Today we’d like to introduce you to Amari Shaw.
Amari, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Growing up, my mother provided me with all that I needed as a child. She made it her mission to make me a very well-rounded individual as I progressed through my youth. When it came down to the things that I wanted, like the fast fashion I saw my idols wearing, my mother felt that I would be just fine with the basic necessities as a kid. After all, being a very active kid, I would have probably ruined the clothes by doing what kids do best, playing around. Whenever my mother would buy me clothes, I always took a strong interest in the jeans. I would stand in the mirror for hours adjusting my jeans so that they would look a bit slimmer, and trying on all of my sneakers with each pair of jeans so that I knew how my stacks would look. At the same time, I found myself using art as an outlet for my built-up creativity. I would practice recreating the characters I saw on the television and in comic books until my version matched the version I saw perfectly. Eventually, I began to draw out my own characters instead of recreating the ones I had seen, and my grandmother would hang up my work on the walls of her home.
Right before the start of middle school, my mother moved us from Chicago to Silver Spring, MD for a military job that she took in Washington, D.C. I was ecstatic for the move, despite the feeling of leaving everything I had known since birth. Maryland welcomed me with open arms, and the school I attended was a melting pot of cultures and ethnicities – something very unfamiliar to me at the time, but I embraced it all. This was the first time I had attended a uniform-free school, and it allowed my self-expression to flourish. I began to write poetry/music, perform in art festivals, produce/edit mini videos for the schools’ “Good Morning Takoma Park” program, and implement styles/brands into my wardrobe that I had not been exposed to back home in Chicago. I even began to become somewhat of a personal shopper and stylist as my fellow classmates would ask me to go shopping with them or find clothing online for specific school events and send them the website links. Being in this setting allowed me to start the process of the creative I had longed to be, without being fully aware of it at the time.
The summer before I started my freshman year of high school, I moved back to Chicago from Maryland. I was reluctant and saddened because I was leaving all the things and friends I had grown to love, and more importantly, an environment that allowed me to become in tune with my creativity. To my surprise, my arrival home was gifted with a newfound streetwear culture lead by the youth of Chicago. Urban/hipster culture began to rise, and along with it came a new wave of fashion, music, and way of life. What I appreciated most from this wave was its emphasis on quality denim. It introduced me to a multitude of denim brands and styles ranging from selvage, premium/organic cotton, raw/pre-washed denim, and I even began to grow a love for the overall fading process of raw denim. Although I attended to a high school that required me to wear a tie, blazer, and khakis, my peers and I found ways to diversify our uniformed setting. We would arrive to school in our khakis, however, they would be topped with graphic tees/hoodies, flashy coats/hats, and the latest/rarest sneakers of the year – even our backpacks had a flare to them. Our blazers, ties, dress shoes, and white collared shirts would be located in our lockers or backpacks, and we would change into them before the first school bell rang. And as the last school bell rang for the day, we would change back into our urban wear topped over our khakis. While I attended this institution, I met friends and mentors that would feed my hunger for creativity by introducing me to new waves of pop/urban culture.
The summer before my junior year of high school, I transferred schools. This school was uniform free, and I embraced every aspect of freedom of expression with this opportunity. I saw it as finally being able to fully implement the urban fashion keys I had learned earlier on in high school, on an everyday basis. My junior year is when I began to develop my personal denim collection consisting of vintage Levi’s, Nudie Jeans, PRPS, Naked & Famous, Woolf denim, Unbranded denim, Embellish jeans, APC denim, and Billionaire Boys Club denim, etc. Additionally, I began to draw out ideas with my best friend on what I wanted my streetwear clothing line to look like and began to customize (bleach, distress) my own denim.
It was during my Freshman year at Morehouse that my close friend from Spelman developed an admiration for my affinity for denim and decided that she would aid it by teaching me how to sew by hand. Eventually, I began to implement this new skill into my denim customizations, along with painting denim. Over time, my customizations started to catch the eye of my college peers, and they soon started to request my work on their own denim. At the end of my sophomore year of college, I bought my first sewing machine and began to teach myself how to do quick-fixes and taper/hem through the course of my summer and junior year. During the second semester of my junior year, I took a break from all things feeding my creativity to get back on track with my academics.
Despite my creative halt, I decided that I would intern with the bank to learn skills that I would be able to implement on the business side of fashion like money management and proper investments. At the end of that summer, I bought my second sewing machine to take back to school with me so that I would have one in Atlanta and one in Chicago. It was not until October of my senior year that I decided to pick back up the sketchbook, needle, thread, and bobbin pin. It all started when a few friends asked me to tackle a few patchwork projects on their jeans. Although this was a level of work I had not done before, I was up for the challenge. With all parties in awe at my work, including myself, I began to post my work on social media to show the comeback of my creative process. As a result, I began to develop a broader clientele, notoriety for my work across multiple college campuses outside of the Atlanta University Center, develop close relationships with established designers, and execute work under contract as a freelance designer for notable streetwear brands in the Atlanta area like LeWuz Studios and FashionOverPeople Inc.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
While I can not complain about my path thus far as I am aware that everything has a purpose, it has been far from the smoothest. Outside of balancing a business and keeping up with academics to maintain scholarships, the life of a young creative is coupled with a lot of internal conflicts that can sometimes seep out into their external life, thus causing more conflict. I learned at a very young age how to let go of things I loved to take care of things that would propel my future onto a higher level, though many of those times I was reluctant, it has all paid off. Whether it was losing friends in the process of taking care of business, coming to terms with the fact that not everyone can come along my journey, admitting/owning up to my own behaviors that caused turmoil in life, it was all worth it. The times where I would sit at my sewing machine for 15+ hours straight through, go on hiatuses from the world, or go 4-5 days straight without a single minute of sleep to check everything off of my to-do list, I can not stress how much it has all been worth it.
Please tell us about Martober.
MARTOBER is a showcase of my love for denim. Under that name, I tailor, design, consult and customize in all things revolving around denim. The product I am known for is my patchwork collection – taking a single denim garment and using is as a canvas for multiple layers of selvage, premium cotton, and washes of artwork. What sets me apart is that every single garment I touch is personalized and completely different from the other. It allows the people who have my artwork to feel distinct and exclusive, knowing that there is not a single person around who can say that they have the exact same product.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
“Class, write down what you would like to be when you grow up on the yellow note card I have just handed out to you all.” – these are the words of my third-grade teacher Dr. Madras that I often think about to this very day. That exact moment is when I declared what I wanted to do with my life going forward. I can recall how all of my classmates wanted to be sports superstars, physicians, lawyers, and millionaires – I, on the other hand, had simply scribbled out on my note card that “I want to own my own clothing brand and store.” Seeing my idols wear things that I liked on television inspired me to want to be the producer of the clothing they wore in the future. I knew that there was a personal mark I wanted to leave the world with, and I knew that I would do just that through fashion. What I had written down on that yellow note card felt like a truth I knew I would eventually walk in despite the roads it would take to get there, and at that same ripe age of nine, I fell in love with what would lead me to the road of my truth.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/martober_/?hl=en
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