LA Weekly People Issue 2015 is out with my feature on one of my favorite Angelenos and personal heroes - Melody Ehsani.
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| Melody Ehsani (center) with shop girls A.V. (left) and Carmen Dual (right). Photo by Ryan Orange |
Long before opening
the first female-focused store in the male streetwear–dense enclave of Fairfax
Avenue, Melody Ehsani interned on Capitol Hill. "I got there a week after
Sept. 11, so it was surreal. The Pentagon had just been attacked, and I'm Middle
Eastern." While in D.C., Ehsani "explored every single type of law.
And at the end, I was left unfulfilled."
She abandoned a future
as a lawyer for a career in shoe and jewelry design. But the ideas that
motivated her to seek a law degree — her passion for social justice and women's
issues — are still at the root of what she does. Powerful phrases such as "You
are not your history" and "Stop waiting to be who you already
are" adorn her shoes, jewelry and even the walls of the store that bears
her name.
When Ehsani opened the
boutique, she had already established a clientele of music industry sirens,
including Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, Rihanna and Solange. Yet Ehsani's jewelry
remains accessibly priced. "I had friends that were celebrities, and I had
all these friends that were struggling," she says. "There is
something special about seeing someone like Rihanna wearing a piece of jewelry
and knowing you can go buy the same thing."
Ehsani's works are
both playful and strong, with inspiration coming from such varied sources as
ancient Egypt, the 1980s and futuristic fashion. Looking at the pieces made of
acrylic and gold-plated metals, one could imagine Sun Ra, Big Daddy Kane and
the goddess Isis joining forces in Ehsani's mind. Her pieces have names such as
Ruhiyyih, Cleo Horn and Zulu Warrior and come adorned with feathers, crescents,
hieroglyphics and lion-head medallions.
In 2012 her initial
shoe design for Reebok's Betwixt Collaboration Ambassador Program sold out
overnight. The company took notice and signed her for three more years. Ehsani
made it a goal to design the first Reebok Pump sneaker for women; as a child,
she had watched the Celtics' Dee Brown pump up his Reeboks at the 1991
slam-dunk contest and craved those kicks for herself, but the shoes were never
made for women. Now, Ehsani's intricately patterned, brightly colored Reebok
Pumps cause Internet stampedes and crash websites. She has three more Reebok
collaborations dropping this year before she takes on her new position as a
creative director in Reebok women's division in 2016.
Ehsani's mother, who
initially didn't understand her daughter's decision to leave a lawyer's path,
now can be found in the jewelry workshop behind the Fairfax store, handcrafting
chains and jewelry for her daughter,
"For the longest
time, before I started following my passion, I felt like I was just
sleeping," Ehsani says. "My goal is to wake women up."
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