Sustainable Baddie of the Week: Anna Emberson of Flower Power
🌞: Taurus 🌙: Gemini ⬆: Cancer
Your childhood bedroom. The playground at your first school. Your grandparents’ house. The city you chose to move to when you could finally make your own decisions. The destination you dream of, but have never seen for yourself. The influence of our environments, the ones in our physical reality, in our memories, and in our fantasies, is profound. Los Angeles-born, Louisville, Kentucky-raised, and freshly-minted New Yorker Anna Emberson is constantly inspired by the many definitions of place. Her relationships with her homes, both past and present, weave their way through her work as a young upcycling and vintage designer and define her brand, Flower Power.
Sustainable Baddie had the opportunity to talk with Anna about her experience as a new designer in the upcycling world and get a personalized tour around the Parsons School of Design campus, where Anna is currently a freshman. We met at a coffee shop right off of Union Square, Outro, a clear hot spot for students in the area. The space was packed with undergrads in soundproof headphones and crouched over dimly lit laptops (posture, beware!). When Anna arrived, she was wearing some of her own original work: a tank top that she upcycled to add a star in the center and cut out the letters to spell “I’M A STAR”. She had on a pair of earrings featuring small triceratops figurines dangling above her shoulders, and she had pinned a handmade button with the phrase “Fast Fashion Sucks” to her jacket. The playful, classically Gen Z ’fit was completed by Anna’s eager and refreshing smile.
At Parsons, Anna majors in integrated design, electing classes in fashion, design, and art. Having attended an arts high school in Louisville, Anna always knew that she wanted to continue her artistic path in college. Her brand, Flower Power, began as a school project in 2022 and has since become a consistent part of her life. “I took a digital design class and our last project was sort of a freebie like we do whatever we wanted. And I've been wanting to start a clothing business for a while.” Starting her own business at just eighteen is no small task, but she was inspired by her dad, a small business owner himself. He organizes whiskey-tasting tours in their hometown, and you can tell that entrepreneurship runs in Anna’s blood. The name Flower Power itself came to Anna from a bumper sticker she had on her car in high school, but it’s not lost on us that this popular slogan used in the 60s to protest against war and violence in the US feels once again apropos for our generation’s struggles. The free energy of the phrase reflects her own appreciation for the stylistic ideas that it elicits. Her brand’s designs evoke the spirit of styles from the 60s and 70s, the playful, childlike energy of Y2K, and now Gen Z fashion. Flower Power has been a large part of Anna’s life, and it has inspired her to take classes in fashion and design, but she isn’t pigeonholing herself into one industry just yet. She is eager to dive into many different forms of art, including 2D art, fine art, and graphic design. Luckily, with access to the community and resources at Parsons, she has the freedom to explore her varied interests in a hands-on way.
In our conversation, we discussed what it's like to be an art student in New York today while wandering the Parsons grounds. In her Fashion Studio class, Anna and her classmates are creating designs that are inspired by family history. For Anna, this means incorporating location, especially the places tied to her childhood. She is currently working on pieces that are inspired by a blend of Hollywood, representing her connection to Los Angeles, and the US’s South, representing her connection to Kentucky. “I'm inspired by being from L.A. and…the place of Hollywood stars and…glam, as well as that sort of Southern charm of Kentucky.” While she continues to work on this project, merging her two places of origin, she also draws inspiration from living in New York’s status as the nation’s style capital. In her upcoming Flower Power collection, Anna explores her various homes and family history as well.
When discussing the upcoming collection, Anna gave us an insight into her creative process. As a vintage and upcycled fashion brand, a lot of the day-to-day work is dedicated to sourcing pieces that reflect current, popular styles. Having done much of her sourcing in Louisville, a lot of Flower Power pieces are influenced by Southern fashion. Anna likes to play with Southern trends, including brands like Lily Pulitzer and big bright florals. Now she’s starting to incorporate the cooler and darker style that New Yorkers are favoring. She told us that she feels inspired by walking through stores where she knows people are shopping. She often does research by going into stores, seeing what’s hanging on the racks and what people are buying, and then sourcing a vintage version of it or making her own. Through this process, she’s been able to recreate popular fast fashion designs for Flower Power and for herself.
All of her designs are meant to replace fast-fashion items, and many of these pieces reflect the location of the stores she sources from and the styles that are unique to each place she visits.
Flower Power’s spring and summer collection just debuted in March, inspired by a lot of the punk-adjacent styles Anna sees in New York, and is made up of mostly denim pieces, which are popular everywhere but especially in the South. In addition to her upcoming collection, Anna shared with us that she is excited to continue producing more collaborations through Flower Power. She told us, “I created a sustainable merch collection for a local band and it was completely upcycled and it was really fun, I haven't seen any other sort of upcycled merch collections.” Designing an entirely upcycled and sustainable merch collection was one of Flower Power’s largest projects, and Anna is excited to begin creating a blueprint for other consciously-minded bands and groups to make their own sustainable merch lines.
Although Anna still goes back to Louisville to host Flower Power pop-ups and shop for the brand, her focus is on her school right now and much of her inspiration is coming from her work there. She has her own sewing machine in her room, which she uses most often. But the most challenging aspects of her work happen in the sewing machine studio on one of the top floors of the New School’s University Center, a bright white room with industrial-style sewing machines for more intricate designs and complicated patterns. We walked through the “Making” space on floor two of the Parsons School of Design building. It was a gorgeous space with white brick, massive windows, and large tables for working. Also on floor two were a 3D printing studio and a woodshop studio. Anna loves doing her work on that floor, especially for her 2D and drawing classes.
As she focuses on her school work and developing her identity as an artist and designer, she’s making the most of having access to this equipment and studio space, since it’s rarely available to young designers. As Flower Power grows, and with the release of her new collection this past month, we’re curious to see how New York and Parsons have influenced her Kentucky roots and her LA background. When asked what she’s looking forward to in the future, Anna told us, “I would love to sort of continue to do Flower Power on the side and just grow it [while] I grow as a designer. I'm not really studying fashion design exclusively and I don't really see myself becoming a full-time fashion designer, but I definitely want to work with fashion somehow.” Although Anna has had to put Flower Power on the back burner as of late, as she continues to focus on her classes and being in college, she collects information and inspiration to bring back to the brand when she is ready. It’s thrilling to see someone so positive and energetic stepping into the sustainable fashion and art world, and we’re in her corner as she innovates new avenues for creative expression.