I have happily known Presley Oldham since his birth as I'm his uncle. His dad, my brother Brad, worked at our family factory and was in charge of making our endlessly experimental metal castings and the ceramics department with its fleet of kilns. Within a few days of being born, he was at our family's factory in his newly adapted playroom formerly a storage closet. I can only imagine how strange it was having your first visions be the mechanics of hand made fashion.

It was normal for Presley to travel to NYC from Dallas for New York Fashion Week in the 1990s, before he could even walk. He hung out backstage with supermodels, actors and singers wearing a custom outfit made from the current collection. Our spring fashion shows were sometimes on Halloween so one year he came dressed in a custom skunk costume made from the same faux fur shown on the runway.

Presley and I have something else very dear and wildly influential in common, my mom Linda, his grandmother, Mimi.

We both grew up with front row seats to mom/Mimi's outrageous makers skill sets and my dad's clever building abilities. They spent both of our childhoods teaching us everything they knew and what we didn’t know we learned together.

Presley's earliest art memory is at 3 or 4 making ceramic tiles shaped like flowers mom designed for their new house and helping to string beads for mom's beaded flower constructions, a toddler studio assistant of sorts.

His love of making and skill sets helped Presley start his own jewelry collection during the pandemic which blossomed into a beautiful full collection now in its fourth season. (presleyoldham.com) His delicate, subtle work is beautifully made and includes all kinds of special ingredients like gigantic pearls and vintage Japanese glass that have been assembled in elegant classic designs.

When we opened the metal button/buckle/jewelry/purse handle section of our archive in New Mexico it was a one ton treasure trove (we weighed it!) I asked Presley if he would think of making new things, his way, from whatever he wanted and I was truly inspired by the results. It’s fun to see how well our styles meshed together to create something new from pieces of stuff that was designed by his uncle, made by his dad, and revisited 2 decades later. His “Acid Trip” necklace includes buttons made the year he was born! In further celebration of our collaboration please watch the mini doc “The Boy Who Crawled on the Runway”