Sigal de Mayo and her husband, Fabio Otalora, have been selling her wildly popular leather fashion accessories in all the pop-up shops around town for over 16 years. The company they built together is Insiders1. It manufactures all their leather products in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. “We manufacture here so we can have quality control,” says de Mayo.

De Mayo, who began her career as a graphic designer, prints her artfully altered photo images on high-quality Italian leather that she makes into totes, wallets, gloves, shirts, books, belts, luggage tags and art patches and she recently added a line of silk scarves. Prices range from $25 to $375. The scarves are sewn and printed in London. Images on her bags and scarves are of New York City: street signs, graffiti art, bridges, and iconic landmarks such as the Coney Island Cyclones and the elegiac Imagine tile mosaic that is dedicated to John Lennon in Central Park. De Mayo photoshops the images with extra layers of colors and vintage patinas. They work as high-fashion products for locals and as quality souvenirs for discerning travelers.

De Mayo’s entrepreneurial spirit brought her to the U.S. in 1997 from Israel. “I was working as a graphic designer in the city and I got involved with the underground art movement,” she says. She thought a great way to make some extra money was to give underground art tours for tourists. She and her friends printed brochures and gave them out to hotel concierges around town. She shepherded tourists all over Brooklyn and the Lower East Side, visiting edgy but under-the-radar galleries and artists’ parties. “Of course, everywhere I went I took the camera with me.” Soon she was photoshoping these images onto promotional tee shirts and selling them to her clients. “I found out people didn’t want to pay more than twenty dollars for a tee shirt no matter how artistic it was; that’s when I came up with the idea of printing the images on leather.”

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Trash helped shape the contours of his life, contributing to the occurrence of significant events. For most, garbage isn’t considered a blessing. But the designer known as GGrippo has long understood a fundamental truth: Treasure can be unearthed in the junkiest of spots. “I’ve been a compulsive trash collector since I can remember,” he attests. “Growing up in Argentina, I learned about the importance of using and reusing.”

A Williamsburg fixture since 1997, GGrippo is now a vocal proponent of up-cycling, the act of repurposing garments, accessories, and goods for a second life. The bottom floor of his eco-friendly shop, GGrippo Art + Design, stocks recycled rubber purses from Cyclus and messenger bags made by Freitag out of reconstituted truck tarps.

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By Francesca Moisin

Lexi Oliveri remembers playing dress-up with the stash of old clothes in her parents’ attic. “My dad grew up poor in Brooklyn, my mom in the Bronx, and they both mastered a mentality for conserving everything,” she says. Then Oliveri became a teenager, and that cornucopia of retro frocks, skirts, pants, and tops became embarrassing. “I hid the vast collection from my friends, because I thought it made my mom look like a pack rat.” Yet it was this very dedication to accumulation that enabled her to launch the 415-square-foot Grand Street shop, Antoinette Vintage, two years ago. Almost every piece she now sells was sourced from those familiar garment racks, which is why the uniquely curated boutique bears her mother’s name. One could say a passion for fashion preservation is encoded in Oliveri’s genes. One might call it destiny.

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Like many great success stories, this was born of necessity. Mary Meyer didn’t always want to design clothes. As a student at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, she studied printmaking, weaving, dyeing, welding, and woodworking before graduating with a degree in painting. It was only after school that fate and need collided to alter Meyer’s future. “I was broke and couldn’t afford to buy the things I wanted, so I started making them,” says the 34-year old Williamsburg resident. “People would ask where I’d found my top, and upon learning I’d made it, they’d want one too.”

A small factory soon sprouted in her living room, and Meyer began to create custom dresses and shirts for friends. The Northern California native founded her company, Mary Meyer Clothing (marymeyerclothing.com), in 2005 before migrating East one year later. These days, with the exception of a few pieces fabricated at a midtown Manhattan workshop, all MMC designs are handmade in a factory near Coney Island, printed in Greenpoint, and dyed and processed in Bushwick. “It’s important to support my community,” says Meyer. “Because production is local, I can also monitor working conditions to maintain healthy environments and ensure garments are sewn correctly.”

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By CC McGurr

When my editor asked me to write a piece about “vintage gifting,” her pressing question was: “Is it appropriate to vintage gift?”

Given that I’m engaged in the business of antiques and vintage wares, I’m of course enormously biased, but also knowledgeable, and always enthusiastic about things of the past.

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