We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lyss Wamsley. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lyss below.

Lyss, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

In today’s fast paced society, consumers have come to expect their products at their doorsteps in days. My clothing store Astral Vision Designs does things a lot differently, taking slow, sustainable fashion to a whole new level. Instead of having things in stock, sitting on the shelves, once a year we open our checkout and our customers are able to place their orders for any of the items in our shop, completely custom made for them. Taking each persons individual measurements and fabric choices, we create a piece special for anyone who is fast enough to order within the few minute window our checkout is open for. Within those few minutes, we receive anywhere from 400-500 orders, for thousands of items and checkout closes back down.
My husband and I then spend the year catching up on our orders, and intentionally creating unique pieces infused with love. So we differ a lot from the industry standard in that way. We have created a customer base of patient, understanding people who are fully aware of all that goes into the clothing making process, which the average person doesn’t really think much about!
It was never our choice to have the shop operate in this way, it just happened. But we are so grateful because it allows us to give people a special relationship with the clothes they wear when they see all that goes into making it.

Lyss, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m Alyssa! I am 25 and I’ve loved fashion ever since I was a kid. I would play dress up with my barbies more than I did actual playing. When I was a sophomore in high school I went to my first music festival and fell in love with the fashion there. I’ve never been super enamored by designer fashion and big names, but I knew the moment that I discovered festival fashion that was where my heart was. I began experimenting with braiding clothes, stealing from my moms closet and cutting up her clothing.. I still feel bad about that!

For my birthday in 2016 I got my first sewing machine began sewing and started up my clothing shop online. I attended my local community college in NJ for fashion design for 2 years and ended up not being able to finish with one semester left because at that point my business was taking off so much I had to focus on that.

Over the years, the shop grew and so did my skills. I really dialed in my own unique style , and combined funky psychedelic prints with my braided clothing designs. The ideas kept getting more complex and its just been a beautiful constant evolution.
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Fast forward to now, I live in Colorado with my husband, who I met at a concert in 2018. I taught him how to sew and now we work together as partners in life and in business. He creates all the men’s/unisex designs in my shop, and helps me by operating our laser fabric cutter. We upload our paper patterns into Computer Animated Design (CAD) and use the laser to cut them out, with the slits for the braids in it. This helps us speed up our process a bit, to try and work through our 1000’s of items faster. We are going to hire some skilled help too which we are really looking forward to.

All in all, my husband and I are extremely passionate and hardworking and we put our entire souls into what we create. We strive to put out designs that set us apart, and make people feel confident and powerful.
Having so much work on our plate constantly is not easy, it is often difficult for some people to understand why we don’t just go the mass production factory route to meet our intense demand. But I never started making clothing with the intention of that, I started because I love creating. I fell in love with the way wearing a eye catching one of a kind outfit makes me feel. And I love to see it make my customers feel that way, knowing that I contributed to that confidence.

I am proud to say that our clothing is 100% custom and inclusive for any body type, and made with sustainably sourced fabrics. And I am proud to combine comfort with sexiness and style, creating pieces that not only look great but you can dance the night away in them.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

An issue that rings true over and over again in the fashion world is copying. In all art forms, people copy each other. Something that has been really hard for my journey as a designer is to see my work ripped off and recreated by people who don’t want to wait my wait times for my pieces. Or they just want to make it themselves and take the credit for my idea. And honestly it is something that really upsets and discourages me. So I am resilient in the way that whenever that happens, I get back into my studio and make something even better. Even more complicated! And I find resilience within myself in knowing that as a designer it will continue to happen but I will get back up every time and come back stronger.

For any aspiring artist, designer, or creator, the key to success is originality. It has gotten me to where I am now, by making sure that when you look at my art nothing else comes to mind besides Astral Vision. So always find your own flow because that is where the magic happens. :)

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Customer service, quality, and open communication. When I tell people that my customers wait up to a year for their clothes, they have a hard time understanding how the customer is okay with that. My customers are okay with the wait times because they are completely aware from the start! I’ve seen so many shops go silent when they are overwhelmed with orders, ignoring customers and keeping people in the dark. This creates a sense of distrust, which is really bad for a small business. Someone would rather hear you say that their order is going to take a while rather than not getting a response at all! So being communicative, and honest has created a good reputation for me. I tell my customers exactly how much work I have, and also am open about the time I take off when I do. So there is never any surprises!

I also make sure my customers are always happy with their pieces even if it means remaking something in a different size for someone. And there are usually never issues on my end of production, but if I do make a mistake I always fix it for the customer. That kind of thing keeps them coming back!

Contact Info:

• Website: astralvisiondesigns.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/astralvisiondesigns
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AstralVisionDesigns/
• Other: https://astral-vision-designs.printify.me/