Q: Where are you originally from?
A: I was born in Guyana, South America and raised in Brooklyn, New York
Q: What inspired you to become an eyewear designer?
A: The need to create something new. I have a love affair with textiles and I try to apply them to everything I can adhere them to. Sunglasses come in all shapes and sizes but not prints. I wanted sunglasses to be as much a part of the wardrobe as a shirt or pair of pants, of course you can’t leave your house without pants but you should not leave the house without sunglasses on a sunny day either. Your face is the focal part of the human body and should be dresses and adorned like the rest of our body. I also saw a void and wanted to fill it.
Q: Where do you find inspiration for your designs? They are so uniquely bold and different and I love it.
A: My inspiration comes from nature, fruit, foods, buildings, indigenous people, music, life, etc. Thank you for the complement. I wanted to create a true piece of wearable art. The shape of my frames are my canvas and the textiles prints help me express the feeling the frame gave me when I was creating the sunglasses.
Q: Describe the person who embodies the Textiles and Alchemy brand of eyewear.
A: The person who strives on being an individual. The person who expresses themselves using there bodies as the cover of there book of life. The mom rushing out to pic up her kids after school is an everyday alchemist. An everyday Alchemist is a person that expresses themselves through fashion in every aspect of life. There is no dressing up or down just always dressing to impress themselves no on else.
Q: What is your favorite piece of accessory? Is it a pair of fabulous sunnies?
A: Yes. Of course sunglasses and an amazing watch.
Q: What frame shape can work best with most face shapes?
A: The classic wayfarer shape my brand calls it the emperor. It is the perfect unisex frame balancing the masculine and feminine lines of all our faces. For women, I believe a cat eye shapes the face and makes the cheekbones seem higher than they are.
Q: What is your vision for the T&A brand?
A: I want T+A to become a staple in peoples wardrobe. Everyone should have a pair. I want people to recognize the brand as an eco-conscious brand that helps the environment instead of adding to the waste.
Q: Where do you see the brand in the next 10 years?
A: I see the brand with a flagship store that pops up in different cities. During the pop up, the brand will see how we can help each community we visit via food drives, clothes donations, or school supplies drop offs in exchange for discounts on the sunglasses. Or donating a percentage of sales to a real neighborhood cause. The brand will have its own designer frame shapes and branch out into jewelry and home decor.
Q: I love that you all have an eco-conscious awareness, something that you rarely see or hear about in the fashion industry. What inspired this initiative?
A: We have always been close to the environment and try to live with the universe instead of in it. I saw all the remnants and could not part with them. I did not want to make more waste so I figured out a way to apply the textiles to different things. One of the first things I adhered the textile waste to were jewelry then sunglasses and as they say the rest was history. We have a zero waste initiative called T.R.R.P.- Textile Remnant Recycle Program. I went a step further and started collecting textile waste from local seamstresses and tailors to be reused by T+A to reduce our carbon footprint. I still experiment from time to time with our waste, who knows what I will discover next.
