Dara Ambriz, Land of Enchantment and Hopeless + Cause Atelier

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I am a writer and executive administrator for Trusted Clothes, which is an ethical and sustainable fashion organization. The following is a series devoted in honor of the work done in collaboration with the Schroeckers and the Trusted Clothes team. Here is part 1.

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Tell us about yourself – family background, personal story, education, and previous professional capacities.

I am a native New Mexican, born and raised in the Land of Enchantment. I come from a tightly knit family full of artists. Living here you can’t help not be one with the rich landscapes, the diversity of the people, the beautiful sunsets and magically star filled skies. As a girl, I was introduced to the opportunity of fashion design as a career, through the gift of Fashion Plates. This gift set was my creative outlet for design and mixing colors, patterns, and textiles on paper. I spent endless hours designing through this medium. I took the next step into actually creating my own clothing after my parents divorced while I was in the fifth grade. When that life event occurred, I spent countless summers with my maternal grandparents. That’s when my grandmother taught me to sew. It was a wonderful bonding experience and helped me to continue my love for fashion and design. This occurred during my early teenage years, in middle school.

Middle School, I feel, is that awkward time, when you are trying to find your own identity while still trying to fit in with your peers. For girls, acceptance and self-esteem play a huge role in your life at this time and for me without a clothing allowance, creating my own clothing were the way for me to create my own style. As I went on to high school, I was serious about following a path in fashion design. My junior year I signed up for the fashion course and club, only to be disappointed when the class was canceled due to budget cuts and the club disbanded due to lack of interest.

Because I didn’t want to leave the state of New Mexico and the lack of designs schools locally, I followed my second love: studying people through psychology and communications. This led me to work in the field of Human Resources and Community Relations. Through this work, I was able to engage and empower employees to assist them to develop their leadership skills and impact the community through non-profit volunteer work. While I wasn’t working in the fashion sector, it was never too far away for me. This role ended in 2013 and that’s when a ticket to New York Fashion Week brought me back to my first love.

Seeing designers bring their creations to life on the world’s stage inspired me to invest into an independent retailer and learn about the business. I learned that I had a keen eye for fashion, buying, and styling. I bought out of the Los Angeles market, so I began to appreciate slow fashion, lines that used eco-friendly materials and products that were made domestically or through sustainable manufacturing processes. I loved working one-on-one with customers to help them find the right look. It was incredible to see their transformation, feeling confident and empowered with my assistance. I had built a clientele base, helping people with their shopping and styling needs, and one afternoon I had a conversation with someone who asked me, “Why aren’t you designing?” I thought it was an odd question because he didn’t know that this was a childhood dream, so I responded, asking him, “Why do you say that? You’ve never seen anything I’ve created.” He stated matter-of-factly, “You have an eye for it. You’d make a killing.”

A few months later, I started designing and creating for myself. Being in the small business, in order to market the company, I attended many social and networking events (there are countless numbers of them in Albuquerque, NM). Evening wear can get expensive and especially when it’s something you don’t wear over and over again. I started making outfits for these events. It was great because I was truly unique in what I wore and received a number of compliments from friends. However, I was never quite sure if they were being just being kind or truly being honest.

Then shop closed. I was devastated and I wasn’t sure I wanted to move forward in this space. I had a conversation with a friend who challenged me. She said, “I’m not going to let you give up on this dream. I want to commission you to create two outfits for upcoming events.” I did and was with her at one of the events when she was stopped over and over again to be told how gorgeous her dress was. It was the perfect market research. That’s when Hopeless + Cause Atelier was launched. It’s a social wear line with a social conscience.

There are three tenants of the line. I want it to be a transformative experience for the wearer by helping them to feel empowered, confident, comfortable while making an impact on the scene (this comes from my background in psychology and communications and I see fashion through that lens). I want people to know who made their clothes and use sustainable textiles and recycled/upcycled materials in the process. One of the companies, I collaborate with is Batiks for Life. The founder, Sara Corry (who also writes for Trusted Clothes), created this company to provide economic empowerment to women in Ghana, Africa while the sales of the batik medical scrubs support health care access to people in that country. I purchase custom batik from her to create my Caprice line. Finally, giving back is hugely important to me. I believe in the work that nonprofits do to change the world for the better, so 10% of the sales of each piece benefit a nonprofit.

Since its inception, Hopeless + Cause Atelier has grown through word of mouth marketing and it’s moving at the right speed for me. I’ve hosted a couple of runway shows for the local New Mexico market. For the first time this October, the line will be shown outside of New Mexico during FWLA’s (Fashion Week Los Angeles) Spring/Summer 2017 Discovery Session. I’m excited to work with FWLA and out of the Los Angeles market because it will put me closer to more options for domestic manufacturing and sourcing of eco-friendly and sustainable textiles.

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Original publication on www.trustedclothes.com.

All images courtesy of www.trustedclothes.com.

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