We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Patricia Pietri a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Patricia , appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
It was during the pandemic. I had just graduated from film school and decided to give myself a year to move through the world; absorbing cultures, experiences, anything that might sharpen my instincts before committing to a path. I had almost no money, but just enough to get to Italy, where my best friend was living. She was in Bologna, not particularly happy there, and offered me a place to stay rent free. I took it without hesitation, knowing nothing about the city.
I didn’t like it. Not at all. But I had already performed this whole “I’m going to Italy” narrative, and returning home felt like a failure. I also didn’t have the means to relocate elsewhere. Then the pandemic hit, and suddenly the decision was made for me. I left Bologna as quickly as I could and went back to Miami, where my family was.
What followed was unexpectedly one of the most formative periods of my life. I spent months indulging in the stillness… reading, taking online courses, watching films. There was a depth to that silence that I hadn’t anticipated. I had left in search of stimulation, but it was the absence of it that clarified things. I felt deeply inspired, though I didn’t yet know where to place that energy.
At first, I thought I might start a leisure brand with a friend. But as we began shaping the idea, I found myself pulling it in a different direction, towards something more layered, more specific. It slowly drifted away from anything seasonal or surface level, though I couldn’t yet define what it was becoming. Over time, the fragments began to align. My interests in anthropology and cinema started to converge into something tangible, something that could evolve, shift, and hold meaning beyond aesthetics.
That process eventually brought me to Mexico. I came looking for artisan collaborations, but more than that, I came in search of a human connection within the work, a way to build something that felt alive, rooted, and expansive at once.
Costaiia became the result of that search: a living framework where storytelling, material culture, and craft intersect… an evolving body of work that translates dream and experience into objects, images, and narratives that are meant to move, shift and endure through time.
Patricia , 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 am a creative director working at the intersection of image-making, narrative, and material culture. My background in film informs the way I construct worlds, each project approached as a visual language rather than a single output. I am less interested in isolated aesthetics and more in building cohesive systems where story, texture, and context can coexist.
I was born in Venezuela, but my life has been defined by constant movement. Displacement was not an exception, it was the structure. From an early age, shifting between countries meant continuously renegotiating identity, not just adapting to new environments but reconfiguring my understanding of self each time.
My work is rooted in that state of transit. I understand identity not as something fixed, but as a continuous construction, an accumulation of references, memories, and cultural fragments that exist in relation rather than isolation. The idea of belonging becomes fluid, and that fluidity informs how I approach both narrative and form. Displacement, hybridity, and what I think of as an emotional archive are not themes I explore from a distance; they are the material itself.
I draw from anthropology as much as from cinema, using both as frameworks to examine how culture is carried, through ritual, gesture, objects, and image. My direction operates as a form of translation: taking something intangible, often fragmented, and giving it structure without fixing it into a singular meaning. The intention is to create work that feels lived in, layered, and in constant negotiation.
My brand, Costaiia operates as an extension of this condition. It is a practice built from transit; where identity, process, and material are in continuous movement… and where storytelling, craft, and research converge to form an evolving system rather than a fixed outcome.
How did you build your audience on social media?
Stay genuine. Stay true to your vision. The more you give in to algorithm-driven trends, the more you lose your voice. In a sea of formulaic content, it’s refreshing to come across something pure.
Discover your core, develop your own voice, and remain anchored in it. It’s not a sprint; it’s a climb. Keep it steady and don’t lose yourself.
Above all, it’s the quality of your audience, not the quantity.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Some days, you question everything you’re building. It can feel pointless, and the temptation to walk away is very real. The path ahead looks too long, too uncertain, and the idea of stability… a steady job, a predictable income, starts to feel almost irresistible.
Those are the moments to return to the beginning. To think about the person who started it all, and imagine her looking at who you are now, at what you’ve built, at how far you’ve come. Ask yourself if she would be proud. More often than not, if you’ve stayed true to yourself, the answer is yes.
And in those moments when you want to give up, you continue for her. For the version of you who believed in something before there was proof, who would want nothing more than to see you carry it through.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Costaiia.com
- Instagram: Costaiia
Image Credits
Images of artisans in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, and Chamula, Chiapas. All images were taken during my travels visiting the communities I have collaborated with through Costaiia.