My name is Melody Asani and I'm a designer. Prior to fashion design I was headed to law
school. I met a friend who encouraged me to move towards design and I started doing research
on different design schools and took a class and the first night I was like, yes, this is me.
My aesthetic wasn't really something that I tried to do on purpose. I just sort of saw a hole in
the market and I filled it. I would describe my designs as being emblematic and tongue-in-cheek.
They tell you about the person that's wearing them.
When I was creating my space it was really important for me that as soon as you walked in it
really woke you up because I think that's what the jewelry does. It's sort of is designed to
wake people up where it's like, oh, this has never existed before and if she can do it so can I.
I don't have typical days in my life. I wish I did but I try to dedicate at least three or four
hours to being creative in some way. I've been inspired by Sun Ra, the Maasai tribe in Africa.
They created all this beautiful jewelry. Cleopatra was another one that I was fascinated by so I
wanted to know more about her and her life. Once I sort of have the general themes of the
inspiration together and I have an idea of what pieces I'm moving towards then I'll go to the
market. I'll go to bead stores. I'll go to, you know, different sorts of suppliers and manufacturers
of different sorts of findings and when I'm there based on the inspiration I'll just pull whatever I
think looks cool. There's no rhyme or reason to it and then I'll come back to the office and I'll play.
The design process for me is pretty abstract. Sort of this process of studying and collecting all
these different random things and then seeing how they all fit. I either sketch out my ideas on
paper or I'll do it on the computer. It just sort of evolves. I keep doing that until it's
refined and I have a collection. I started off hand making all the jewelry in my studio apartment
and even today a large portion of the jewelry is handmade in the back of the shop. I wonder if
people realize how tedious these pineapples are. It's like surgery. It is. They're playing
operation when I do those. But then again whenever I see somebody on the street that's wearing
something that we made it's just so exciting. It's crazy. They don't know how much went into it.
Right. It's not just a piece of jewelry. I think that's why they buy it though. My employees and
I have really become like a family and as I've grown they're also growing. It's really about the
love that goes into it. Right. Tonight we are having a party to launch my fourth shoe with
Reebok which I'm really excited about and I was the first woman non-athlete to be signed to them.
The design features for this shoe include a handwritten quote that I wrote inside of the
lining which is something that I do with every shoe that I design. The inspiration behind the
shoe is this idea of space. Even more so the idea of these constellations and so to have the constellations
glow is really cool.
The party is going to be filled with customers and dear friends that have just watched my
evolution over the last five or six years. I believe that love is the only nutrient in the
world that can be expressed and so I try to honor that expression in every piece that I made.
