THE DROPPOINT:
The brands I admired spoke loudly—Off-White, FOG, all the icons. But they came with price tags I couldn’t reach and sizing that didn’t include people like me. I wasn’t invisible. I was just left out.
THE ENTRY:
This is the first log. Not the start of the story, just the first time I’m telling it all the way through.
I didn’t begin in a studio. I began in shelters. On couches. In silence. Planning fashion shows in the mid-2000s with emerging designers while figuring out where I’d sleep next. I ran a small fashion and music magazine from a cracked laptop.
In 2016, I won the ASU Edson Initiative Award for a big & tall styling subscription service. That was major. But I was still navigating the shadows—always building, always surviving.
Haus of Mix wasn’t a brand idea. It was desperation. A last gasp for something that felt like me. Off-White, FOG—I admired those pieces from afar. I couldn’t afford them. And even if I could, they were never made with bodies like mine in mind. Nothing ever fit.
So I built something that did.
What no one tells you is that doing something new and expensive when you have nothing—it’ll wreck you if you let it. The anxiety was suffocating. I was already in therapy trying to find air. But I kept stitching. Kept sketching. Kept praying that the vision was louder than the doubt.
A little over a year later, I’m still here. Fully in this. Heart open, hands steady.
This work has healed me. It’s given voice to the kid who didn’t know how to express himself. It’s given me confidence I didn’t even know I was allowed to have. The anxiety still calls sometimes, but it doesn’t stay long.
This is THE VAULT. The good. The bad. The ugly. The reason.
We document here so the journey doesn’t get erased.
THE TAKEAWAY:
You can build from nothing. Especially when that nothing finally pisses you off enough to move.
- Aron
