Life and Work with Shayna Ariel

Today we’d like to introduce you to Shayna Ariel. Them and their team share their story with us below:

Shayna Ariel (they/them) the founder, creative director & sole designer of the fashion brand Darkm0th Industry, moved to Colorado after living on both the East and West Coasts. After studying vocal performance in LA & traveling the US as a fire dancer & making costumes & performance outfits for themselves & their performer friends, Shayna made the move to the Rocky Mountains in order to focus on their love of nature & sustainable design. Darkm0th Industry is committed to help promote change within the damaging fast-fashion culture & overall fashion industry & hopes to make loving & caring for our planet #trending. Falling in love with sustainable textiles from around the globe, Darkm0th creates high-fashion, hand-made garments that prove sustainability can still be a luxury. Darkm0th Industry’s designs are size inclusive & genderless, using modular design techniques in order to create unique & fashion-forward garments adaptable to all bodies.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Of course, big dreams & big ideas have their challenges. While I could point to the obvious – industry of fast fashion – as a major hurdle to overcome, I look at it as an opportunity to promote change. Currently, humans are polluting the earth & its water systems faster than we can even recognize. But the language of art speaks louder than words ever could. Art is the language I chose to speak. I truly believe that through honest creation with true intention, creators will start a ripple effect, systematically crushing capitalistic tendencies & killing the need for fast fashion as a whole. My hope is to perpetuate that clothing is genderless. Size-inclusive and clothing sustainable to us & to this amazing planet we live on. I believe all of life’s complex equations can be answered by celebrating our differences instead of waging wars against each other. No hurdle is too high to jump when the other side is the most beautiful of pastures. Instead of arguing, I desire to show the world a new way of looking at such a basic need as our everyday clothing; posing the question, can we promote real change by how we dress & present ourselves to the world on a daily basis? The road is certainly not a smooth one, but I would not have it any other way.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Darkm0th Industry in a few words is dark, minimal, industrial & futuristic — all words that do not normally equate to sustainability or inclusivity. Fashion should be timeless, genderless & inclusive. Good design should always be sustainable, if it is not, it’s not good design, end of story. We are creators, not destroyers. Art should not discriminate towards any person or group of people. Fashion should not be difficult, painful, or cause more harm to us or our planet. Looking & feeling luxuriously good in your everyday life should not have to come at such high costs. Darkm0th Industry aims to tackle all of these things & more with their design and will not stop at just that!

How do you define success?
Success to me is being able to communicate my ideas to larger & larger audiences — to open up a wider conversation to the world about our collective future here on earth & what that might even look like. What would you want that to look like? I know one thing is for sure, bigotry & exclusivity are certainly not a part of a world I seek. Success to me would be a collective realization that what is happening now is not working at all & that the future is not some foreign, distant, ethereal imaginative thing. The future needs to be NOW. Success would mean the people of the world are ready & accepting of that, success would mean to kill capitalism & drown out fraudulence & hatred & I will not stop until I can communicate that.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.darkm0thindustry.com (Coming Soon 2023)
• Instagram: @darkm0thindustry
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/darkm0thindustry/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SQk4mCbpBE&ab_channel=THAILANDFASHIONWEEK

Image Credits
Photo by Rebecca Grant Studios (photo of me on the runway) Other photos: Models Sandra Olivas and Stephen Garcia Photography by Danielle Webster