case for a lot of people. But it's also like, you have to play, I feel like even now, it's like a couple years later. I've been doing this for nearly two years full time. It's just kind of a different game now. And I don't know that I really get it. So I'm trying to remove myself from it a little bit more because it's just like, it's demoralizing in a way. It's just hard when you're like, I'm doing all this work to do this thing and nobody's seeing stuff anymore. And how much do I really want to invest in that when it's like, do I really want to feed into Instagram more or would I like to invest in other areas? I haven't actually done any marketing really. I haven't paid for any marketing. I think that there's a point where we have to start doing that. Just because I have a product that I'm trying to sell and probably should engage in it a little bit. I'm trying to figure out ways to do that and maybe it's like not a super online method, but maybe I can have something that I send out to people.There's this radio station called Dollar Country and they pull old country albums for their shows. They do this physical newsletter that you can get in the mail. And it's so special, to get something physical from somebody and that they've created, it is just kind of a game-changer. And so I'm thinking about how I can create something that comes to somebody, but maybe not on the internet? Because we're so used to just receiving things online all the time.
MB: How amazing. Yeah. I love that idea. Again it’s about going back to some older ways of doing things. I agree that there's just such a bombardment of advertising now. And I love that so far your navigation of that space has been organic and the fact that you were able to find traction organically just through what you were already doing is so rare and so beautiful.
AS: Yeah, I feel really lucky.
MB: I'm seeing more of this return to physical printed goods. Actually, my husband and I just came across a new print newsstand/magazine shop in Austin. It's teeny tiny and it's run by a boyfriend and girlfriend together. They just moved to Austin like a year ago. We went in there and both walked away just so inspired to bring print back to our own projects. I was like, gosh, I'd love to publish these interviews in a really cool newsprint journal and mail them out or do some kind of zine. And for him, he does photography, he does graphic design, and his head was spinning with all of the different projects that he was thinking he could do. I was really struck by that, though, how inspiring that physical artifact was. We ended up buying a ton of different things—both more established magazines and little like tiny run projects and other stuff. And since then, every friend that's come over, I've been like, “just look at these!” and “you have to check out this shop!” And everyone's been like, you know, from different creative backgrounds, but every single one has been like, I need to do this, you know, it's like all of us remembering there's this other way, a way that we already knew. Like things don't just have to be digital. They don't just have to go into our inbox or they don't just have to be shared on a profile. We need some nutrients in the media that we are constantly consuming. We don't just need a bunch of things that evaporate. So I do think that you're onto something. I think that there's real potential for thinking of how you share your brand with the same care as the same way you're sourcing things. I love there being this throughline of all of these processes that are rooted in quality but are no longer as prevalent. Like I think that it tracks that you could do something that also feels as though it’s from a bygone era.
“…a lot of where my head is now is how do I get off of the internet? I want to get rid of my smartphone. I want to have a landline and just be like, you can call me on my landline, and if I don’t answer, just leave me a voicemail. It might take me a couple of days, but I'll get back to you.”
AS: Yeah. And it's like, this is something where maybe somebody can't buy into a garment, but they can get something like that for free in the mail. And it kind of offers the work to people in a different format, one that they can then collect for themselves, which I think is just kind of a nice way of working through that idea. And it's also like, I'm always looking for people to collaborate with. I feel so grateful. I've found amazing, amazing people to collaborate with. That's my favorite part of the whole project. I kind of got to a place a number of years ago where I realized that I don't have to learn how to do this thing—like I don't have to make paper. There's somebody out there who makes paper that I can work with that I can support their passion. And I feel that way with the printed work too where I can't wait to find somebody who can help me figure out how to bring that to life. And then we get to create this thing that is really fun and special for us. And then hopefully other people find it to be that way for themselves too. But a lot of where my head is now is how do I get off of the internet? I want to get rid of my smartphone. I want to have a landline and just be like, you can call me on my landline, and if I don’t answer, just leave me a voicemail. It might take me a couple of days, but I'll get back to you.
And I think I'm just really leaning in that direction because it's also the expectation to get back to people right away, and not that anybody is ever aggressive or rude, but that expectation of urgency is something that I think a lot about.
MB: Yeah, this false sense of urgency.
AS: And part of the reason I also shifted the way I was doing things is because when I was just doing hand-drawn drops all the time, it would make people feel panicky to get something. It’s great in a way for the business for people to feel that way, but I don’t want people to be stressed out all the time when they are trying to pick something out.
MB: Right, right. It feels antithetical to your process too, which is so thoughtful and slow, to rely on urgency to sell your goods.
AS: It's like these are investment pieces and it might be something they have to save up for, but it's there when they're ready for it, you know, and I think I'm trying to shift some of my other processes to that as well. We don't always need to get these things right away. Like we all have plenty of clothing. We can take our time. And if somebody needs me to send something to them for them to try it on first, we can figure it out, like, absolutely. Let's just slow things back down for each other. And for myself, I think I feel kind of panicky in moments too. And I'm trying to help myself find some more of that calm. I'm trying to bring that into my business practice as well. I'm not running with seasons or doing like the big clothing thing. I'm keeping the same styles, the colors might change here and there, but keeping the same processes. I'm going to experiment more with fabrics and stuff like that, because that sounds fun. I personally like buying the same stuff over and over again. If I find a pair of shoes that works, like I'm just going to buy five of those shoes.
MB: Yeah, more like uniform dressing.
AS: Yeah. So I want to be able to offer that to people where it's like, this is the style, it doesn't really change that much. If you want to buy another one, you can, but also the clothing is made to last you for your whole life, so you don’t have to. And I think it improves with age, the more wear you put on it, the more it becomes yours. I see that as a collaboration between me and the person who's wearing the clothing as well. It changes for each of us based on how they take care of it and what it becomes is kind of fun to imagine.
MB: Do you ever get pressure or do you feel long-term concerns about how that plays into reaching a saturation point with your customer?
AS: Yeah, it's the sustainability of the business, too. Like how do I make this actually work, you know? There will be a point where that happens, when I'll just navigate it as it comes, I guess. It's really easy to get worried about it. Especially because I have a lot of anxiety. So it's kind of natural for me to worry about everything. But I'm just trying to figure it out as I go. That's kind of how I've been doing it. And if it stops working, I'll shift and do something else.
MB: I love that.
AS: That's kind of all I can do. I'll do this as long as it makes sense. And then if it stops making sense, I'll try to figure something else out. But I love what I'm doing.
MB: Yeah. I ask because I had a similar approach with my collection. We had a lot of the same core styles and every time I'd bring someone in to consult or give business advice, that was always the first thing they’d say, that we needed more novelty. That you need to give people something new to purchase every season. And, you know, in my mind, I was like, well, that's exactly what this collection is in response to is not pursuing this idea of built-in obsolescence. I don't like the idea that I'm telling you, yes, invest in this really thoughtful, well-made piece that we put all of this intention into, and then in another three months, come back and buy a whole new wardrobe from us. That communicates that these pieces will no longer be relevant or valuable. But then on the flip side, or the devil's advocate side, I understand where that perspective is coming from because essentially it's recognizing like, okay, our existing customer will at some point have enough of this style or they will be satiated with what it is that we have to offer. And when you're working from this place of just growing, growing, growing then that’s a problem. I think one thing that the internet and online sales have shifted for people is this idea that there is this exponential growth potential and you're always meant to be capturing more and more of the market, and scaling more and more. But why is that the foregone conclusion? Especially if you're doing things in a way that's very intentional and by design is not meant to just be multiplied by a million with every year. There's that friction though, having to go into it really knowing whether or not you want to have a team, whether or not you plan to expand and all of those things. It's such a delicate dance that comes down to how do I maintain the intention of my process? But then also, how do I meet the increasing costs and how do I make it financially sustainable in the long term?
“…there's money to be made, but is that my main priority? Not really.”
AS: Yeah, I'm still asking myself a lot of those things and trying to figure it out because it is just, I know that the way I'm doing things right now isn't super sustainable, but I'm figuring it out and I'll continue to try to bring things in. I think that part of that was trying to fulfill something for other people and I think that this year I'm trying to be like, what is it that makes me excited? I'll just do that and I'll see how that goes and how it feels. And I want to treat this more as if it is a brand because it is, you know, but it's also my art practice and so I want to go with what I feel good and excited about.
It's also challenging though because I think that it is like a constant struggle and battle with, well, there's money to be made, but is that my main priority? Not really. Yeah, being able to retire someday might be kind of a nice idea or buying a house someday might be a nice idea. I would love those things but I also don't want to sell like the soul of my project in order to get that. And I want to do things the way I want to do them. That's why I am working for myself. I've worked for other people and I've watched them try to scale and get big, like get it while they can. I for one love going to a restaurant where it's their one restaurant, you know, and they do like five or six things and they're really good at those five or six things. That's my favorite type of place to go to. When I was working in other restaurants, or, I don't know, just any business I've worked for where it is that idea of like grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, get bigger, get bigger, get bigger, hire more. I understand that I think there's a place for that. And for other people that works. But for me, that's just not the kind of business I want to run.
Whether or not that makes me like a good or a bad business person, I'm not really sure. But it's the business that I want.
MB: I think what kind of business person you are is kind of neither here nor there when you're a creative, right? That's the tension though, is so much of us start as creatives and then suddenly we're business people and we're like, how the fuck did that happen? What did I do exactly to find myself here?
AS: Yeah. It is. How do I? What am I doing? What did I do? How do I want this to work? Yeah.
MB: And I know for me, that was kind of the moment I had. I know in some of the other conversations I've been having as well, there's so many people I'm talking to where it's like, oh, well, I just had a cool idea. You know, I had this thing I really loved doing. And then suddenly people wanted it. And then it was like, oh, how do I meet that demand? And I think one thing I admired in reading about your work, though, was it sounds like you don't have an in-house team, right?
AS:Yeah, yeah. No, it's just me.
MB: You just find partners that really have their system dialed. I think that is brilliant. And I really give you kudos for that because that is one of the things I see in hindsight now about my former business where I'm like, wow, what was I thinking? I was trying to do all of the manufacturing. We were doing all of the cut and sew. All of the plant dyeing, being zero waste, having inclusive sizing, managing all of it in-house, and then adding a brick and mortar store in addition to our wholesale program and online store and it was like, why? I had a friend say to me once, “Why are you doing so much? Could you just do one less thing?” And you know, prior to that, I never thought of it in that way. Everything felt so interconnected, which can be a blessing or a curse. It was about employing these people and owning this process. But it was too much, for me anyway. And I think there is this broader transformation for all creatives that become people managers and suddenly may end up feeling far more concerned with keeping the lights on and sustaining what the business had grown into.
So I think when anyone has the foresight and the wisdom at the front end to say, “I don’t want to do that,” I am so impressed. And I just love that in your case, you're saying: this is an opportunity to platform these other incredible artisans. Whether they be weavers or dyers or cut and sew facilities—I just think that that's such a beautiful outlook and such a beautiful way to structure your business that also prevents burnout because you can kind of hit pause as you need to as well.
AS: Yeah, yeah, and it's like, I can't imagine managing all of that because even trying to manage the correspondence is a lot. And so having it all under one roof, you're like, oh my God, how are we going to get this all done? I need to stay on top of certain things and it can just be so exhausting. I have loved that part of it. And I'm really glad that I came to the realization that I don't need to be the expert. I don't need to be the one who knows how to do everything. In fact, I don't want to be the one who knows how to do everything. I'll find people who are really good at what they do and I can just make sure that they get paid. And I want to support their projects and I want to support what their passions are and whatever way I can build my business to just be supportive of what everybody else wants to do. That feels really good to me. And it's been really fun for me because then I just get to find people who get really psyched about paper or books or, like, or fabric. And I just get to get excited with them about it. And it's so fun.
MB: That's so cool. What good fodder if you do end up doing a newsletter. I could see a feature with every artisan that you work with about what excites them about their work and story and process.
“…to be able to work with all of these people who are tackling all of these different issues in the ways that they best know how to, it's so inspiring and exciting…”
AS: Yeah, that would be so awesome. It's so fun to see. And I think too, just like when we're talking about responsible practices, it's so fun to see how people see a problem and then try to solve it in their own ways. You know, that's my favorite part of this. And I think that especially in a moment in our history where things are feeling the way that they feel, which is scary in a lot of ways and worrisome, to be able to work with all of these people who are tackling all of these different issues in the ways that they best know how to, it's so inspiring and exciting and just makes me feel really motivated for what our future can look like. And I think that is where it all takes an investment from each of us, you know, and the best way that I can support all of those things is to financially put my money towards it. And my business's money towards it. And it is more expensive to do it that way, but it's also so much more exciting and feels really good.
MB: It's beautiful. Well, and I think too, it just speaks to how as consumers, we've been trained in the sort of gamification of shopping, right? And I think a lot of that is because of this turn towards online and marketing and the array of options, it makes it so easy to be guided by finding the best deal, finding the markdown or discount, finding a promo code—which companies will give out because when you are growth oriented, it’s all about getting that first customer in the door, getting that first conversion, all of the time. And it's sort of turned our relationship to consuming goods into this game where it can become almost more about that activity than the relationship to the product itself. You can end up browsing multiple sites to find the best deal, and it can become more about this idea of hunting for that without asking questions about how or why it is possible. Then when you have the thing, I don't really know how much of that ends up being about that specific thing. And so I think that also lends itself to why we don't really cherish the goods that we end up purchasing. I think when you recognize that and are able to kind of unplug from that cycle a little bit, it does change your relationship to how you're consuming and how you're shopping. I think that there is room for more balance there. But on the other side, I think that when we're not driven by this mania towards either shopping to capture the drop or the flash sale or shopping to capture the best price on this item, we have the space to question if we even need that thing at all. The items that we’re purchasing are often only worn a few times, I believe the average wear rate is currently around seven times, so we don’t end up having any real attachment to these things. Some of them are so cheap that you might not even really care enough about it to exchange it for the right size, for example.
AS: You just get rid of them, yeah.
MB: When we're no longer in that place of mania and frenzy, we can have a very different relationship to how we're spending the same amount of money in the end, towards things that can feel a lot more meaningful and are an investment in practices that on this grander scale are creating really meaningful jobs, really sustainable practices. While it can feel cost-prohibitive when compared to a fast fashion garment, when you calculate in that disposability, how few wears these fast fashion pieces actually yield, it becomes a different conversation.
AS: Yeah, you're still spending so much. I was reading something that was saying, like, through the 1980s and 1990s, the average number of garments purchased a year was like 12. And now we're up to around 80 garments, and not that much time has gone by between those two time periods. And at that time, something like 75% of the clothing was made domestically and now we're at 3%. It takes time for us to start to restructure how we think about purchasing. It’s like, do I need more t-shirts right now? Personally, probably not. I might be at a good point where I can stop making t-shirts. And yet it still hits me. I still get the buzz to get something new and how exciting it would feel, but I have to slow myself back down because it is like, how much am I trying to consume right now? Like, what do I really need? And I'm trying to shift my focus personally. I like there is a wider conversation for that right now too, of like, if I see people out, do they really need to see me in a different outfit every time?
MB: Yeah, like who gives a shit about that?
AS: Like, they're not noticing, we're all grownups and I'm gonna wear whatever I want to wear as often as I want.
MB: Yeah. And who is even evaluating that? Who is keeping that score? One way that I've been trying to look at it is I'm 41, I pretty much have what I need in my closet at this point, so anything that I am adding needs to be really special. I saw a thing once online that was like, if you're over 35, you probably don't need to buy anything anymore—you probably have accumulated everything you will ever need at this point, haha–
AS: That's pretty funny. You might be good. Yeah.
MB: I think with that mentality, it's changed the way I think about bringing things in to my own little ecosystem. So since I have my bases covered, if I'm buying something, it's because I'm really moved about how it was made, who made it. It's an incredibly beautiful, aesthetically-pleasing-charged thing. It's someone I really want to support. And it's just, that's totally changed my attitude around shopping versus having more of that like thrill of the hunt kind of thing, you know? And with that mentality, it's like, well, because I'm not getting this steady stream of new stuff all of the time, I can actually invest more in the few things that I am bringing in.
AS: Yeah, I do. It’s like, I'll wait, I'll save up to be able to afford that. Yeah.
MB: I think it’s really about divorcing the urgency, because it's that false sense of urgency that has really manipulated the way we navigate the marketplace and shopping in general as consumers. And I think when we talk about sustainability as well, whether it's running a sustainable brand or shopping sustainably, I think the false sense of urgency created by marketing has to be removed from the conversation. It's also not sustainable to offer discounts all of the time to create that urgency, you know?
AS: And if your business is built off of that—whenever I see certain brands where it feels like every three months they are doing big sales, but you put a lot of money into building that out, you know, and a lot of time. And I think that's where I keep thinking about, do I need to produce, produce, produce, produce, produce, you know? I don't know if I do. Like maybe I just keep things really small. And when things sell out, they sell out. My method of production is like, I try to work with my partners when they're in slow seasons, just because I'm not seasonal. And so if I'm able to fit in when they have time and to fill some of their windows, then I'll do that. And it's hard because I see everybody else doing something else and I feel like I need to fit into how they're doing it. But also, is that really the way that I need to operate? Like, is that what I'm trying to do? Not really. And I have to check in with myself about that pretty regularly. Because I get the urgency or like panicky at different moments of how do I make it happen now? We need to get it done. It's spring. You know, and I'm like, that doesn't matter, actually. I'm doing the same stuff no matter when. But I think it's just kind of an interesting moment. And I think that we're all having a lot of these conversations about clothing. Especially for those of us who have worked within the industry and see what it takes to run a business and how hard it is, especially if you have employees that you pay regularly. And I think about when I was working in restaurants, I'm so grateful I had restaurant jobs because now going into any restaurant, I just have a different attitude as to what my expectations are and how to treat people in those moments. And I think we're beginning to have that understanding with clothing and production again, too. It just takes a lot more conversations and education and working through it and maybe all of us stopping for a moment and saying, do I need more?
MB: Absolutely. In some ways I feel like food led the charge with the move towards slow food and local production and looking at regenerative agriculture, in much the same way as you're describing your approach to fashion. I think the way that food has made that turn in the last like 20 or 30 years, you know, it's been a long, low and slow kind of burn starting with very niche restaurants to now becoming a broader conversation that we're all having, a broader awareness. And I think it's that same thing that is slowly taking hold, hopefully in fashion, which is just this desensitization to how alienated we've been for so long. We were desensitized to what that supply chain looked like, to where goods are being produced as things moved increasingly overseas. Less eyes, less awareness, more opacity, things just sort of showing up only within the context of marketing rather than production. Suddenly our expectation of what cost around garments continues to just decrease and decrease and decrease with the advent of fast fashion. I think that is sort of the watershed point we're at now. I don't even know if we're at the watershed point yet, but I think that's the beginning of the tension we're building to.
AS: I think we're building to it, yeah.
MB: And the tension of this understanding with a market that is still totally saturated in fast fashion. But I think that this increasing understanding and awareness of what the true cost of that is, with more and more documentaries coming out, more and more of this understanding and conversation. And I think similar to what you're saying, it's not about blaming or shaming people for shopping this way. How can you refuse? If suddenly dresses cost 20 bucks and it's...
AS: Yeah. And you're being told that you need to do it, too. You know, like this is the way we've all been raised. It's how we were taught to consume. I feel it especially through our generation, it was like, you buy, buy, buy. That's just how we do this, you know? And I think that we're at the beginning of a moment of saying but maybe we don't have to do that. There is a way where we're supporting ecosystems that we really believe in. And it's more expensive because all of those hands get paid fairly, but when you wear it, you know what you're wearing and where it comes from. When I talk with friends about it or people that I've met in different places like pop-ups or things like, it's been so nice because I get messages afterwards saying, “I'm still thinking about that piece.” And I'm like, that's great. Even if you're not able to buy, like I just want to have more of those conversations with people where we're able to say what do we want this to look like? We get to decide as a consumer, we get to decide what we want our future to look like. Putting more of the power back in our hands rather than feeling like everything is out of control and we can't shift anything, you know? Like we can still shift how we want things to look. And I think one of the best ways to do that is where we invest our own money, which again is a hard shift because we've been trained in a really different way to spend, but I think that we can, we can make those decisions.
MB: It's everyday choice-making that we're committing to. Where we spend, how we spend. It's sad the way that our roles as citizens and consumers have kind of become interchangeable, but I think that it speaks also to how we moved away from doing this type of making in our own homes—whether that's growing our own food or making our own clothing or whatever it might be. I think that is where that shift in language even comes from, because our relationship to outside resources now is to consume them. And so in every one of those interactions, we're making these choices. And I think that's also what makes it sometimes just feel incredibly overwhelming and a little too heady because sometimes you're just like, I'm just trying to buy some lettuce.
AS: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I've got like a family and I've got stuff to do. I've got laundry I need to take care of, fully.
MB: I have a full-time job. I have all the housework to do, you know, and so that's why sometimes it can become too much. We really don't get a break from the act of consuming and that interaction for the most part.
Join me next week for part two of this conversation, where we dive further into Stiteler’s hyper local approach to production, the nuances of balancing environmental sustainability alongside fiscal sustainability, the world of plant dyes and much more. My deepest thanks to Alexis for her time, I loved getting this intimate portrait of her work and look forward to sharing more with you next week.
This project is audience-funded, and if you have enjoyed this work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber and enjoy access to the entire archive of past interviews, essays, and more are available on demand. The comment section is open, and I would love to hear from you.
Love Alexis and her work is
amazing!
I discovered her through the thread in your profile!!! She is so incredible and inspiring