Pierangeli Mendez

Last week I got to sit down and chat with this inspiring soul, Pierangeli Mendez. As a self-proclaimed "knit-nerd", Pierangeli is developing new and compelling knitwear designs and she isn't going to let anyone slow her down!  Find out what inspired this young Puerto Rico native to pursue a career here in New York. 

By Romain Ruth - Sunday, August 27, 2017

Are you originally a New Yorker?

No, not at all. I was born in Puerto Rico born and raised there. I moved here 4 years ago because I wanted to go to Fashion School. I did a Bachelor’s in PR in Multimedia and TV production. That was really cool, but I knew I wanted to do something more creative and then I started going more towards fashion but there was no school in P.R. that I was going to give me the tools that I need to be a fashion designer. Then I figured out I wanted to go to school in New York.  I worked for a few years, saved a little bit of money, and then moved here. And I just finished school a few weeks ago at FIT.

Well Congratulations on the graduation! What inspired you to first start designing? Was it from your family or was it something you kind of came about on your own?

Well, when I was little I would always be telling my mom, “Mom, I want a dress that’s like ‘this, this, and this’” We would go to the store, and of course they wouldn’t have the dress because I just made it up. My mom didn’t go to any sort of fashion school, but she sort of knew [how to sew] from like making things for herself, so she would tried her best to make what I wanted as a kid. Then when I was a teenager, I was like “Mom, can I just use your sewing machine?” and she was like, “Yes, but I don’t want to be responsible for that, SO you need to teach yourself!” And I did and it was kind of like I was in Love, and I thought “Oh my god! I wanna do this!” And I was probably in middle school or high school when I started seeing project runway.

OH Yeah! That was a good one back then! 

And I was like, “This is good TV, but this is also like a career path that I can take” and I sort of developed from that. I’m big into learning something by yourself, so I learned a lot of things by watching tutorials and going on forums, and even YouTube Videos. But then I realized, “This is not going to work.” And That’s when I decided to go to school. It was a kind of progressive idea like, “Oh I like this as a hobby” and then “wait a minute, I can just do this.”

There is a vast world of fashion and design, but you seem to focus mainly on woven and knits. How did you come to zone in on that?

So at FIT the first 2 years that you do are wovens. Strictly cut and sew, wovens. After the 2 years you have the choice of just graduating and having an associates or continuing and doing 2 years in either knitwear, sportswear, initimate apparel, special occasion, or children’s wear. So I decided to go into knitwear because I didn’t know anything about it. Like I would buy a sweater and I don’t know how that was made versus me buying something woven, and I would know how it was made. It was so new to me, so I really want to know how to do this. And that’s when I went into the Knitwear program.

I thought it was great, I saw a lot of new things. There are a lot of machines there that as a designer in New York, you might not even see because they’re mostly based in factories in Asia but we would have them at the school so you get to see it, and that was pretty cool.

Earlier this year, believe it was in the Spring. I apologize but I took a really deep dive through your Instagram feed! So, creepy, I know! But you were one of 4 student designers chosen to have a design displayed at Neiman Marcus. That dress is stunning! It looks so intensive and detailed, and so delicate. How long did that take to create?

Ugh…I don’t wanna… [laughter] So I can send you pictures of the process. I will most likely be doing a photo shoot in the next few weeks, so I will have some pictures of the dress that I can send you on the model because I have tried it on myself and I was like, “Oh my god, it looks scandalous!” I truly cannot wait to have it on a model!

The process of the dress was kind of intense. In the winter, I was just experimenting with fabrics trying to figure out what I was going to do. And I found a mesh thread that was nearly invisible and a started piling on these little loops, and every stitch was placed by hand one by one. After I figured, “I have swatch this big [roughly 6 inches by 6 inches] and this took me an hour…. Am I ready to, like do this?!” And you know what, let’s say I finish school, I get a job, I will never get the chance to do this again. I’m never gonna have the time to do this crazy idea again. So that’s when I felt that I just had to do it!

It took so long, especially because in knitwear if you drop a stitch, the whole thing drops down.

Yes, I have sewn one or more scarves where I have missed a stitch and I have go back and unravel. But your dress was WAY more intricate, so you can’t really just pull a string and go back.

No, because I couldn’t even see it!

Oh, damn!

Yeah! The whole thing dropped once. I was almost done and the whole thing dropped at like 3AM. I was like, “Okay. I am not gonna scream. I’m not gonna freak out. I’m just gonna start tomorrow again.”

I knew that it was a chance that I was taking, but after that I did not drop it again anymore. So when I was feeling tired or feeling stressed, I would just think, “It’s better for me to take a break now than to make a mistake, dropping the whole thing and then have to start all over again. But that was kind of also, the thrill of it. This was kind of risky, but if it doesn’t work then it doesn’t work. It was fun and it was exciting. I am trying to get a few more pieces for a photo shoot so I made a matching top, but after that I think I’m done. I’m ready for something safer.

Well, I love it! As intricate as those pieces are, I am just in love them. It’s kind of like that military feel with the more rustic colors, and all the different textures. I truly admire that sort of effort and passion toward the final product. Applause!

Thank You!

With everything thing that you have gone through with moving here from Puerto Rico, to taking on 3 college degrees, what would you say was one of the major barriers that you had to overcome to get to this point in your life?

To be honest, the entire time I was going to school I was also working. I didn’t want to get into any student loans. When I was done with school, I would rather take the money I have and put it into my business or whatever. In my head, I was like, “You are NOT getting into any student loans. AT ALL!” So I’ve been working at restaurants for about 8 years now.

Sometimes working, interning, AND going to school is a bit hard because—

You did all three at the same time?

Yeah, and you can’t like tell them at school, “I can’t do that because I need to work.” So in my head, I had to really plan this. At some point, I became really good at time management, any free time I had I needed to utilize it. Whether I was working and staying late hours or if they needed me an extra day at my internship. I would say that working and doing it all at the same time is what I would say was the most challenging.

Yeah, it’s sort of like that classic issue of balancing work, school, and a social life.

I would be really clear with everyone. I wouldn’t see anyone for 6 months. [My work] was such a priority because this is something I really want. There is no party you can invite me to, and nothing you can say to me that is going to take me away from it. It was really reassuring to think, “I am definitely doing this, and there is nothing that can stop me.”

You mentioned that you are going to be planning a photoshoot. Are there plans for a line in the future for you? Are you working on samples?

I’m always doing something, even right now I’m knitting!

All the companies that I admired, they started being really good at one thing. Even Rag & Bone started with just jeans. So I feel like I just want to do really comfy unisex sweaters.

Oh yeah, that sounds nice!

That’s another thing I really like about knitwear because most of it is so gender neutral. You can wear your boyfriend’s sweater, or you can wear your sweater, you can wear anything. So that is really appealing to me.

In a few years, I do want to do that but I don’t want to produce stuff just to produce. That’s why I’m taking my time a experimenting with what I can do so I don’t just buy a bunch of yarn and make a bunch of sweaters. Anything I can do to be a bit more responsible I guess. And that’s another thing I think is different from wovens and knitwear. When you’re cutting wovens, you lose a lot of space in the fabric and that goes to waste.

So you’re looking towards being more sustainable as well.

Yes, it would be more sustainable. There are a lot of brands that I really like not just because of their aesthetic, but it’s because I really like they’re helping people and not wasting stuff just to waste. And that is something that, I think about everytime I’m in an internship. Like, we are throwing away so much stuff it’s kind of crazy, and I would feel bad about it in the end. So I just want to take my time with my line in the future, but I definitely want to start smaller for sure.

Alright. This is just about it for our interview portion. Thank you so much for sitting down with me, I am honored to be in your presence and I know that in the future you are going to be up to some amazing things and I can’t wait to see what it looks like.