Meet the Designer: Malia Sias
As a fashion designer, Malia Sias always dreamed about creating her own collection. The hardest part for her was conceiving a concept that made sense and felt authentic. Malia's journey with street art began in 2003, purely as something that brought her happiness. As her life led her on adventures across the globe, she continued to engage in street art, finding joy in the process. She began creating tees, pillows, pins, and sticker packs, mostly distributing them to friends and selling them online. However, it never truly evolved into a business until one day when her two worlds unexpectedly collided.
While working on product development for one of her clients, they requested an air freshener featuring their logo. Malia decided to incorporate her own artistic touch by adding her eye to the design. This led her to create rugs, pillows, and a range of other items. Before she knew it, she had accumulated a significant amount of inventory and inadvertently established a business. The next challenge she faced was finding a platform to sell all the products she had created. Her decision-making process was driven by her passion for creation, her love for street art, and its impact on people's emotions.
Malia's business represents a culmination of her life's work, incorporating the skills and trades she acquired along the way. The foundation of her street art can be traced back to her involvement in the sticker-slapping counter-culture, a world she has been a part of since her earliest memories. Like any young girl, she had a sticker book, but it was during her high school years working at a pharmacy that she discovered her passion for sticker slapping. The pharmacist allowed her to take the pill container stickers with amusing warnings such as "may cause diarrhea" or "for vaginal use only," which she would plaster on lockers and friends' books. This marked her initial experience with sticker slapping. In the '90s, while enthusiastically following the band Grateful Dead across the country, Malia created a sticker that read "FART fecal aromatic rectal tremor," which she would hang on payphones and toll booths during her cross-country travels. However, it was in 2003, when she began gluing googly eyes onto fire hydrants, that the idea for a googly eye sticker and the birth of the "googly eye cru" came to fruition.
Following her adventures with the Grateful Dead, Malia enrolled in fashion design school. Having already created and sold dresses at Dead shows, it was a natural progression to learn how to make clothes professionally. Since 1995, she has designed for various categories, price points, and industries, including men's, women's, and children's apparel. Her repertoire encompasses urban, skate, and luxury clothing, with one of her proudest career moments being the design of uniforms for the Flight Crew, the cheerleaders for the Jets football team.
Over the past two decades, Malia dedicated herself to learning all aspects of the industry. It is through her experience and hard work that she has reached her current position.
While there are numerous individuals she could acknowledge, Malia's Tribe holds a special place in her heart. However, when it comes to the Googly Eye Cru, she feels compelled to express her love and gratitude to her fellow Cru members, Tara Logdson and Syd Vongboudty. They have been involved in the street art movement from its inception, assisting her in creating faces across the world. Despite the business being her own vision and obsession, Tara and Syd are lifelong Cru members who share countless cherished memories together.
