This Oakland-Based Fashion Designer Tells Her Story Through Reclaimed Fabrics

“And of course we’re going dancing in this, so let’s go,” she said in the video before it cuts to footage of her grooving to bachata at a club.

Her goal, Garcia said, is to teach people to make clothes so that they can appreciate all the work and artistry that goes into a garment.

“There’s just so much clothing in the world, and I really feel like we don’t need to make any more material,” Garcia said. In her eyes, upcycling “is just seeing the potential within a garment and creating something completely new.”

Garcia’s ability to not just reuse an item, but turn it into a work of art, reminded me of the Mexican and Chicano tradition of rasquache, a practice rooted in resourcefulness, creativity and reuse of materials.

Rasquachismo stems from the idea of not letting anything useful go to waste, said Aída Hurtado, a professor of Chicano and Chicana Studies at UC Santa Barbara and co-author of meXicana Fashions: Politics, Self-Adornment, and Identity Construction.

Many Latine designers are looking to fashion for cultural expression and to promote practices that benefit the environment, a long-held tradition, Hurtado said. Latinos have been known for reusing everything from margarine containers to clothing to broken items, all of which can be repaired or reassembled into something else.

I witnessed this growing up with my mother, who sews, and my father, who knew carpentry. There is still a bench sitting outside my parents’ house that my dad fashioned out of a discarded diving board.

Hurtado said that in Latine communities, “you have to make everything extend because you don’t have a lot of money and you also live in a collective, collaborative kind of community where whatever else you have, you give to other people.”

“It’s more common among people that are working class or are poor, both in the U.S. and in Mexico.”

Rasquache, born out of necessity and struggle, now confronts a world where regular items are cheap and disposable and fast fashion clothes are filling up landfills — a particular concern for Garcia.

I asked Hurtado if Latinos are beginning to lose our Rasquachismo as it becomes easier and cheaper to access various goods.

Hurtado responded that cultural practices are not always transmitted linearly from one generation, and younger generations can choose to carry on those practices.

Garcia, for example, is making a conscious choice to reject fast fashion and promote sustainability.

“You may not loop back all the way to the origins of these practices,” Hurtado said. “But you end up modifying those practices and keeping some of the essence of them.” 

Garcia, whose parents immigrated from Oaxaca, Mexico, grew up in Paso Robles. From the time that she was in kindergarten, she knew she wanted to be a clothing designer.

Garcia’s love of thrifting came from “just not having money,” she said. “Growing up, we would go to charity shops and get secondhand clothing, or I’d get a lot of hand-me-downs from my sister or my mom or family.”

She learned to sew in high school so she could apply to a fashion program for college, and made her dress for senior prom. At FIT, she specialized in intimate apparel and learned how to make garments by hand, use natural dyes and make use of what’s known as dead stock — excess fabric left over from clothing factories.

Part of her graduation from FIT was supposed to entail a final fashion show, attended by potential employers. The event was canceled because of COVID-19.

She had imagined trying to get a job out of college as an entry-level designer for a fashion brand, but those opportunities dissipated during the pandemic.

That led her to social media and upcycling.

“When I first started out my business, my intention was to upcycle and sell pieces. But I was doing that, and I was pricing things very affordably,” she said. “So I was underpaying myself. It just wasn’t a sustainable business model.”

She mostly makes dresses for herself as opposed to making them for customers, because dresses seem to offer the biggest wow factor.

Now, she said her business brings in six figures from ad revenue, sponsorship deals and sales of digital sewing patterns through Etsy. That is more than double what she might be earning as a low-level designer at a major fashion brand.

“I’m really happy with the way things turned out, because if that never happened, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” she said. “It pushed me to start my own business.”

After Garcia and her fiancé moved to the Bay Area in late 2024, she set up her studio in the second bedroom of their apartment.

Her creative process starts with finding reclaimed fabrics, usually at thrift stores like Savers in Alameda, one of her local favorites.

On a recent visit to her studio, she showed me some of her favorite pieces, including a two-toned light and medium blue halter beach dress, a sleeveless number from a beaded shirt she found in Europe, a cocktail dress made from Mexican National Team soccer jerseys and an off-white lace gown with a Mandarin collar that she plans to wear for her engagement photo shoot.

“I never look at the item itself,” Garcia said. “I always look at that fabric if I like the print, if I like the fiber.

“I’m always drawn to floral prints, bright colors. And, if I’m looking at fiber, I’m drawn to silks, crochet textures, anything that’s really soft and romantic. And then, I kind of just go from there.”

She often comes up with a specific design once she’s done cutting up the source material. She drapes it over a mannequin — and the ideas start to percolate.

Garcia shares this creative process with her social media followers, which, between Instagram and YouTube, total more than 1 million.

“I love reading the comments that people leave saying, ‘I started sewing because of you,’” she said. “I feel so good being able to show people the potential there is in what a lot of others see as waste.”