Black and Silver
Degen of New York
“Cowboy” is an exploration of masculinity as performance—a fashion brand born from the tension between ruggedness and vulnerability, power and pretense.
This project began with a question: What does it mean to dress like a man? In the world of fashion, masculinity is often projected through garments that signal toughness—vintage denim, Western silhouettes, workwear, and heavily distressed fabrics. Yet many who wear these clothes have never lived the lives those garments imply. This brand leans into that contradiction, using it as creative fuel. The goal was to explore how clothing becomes armor—how style allows people, especially men, to manufacture a sense of strength, confidence, or identity. The brand “Cowboy” is rooted in this contradiction. It reflects a persona—one that’s tough on the outside, yet constructed. Through design, I wanted to critique and celebrate this duality, offering garments that reveal the layered psychology behind male presentation.
For this capsule, I developed a single head-to-toe look that captures the brand’s ethos. The top is a reconstructed denim jacket sourced from Naked & Famous, upcycled with a second internal layer: a distressed button-up dress shirt. The result is a double-collared, double-placketed garment that visually represents the collision between blue-collar Western aesthetics and formal dresswear—a tension between “real man” and “performative man.”Paired with this is a set of leather chaps—crafted from soft, supple lambskin—mounted over a base of stretch denim. The irony is intentional. The chaps, traditionally symbols of rugged utility, are transformed into something almost delicate. Their smooth texture contrasts with their connotation, embodying the brand’s core idea: masculinity, softened and exposed. The pieces aren’t meant to be wearable in the traditional sense—they’re meant to speak. They act as metaphors for the fragile confidence embedded in so many masculine expressions today. The jacket becomes a shield. The chaps become a costume. Together, they create a look that is more psychological than practical—an emotional dissection of the modern man.
This project marks my first exploration into womenswear—a space that, while unfamiliar, felt instinctively expressive. Unlike my menswear work, which tends to dissect identity through subtle layering and rugged irony, this garment leaned into extroversion, silhouette, and seduction.Constructed in a soft interlock knit, the dress features a plunging V-neckline, exaggerated flared sleeves, and exposed elements that toe the line between elegance and provocation. The sleeves are slit from forearm to wrist and tied together delicately with chain closures, revealing skin in motion. The back of the garment is fully open, anchored only by a tight yoke panel that cinches just beneath the shoulder blades and fastens with a similar chain detail. From there, the dress cuts low into the midriff and flows downward, hugging the abdomen and rear in a way that celebrates the female figure with unapologetic boldness.
This piece isn't just about sex appeal—it’s about presence. I was fascinated by how confidence can be built into a garment. In designing this, I considered how a woman might feel stepping into something so revealing, how power can be drawn from showing skin—not for validation, but for ownership. There’s a quiet strength in garments that embrace the body rather than hide it.While this was my first foray into womenswear, it opened a lane I never expected to enjoy. My roots lie in menswear, but through this process I realized how much I’m drawn to expressive shapes, daring cuts, and pieces that provoke. This garment set the foundation for a design philosophy I want to keep exploring—one rooted in emotion, edge, and empowerment.
This bag didn’t start as a design—it started as a feeling. I’ve always been drawn to leather. There’s something primal about it. It’s rugged but tender, aggressive but soft. It carries scent, memory, and tension like no other material. It challenges you. It fights you. And it rewards you if you treat it right. For this final project in my textiles class, I knew I wanted to work with leather—not new leather, but something already lived-in. Something that had a story. I ended up using an old vintage Armani jacket I never wore. It was too big, too forgotten, but the leather was perfect—buttery soft, just worn enough, with this addictive texture you can’t help but run your hands across. I didn’t want to let it go to waste.So I tore it apart. I studied the panels, mapped out which ones could be reused, and rebuilt it into something entirely new: a tote bag. Simple in form, but layered in intention. I designed it with a base pattern, stitched the panels carefully together, and lined the inside with handmade felt—a material I created myself from natural wool fibers as part of our course’s fabric manipulation module. That felt interior brought warmth to the coldness of the leather. It added soul.
I didn’t want the bag to feel like an afterthought of a garment—it had to be its own piece. During this period of my practice, I found myself obsessed with Jackson Pollock, with abstract expressionism, with the violence and freedom of splattering paint. So I did exactly that—I took gold paint and splattered it across the bag. Not in some careful, design-y way, but instinctively. Like a release. The splatter made the bag feel alive. It gave it edge. Without it, the bag felt too safe—just another upcycled thing. With it, the bag became something that reflected my aesthetic: messy, elegant, unpredictable, emotional.This wasn’t just a craft project. It was the start of something. It taught me that leather is a material I’m deeply connected to—not just for how it feels or looks, but for how it transforms under pressure. This project was about rebirth—taking something forgotten and making it demand attention again. And I know I’m just scratching the surface. I want to keep pushing this—keep finding new ways to make destruction feel luxurious.
This project was where it all began. Degen of New York wasn’t just a brand concept—it was my first real attempt at entering the industry. At the time, I didn’t fully know who I was as a designer. I was still figuring it out—still caught between uncertainty and ambition—but I knew I had ideas, and I knew I needed to act on them. This was the first time I seriously tried to build something: to create, market, and release a line of product under my own name, with a real website, real garments, and a real audience in mind. I thought, I’ll make a few shirts, get a site up, and push it. Simple idea—complex reality. But I learned more from doing this than I ever could have from watching from the sidelines.The aesthetic of the brand was grungy, punk, and raw. It reflected my own search for identity, mixed with the influences that inspired me at the time—especially Enfants Riches Déprimés, whose graphic tees I still think are some of the best in the game. I wanted to make tees that weren’t just graphics—they were statements. Visual punches. Each shirt featured lewd, explicit, or strange imagery that I edited heavily in Photoshop—tweaking the contrast, lighting, saturation, and layout until it felt just right. Some were inverted, some washed out, some stark and minimal—but they all had that ‘wrongness’ that somehow felt right. The red tee, the only bold color in the lineup, was meant to be the outlier—the loud one in a sea of monochrome. I liked that tension.
What I’m most proud of in this project is the fact that I didn’t cut corners. While most people source blanks from wholesalers or Pro Club-type bodies, I went back to Peru—my home country—and worked with a manufacturer I knew to make the shirts from scratch. I started with flat sketches and figured out the construction. I cared about the base garment, not just the print. Because if you’re going to play this game, especially in fashion, construction has to matter. It’s not enough to have a cool image—you have to think about the canvas, too.This project represents the first spark. It was a crash course in branding, production, marketing, and design, all in one. Looking back, I see all the rough edges, all the things I’d do differently now with the knowledge I’ve gained. But I also see the energy—the hunger. Degen of New York was never meant to be polished. It was meant to be felt. And even if I revisit it one day, rework it through a higher lens of fashion knowledge, I’ll always keep its core untouched. Because this brand was me at my most instinctive, throwing punches into the dark, hoping something would land.
This project was about finding clarity through chaos. Using CLO3D, I set out to build a digital collection that fully reflected the darker aesthetic I’ve always gravitated toward—something punk, something grunge, something that felt torn and raw and beautiful in its damage. I’ve always had a natural ease with tech, so working in CLO felt more like sketching in motion than designing in a vacuum. I didn’t have to wait for muslins or samples—I could test ideas instantly, shape silhouettes freely, and push my aesthetic without worrying about material limits. This felt like an extension of my imagination, digitized. I designed six full looks, each with its own attitude but still living in the same world—heavy with black layers, oversized fits, distressed elements, and that broken vintage feel I always come back to. I included detailed flats to show how every piece fits and flows, as well as a series of accessories, including a metal gothic handbag I’m especially proud of—it has this eerie, sculptural weight to it that makes it feel like both an object and a statement. Everything ties back to this vibe I’m chasing: torn elegance, emotional silhouettes, and clothes that feel lived in and haunted.
Part of the assignment was to create a full lookbook experience in CLO, and honestly, that was one of the most exciting parts for me. I got to think like an art director—how would these clothes exist in space? How would they move? What lighting tells the story best? I rendered shots that felt cinematic, almost like frames from a memory. I think through this process I not only made a collection that’s true to me, but I also saw how powerful digital tools are when it comes to telling a story, not just designing clothes. CLO isn’t just a tool I know how to use—it’s something I’m good at, something that feels like a natural language for me. This project gave me a glimpse into how I could build entire worlds with it. Digital Punk isn’t just a series of looks—it’s a taste of something bigger I want to keep expanding.
