“A story of dreams mixed with reality”
Notorious Italian magazine Outpump interviewed me back in November 2020. Here’s a quick glance about my personal story, past experiences & career ambitions from a third-person point of view.
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You're making a name for yourself in Italy and beyond. You are now based here but you grew up in Costa Rica. How did you get into the world of sneakers in your home country?
“In the beginning with graffiti. There wasn’t any kind of fashion nor sneaker culture in Costa Rica while growing up so my passion used to be graffiti. When I wasn’t writing, I was always watching graffiti videos on Youtube and I quickly began to notice that a lot of the artists I watched the most were ususally wearing Air Maxes,either 90s or 1s. From that moment the footwear & fashion world won me over.”
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Then how did this passion develop?
“I started college thinking that a product design degree is what I needed to break into the sneaker & fashion industry. Later, however, I focused more on graphic design. I started doing concepts in Photoshop and soon after that I started my Instagram account ‘Fiamma Studios’ but only with the idea of crating an online portfolio, not with an initial ambition of building this.”
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You have made a name for yourself by creating iconic ‘inspired by’ designs. Have you always done this?
“I would really like to do my own thing from now on, I’ve been doing these designs for a couple years now and the reception has been amazing but this is just a small percentage of what I’m capable of doing. I’m ready to move on, maybe once my name is even more stable or known I will start producing & creating everything from scratch.”
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So, would you like to do something else in the fashion world?
“Of course! Fashion in general is my passion, I’m heavily inspired by streetwear but I go crazy for high-end too; the freedom in the use of materials and techniques, the pieces created exclusively for the runaways, etc. I have a folder full of sketches, hopefully one day all of them will come out somehow.”
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Would you like to work independently or?
“I’d like to start working in a company to gain more experience in the industry, I’ve been freelancing basically since I started so I’m positive that working with a brand will make my career blow up. Maybe an internship is what I really need, after that I’d like to continue independently. “
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About the business side, how did you start seeing your work at the feet of people like Kevin Hart, J Balvin, NBA players & more?
“Basically, thanks to the power of Instagram. As I said at the beginning plenty of notorious Instagram accounts such as Highsnobiety, NiceKicks Hypebeast, etc. keep reposting my work so that’s how athletes, rappers and celebrities started getting in touch with me.”