I've been making things my whole life. As a child it was drawings, then paintings, then models, then buildings. I studied architecture in Venezuela and spent years working with clients to turn their ideas into real spaces and I loved that work, I genuinely did, but there was always something underneath it that I hadn't given a real home to yet. The color obsession, the pattern obsession, the need to make things that were dense and layered and alive with references that meant something.
Mali took five years to become what it actually is (solo me tomo 5 años, as I always say with a laugh, because it's both embarrassing and completely true). I tried other directions. I tried fitting into narratives that weren't mine. And then I stopped, and I made it what I always wanted it to be: a creative studio with a specific artistic language, rooted in nature, built from everything I know how to do.
That language is maximalist. It is deeply colorful. It is compositionally dense in the way that architecture taught me to think about space, weight, balance, depth, the relationship between every element and every other element. Every design starts from research: real botanical references, cultural objects, places I have lived, things I cannot stop thinking about. Nothing is invented without a reason.
We make silk scarves, but that is the output, not the identity. The identity is the thinking behind every line.
I work in two ways. I design collections that come entirely from my own research and obsessions, and I take custom commissions for people, brands, and institutions who want something made specifically for them. The Museo Catedral in Santo Domingo has been carrying three of our designs in their gift shop for over a year. A fashion brand in Latin America licensed six of our prints for their own collection. A wedding scarf is being finished right now. Each of these came from a conversation, from someone telling me what they needed and me figuring out how to make it real — which is the part of this work that I love the most, and the part that my years in architecture prepared me for better than anything else.
If you have found Mali and you are reading this, I want you to know what we are and what we are not. We are not a fast brand, we are not a trend. We are a studio with a point of view, and every piece we make carries that point of view into the world in a form you can wear, give, or live with.
I am so glad you are here.
You can see my full YouTube video on this here
los quiero mucho, Bárbara P.V.P 💖
0 comments