Elena Velez

A proponent of authentic process and creativity under constraint, our collections often incorporate found, salvaged, and site-specific materiality. Through an aggressively delicate aesthetic signature, the Elena Velez brand designs with the tactile sensibility of a maker who prioritizes functionality and utility over perfection or beauty, working beyond contemporary references to investigate the relationship between femininity and force. Her styling codes are anti beautiful, contemporary artisanal, industrial, and era agnostic. The brand thesis is the recontextualization of regional craftsmanship while sharing the stories of its makers. Our tone is divergent, anecdotal, artisanal, prescient, and steeped in contemporary anthropology.

In tandem with the growth of our creative mission, we’re excited to continue expanding our formula of community building, innovative manufacturing, and the scaling of site specific materiality. We find that working with textiles authentic to the context of the story we want to tell each season lends an artifact-like quality to the work that marries the wearer to the source of inspiration in an incredibly powerful way. In 2020, we proudly launched our EV Collaborator Studio – a remote residency and rotating artist showcase that oversees the creation of limited co-designed products with creatives curated based on a mission parallel to the Elena Velez brand. The studio focuses on democratizing creative and entrepreneurial resources for makers outside of typically established creative capitals and provides a pipeline to the industry for small brands through sales opportunity and circulatory access to our influencer network. At scale, our vision is to build a maker space and small scale factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to rebuild the covetability of American manufacturing from a future-facing, collaborative, and fully integrated perspective.