Interview with Kuya Allen, Designer

Vessel: Welcome back, everybody. We are here today with the wonderful Kuya Allen. Would you please give us an introduction about yourself?

Kuya: Intro, yeah, well, my name is Kuya Allen. My intros are always kind of embarrassing because it’s just painfully obvious I have ADHD. I’m a multidisciplinary artist, so I do photography, painting, and fashion design—fashion design has been the main one lately. I run a creative agency called Down Haus. We’re working on a music video. We throw a lot of art shows locally and professionally. I also do business-to-business tech sales and art dealing. So, just between that and a lot of work in the community, I’m a single dad as well. It’s just kind of always working on something.

Vessel: Wow. Jack of all trades. I want to know, when did your passion for fashion begin? Tell us about your first creation.

Kuya: My fashion passion. I mean, at first, I was always just a consumer of fashion. I never intended to go into making fashion, but early on, I did discover how fashion’s power really changes a person. I mean, it changes how you act, how you view yourself. There’s a culture involved with it, depending on what you participate in. I’ve always been a fan before going into fashion. I learned a lot from Down Haus and from my crew there, like Lux, Kit, and MR in my workshop. They were always making jackets, doing whatever. I learned a lot from them. But only this year have I actually been working and making clothes myself. It started with my girlfriend letting me paint on her clothes. I painted her pants, and I painted a bunch of other clothes for her. It kind of started just like that, a little fun experiment. I think a lot of my different arts and hobbies go this way—just slowly seeing what the limit is, and just limit-testing how far we can take it. I’ve fallen more in love with fashion and want to continue to do more.

Vessel: I think that’s wonderful. All great artists expand in that network. Where do you find your inspiration?

Kuya: Yeah, I guess a corny line is that my inspiration finds me a lot of the time. I think I don’t really look for it like a lot of other artists do. It’s just me tapping into my past and my personal life and things that I go through, conversations I have with people, emotions I’m feeling. I think it always starts with that, then everything else is just a translation of what I’m going through. That’s how I fit a lot of the writing in my art—what I choose to paint from that. It’s always experiential first, starting from that and developing it. I think being able to tap in is always a powerful move to have in your arsenal.

Vessel: How would you describe your style and aesthetic when it comes to creations?

Kuya: It’s pretty messy, you know? I mean, it’s influenced by a lot, but obviously, I think the big ones are punk culture and the DIY thing. I think a lot of what’s important for me when I’m making things is being able to be imperfect and being able to improvise. Looking at my pieces, you can tell if something is for a client or a showpiece—I take it a lot slower. If you look at a lot of the things that I make in my free time, it’s a total mess, just me finding the piece on the garment or on the canvas and letting it reveal itself. And honestly, that’s how some of the best stuff is made.

Vessel: Could you walk us through your creative process, from concept to creation?

Kuya: Yeah, I guess there are two different art styles I do. I think the one that's most common, it's not really a process; it's really just subconscious—I can't describe it any other way. It's more finding a piece than creating something. There's no concept; I guess the concept is what I'm going through at the time and giving it a space to unravel itself. Like I think I've said before, a lot of my art is my therapy; it's my way of sitting with my demons and understanding something that you can't really put into words. It needs to be articulated visually or whatever form I'm doing at the time. The other kind is client-based work, like the pieces I did for Shey, and with Aya. That one's really fun because that process—doing this couture work and doing the one-on-ones—it starts as a consultation, almost like a tattoo artist will consult you. You tell your story, the history, kind of everything behind the iconography you talk about. It's this really fun kind of dance of just extracting meaning from somebody's story and being able to translate that into art. It's like, “Okay, we'll use these kinds of flowers, we'll use this year, we'll use this kind of message,” or whatever it is. You really let the client guide that process. As long as it's anchored in trying to have a deeper understanding of who I'm trying to represent in this work, the rest kind of figures itself out.

Vessel: How do you differentiate yourself from other artists in the industry? What makes your stuff unique to you?

Kuya: Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of really great artists occupy the designer space, especially in Salt Lake. As far as what makes me different, I don't think there's anything I'm doing that hasn’t been done before. I'm not the first to paint on things. I'm not the first to do upcycled work. But for me, a lot of what I put into fashion really is just a combination of all my background. It's what I do professionally, working at the bank and in tech—that analytical mind finds itself in how I run the brand, how I do the marketing, how I develop the team. But then the conversations I have around the city, at different events, and things that I learn about all these different little subcultures going on, conversations I have with my partner, my son, and myself—all of those things come together in a way that I think, once it reaches that point, it has to be pretty different than other people's because it's very personal at that point.

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Designer: Kuya Allen @kuyaallen.couture