Fashion – Los Angeles
My name is Aaron Camacho and I founded the fashion brand Mind Over Hatter three years ago in Los Angeles. It all started with a vision of a postapocalyptic wasteland. It inspired my ventures into fashion and has heavily guided my aesthetic since. In the vision, it was after the end of the world as we know it, and the survivors on the wasteland were starting over, rebuilding, picking up the broken pieces to put them together in a new way. There was a feeling of re-creation and hope, and it was in this vision that I found the spirit of revival, strength, courage and the willpower to endure and navigate the challenges of everyday life, which I transferred into my fashion. Inspired by the apocalypse, at Mind Over Hatter we use discarded and used materials, building our creations from collected found and gifted objects. We believe in repurposing, reusing, upcycling, giving a new life to something old, something rejected by the world, in order to bring it back in a new light.
The first pieces I made were intricate sculpture-hats constructed with found objects collected during my daily travels through Los Angeles. Soon after that, I began experimenting with clothing and accessories. Each hat is festooned with details that integrate and weave within each other and define the character embodied... each has a story of its own, a personality, and no two are alike. Each hat or garment is composed of a certain kind of chaos, inspired by an emotion or an idea. Each has a soul and wants to take on the world in its own way. Now a fashion team of two, we create in our own, unique style. We describe it as the child of the Mad Hatter and Mad Max with steampunk tendencies, but always look to experiment and push boundaries of our style in a previously unexplored way.
What started off as a hobby, quickly became a passion and a way of life. We create for the people who are looking for something different and who can appreciate our philosophy. We are innovative and versatile. What we do is not for the faint of heart. We transcend existing genres and we cannot (and refuse to) be boiled down to one label. We see fashion as art and our expression has no limits. We are inspired by all walks of life. We are not afraid to be strange. We are radical, rough and royal, grungy and sophisticated, whimsical. We go against the grain. Our clothing is meant to inspire, to make the wearer feel confident and free to express their unique personality. Through chaos, we are creating a new level of beauty.