Sierra Dew

Sierra in her own desgin of dragonfish tee

Through her one-of-a-kind wearable arts, Sierra Dew is talking to the contemporary women, who are global-conscious and eco-conscious, thinking about the impact individuals make on the environment by what they buy.

Conscious fashion: stencil print

Sierra wants to make sure she does things right from the very beginning. While she is working on her own line now, she has stencil printed on American Apparel and Alternative Apparel garments with water-based non-toxic acrylic dyes. She hand cuts out of a cardboard the image, hand prints through it onto a t-shirt or whatever, and hand paints colors and details in. Each piece has her personal touch rather than mass produced by machines and anonymous hands.

Apart from environmental concerns, she chooses the media of stencil print also for its long history of public expression. "Print can be very strong and people react to print," Sierra said of conveying the message through images versus through words. For Sierra, fashion should be more than a piece of garment. Fashion can be political. For example, she showed me a print of a little girl wearing gas mask and eating corn, which make people think about issues they face and decisions they make.

"I don't like LA vibe. I like Kaui vibe."

When Sierra produces her own line, it will be made in Hawaii, not LA. She cannot see her own stuff made in cut-throat LA. Beautiful things should be made in beautiful places.And talking about Kaui, she create the rooster print as a tribute to the omnipresent roosters in Kaui. She is nature-inspired, as you can see in her beautiful prints, many of which are sealife, such as jelly fish, dragon fish, and sea shells. Please check out the slideshow or her website for a look at her nature-inspired prints.

She creates a mythical world through her prints, where art meets science and legend meets reality. Her flying unicorn print shows that maybe the mythical world and reality "need not to be separated". She is into the patterns within the natural objects. When she follows the golden ratios in the pattern, she exaggerates the most beautiful or the ugly portion, such as the feature on a bird or the antler on a deer. Intrigued by both the perfection and imperfection in nature, she shows both in her arts.

Nature punk: jewelry

A slender woman, Sierra loves chuncky jewelry. "I may take it to the fight," she beamed while talking about the "dangerousness and edginess" in her big jewelry pieces. Many are metal pieces with a shell embedded, which marries nature to craftmanship. Influenced by her jewelry-making mother and grandmother, she started playing with wire wrapping since a young age. Now she uses lost wax casting and obviously enjoys metal-smithing. "My pieces will last for a long time. People love it or they don't like it."

Sierra, a mix of cultures

From Paia, Maui, Sierra has multi-cultural heritages: Greek, Polish, British and Native Indian, which explains her obsession with feathers, whether it's a beautiful long feather slanting across the front of a t-shirt or the elegant brown feathers dangling from her ears. She was educated by both the fashion program at the University of Hawaii and Polimoda Fashion Design School in Florence, Italy. She likes the simplicity of the contrasting blue and white in Greece. Yet she also likes the colorful complex patterns abundant in Hawaii.

Below is her self portrait created for the textile class at UH. Now she made it onto her t-shirts.

Where to find Sierra Dew

Her website

Her booth at Women's Expo, from 9/11~13, at Blaisdell Center.