Sandalwood: Perfect for Autumn, Sandalwood can produce orange, red and even brown
Can I ask you a question?
How often do you shop in stores to find a unique throw pillow for your home only to find out that the pillow you have in your hand is exactly like the one you saw in another store?
I do the same thing, I go inside a store for inspiration and I see these pillows and some of them are really nice, but I can tell that the design was mass produced; a customer before me and a customer after me will purchase this exact same pillow for his or her own home.
Now don't get me wrong!
From a business point, it's often necessary; there's nothing wrong with having something that has been mass produced. I have clothing and home accessories that I know somebody else has too!
So what am I really driving at then? It's simple really.
Desire.
A desire that's not being met. I want something unique. I want something special. Something made by someone else's hands. Something I can admire and appreciate the work that went into it by its creator whenever I pass by it in my home.
Do you share the same desire?
If you have been struggling with this same desire, you're in the right place!
This is why I chose to create BiHapi Studio; I wanted to find a creative solution to my problem and share that solution with others that feel the same way.
I also have a desire to give back to the community and help the environment by choosing to use fabrics and natural dyes that don't harm our planet.
This is why I chose to use h**p fabrics: they don't create "fabric pollution" while in production.
I also plan to donate 5% of my profits to a charity that is dear to me: Free Arts For Abused Children. I volunteered for a fashion trunk show while I was on an internship with Cotton Inc. in New York. They were helping out this charity; so when I found out more about what they do for children, I was totally onboard to join.
I graduated from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco in 2005 with an MFA in fashion design. I used natural indigo dye in my final collection.
I had so much fun creating my collection!!
In my tiny studio in the middle of Nob Hill, I would be in my kitchen dyeing my different types of cotton material, listening to my favorite jazz station on the radio while getting droplets of indigo everywhere (luckily I was smart enough to cover the floor with newspapers)!
It's a beautiful process, dyeing with indigo--after you carefully take the material out of the dye bath, it literally turns blue right before your eyes!
One of my designs was a long denim coat. To create the pattern for the denim coat, for example, I used oval shaped wood chips and inserted them in-between the accordion folds of the fabric and held them together with metal C-clamps.
I had never worked so hard or so tirelessly than when I was working on this collection. The lab at the school was open from 7am to midnight. Me and other fashion students stayed that entire time the lab was open and I continued working on my collection even after I got home--after midnight.
That's how much that collection meant to me. That is how important the creative process meant to me and still does. And guess what? My devotion and dedication paid off--my collection was one of 8 that was chosen for the Spring show! The Academy of Art's Fashion Spring Show is a BIG deal! Fashion designers from all over the world come to see what we produce and choose students to work with them!
Now I bet you're wondering if I ever became a big time fashion designer? Nope! lol. Surprising right? Between you and me, I was worn out. I loved my collection, I enjoyed working on it. I'm still proud of it. The fashion industry is hard work and a vicious cycle and I made a decision that I wanted no part of it.
As soon as the last model walks down the runway and the show is over, those clothes are already old news! The designer begins working on next season's collection that she will present again in another six months.
The products that I create is something I know I can do over and over again without feeling burn-out, which is why I prefer made to order; it's not like creating a single collection with over 200 pieces!
It's my happy place; it puts me back in my little studio apartment in San Francisco listening to my favorite jazz station playing on the radio.
I want to share that memory with you through my products.
If you have read through this much, first, I'd like to say Thank You!!
Thank you for visiting my page. I hope you enjoy what you see and I look forward to creating your next home decor pillow!
