ERIKA MAISH

NEXT GENERATION

Erika Maish is an emerging womenswear designer and one of the most promising fashion school graduates of 2019. Born in Los Angeles, she obtained her BA in Textile Design and then her MFA at the prestigious Central Saint Martins. Concerned with the current environmental crisis, Erika works predominantly with recycled and unusual materials, making her path in postmodern sustainable fashion. Her MFA Graduate Collection called ‘American Psychic’ is inspired by her adventure trips through the deserts of America’s south-west and her search for esoteric experiences, spirituality, astrology and occultism as antidotes to the political and social realities of contemporary capitalism. Considering the desert as a powerful energetic place of isolation and meditation, Maish’s work imagines a new type of society where people abandon conservative ways of living in the city to reconnect to themselves and to nature by creating alternative communities.

She lists Tom Kelly’s houses in Nevada, fully made of glass bottles, among her key references. This ingenious architectural approach inspired Maish to design her first collection using only waste materials and found objects, such as ring pulls from soda cans colored with car paints from the local auto body shop, massage beads inspired by old car seats, and vintage jewelry. Influenced by the outlandish styles at Burning Man festival, her graduate collection includes can tab dresses, a suit, a trench coat, tiny knitted bikinis and bras, a massage bead bodysuit, a safari dress with astrology-themed eyelets, a printed dress and yoga shorts, and a shimmering crystal healing sports bra and shorts. www.erikamaish.com