Latoya Spence
Love It Into Existence - theyellowroom_studio
Scrap Fabric and a Can-Do Home
I grew up in Grange Hill, Westmoreland, in a home that made things.
Not just occasionally. Constantly. My family were what we called all-rounders, jacks of all trades: farming, sewing, carpentry, masonry, plumbing, painting. They did these things mostly for themselves, out of necessity and pride, and I grew up watching it all. Before I was old enough to flip through a magazine, I was collecting pieces of scrap fabric that fell from my mother’s sewing table.
My mother was something else entirely. She sewed our school uniforms, work uniforms, curtains, throw pillows. She made beaded jewellery. She painted walls in bright colours. She gardened. Whatever could make a house feel like a home, she would attempt it, mostly self-taught, always with a certain can-do, have-to-do energy that I absorbed without realising it. I was just there, small and watching, slowly becoming the same kind of person without anyone having to say a word.
Art, fashion, and design became second nature because creativity was never presented to me as a talent you either had or didn’t. It was simply something people did. That gave me a deep confidence to try things and a curiosity about how things are made that has never left me.
The Detour Through Accounting
I didn’t study art formally beyond the basic high school courses. I pursued accounting instead, and spent a few years in that world. But something kept pulling me back. Not nostalgia exactly, more like alignment. The feeling that I was slightly off-centre from where I was supposed to be. Art and design were where I felt most like myself, and eventually I stopped arguing with that.
I would not describe myself as a fashion designer. The most honest word for what I am is artist. Fashion is one of the things I do, but it is not the whole of it.
When I made the decision to move toward the creative world, I went in with an enormous amount of enthusiasm for clothing. I love what an ensemble can do, how it tells a story about who you are and what you believe without you having to say anything. I wanted to go deeply into the clothing industry. And then I started learning what the clothing industry actually costs the world.
The overproduction. The strain on resources. Clothing treated like single-use objects, shipped at discounted rates to other countries, dumped in others, yet the production never slows. It was saddening in a way that changed how I thought about what I wanted to contribute. I didn’t want to add to the problem. I wanted to be part of something that pointed toward a solution.
Why a Bag Outlasts a Dress
That shift in thinking is where theyellowroom_studio was born.
I started asking myself a different kind of question: what lasts? A book can be read, loaned, donated, held for years. A bag is used more than almost any single garment. It works across outfits, across seasons, across years. It counters the single-wear, single-use culture in a quiet but meaningful way. I focused there, and on writing, and on other forms of art and design built for longer life.
The studio became my vehicle for conscious, sustainable creation: small batch production, minimal material waste, originality, and a deeper message underneath all of it that we care about the world we live in.
The Jamaica in my work shows up in the pieces themselves. Bags shaped like large flowers. Bags adorned with banana leaves cut from burlap and vegan leather, in colours inspired by the tie-a-leaf dish my grandmother used to make. We love to stand out here. We love things that represent our stories and reflect where we come from. I draw from that and try to make pieces that are eye-catching enough to elevate a simple outfit while carrying something of our culture in every seam.
The Year I Failed at Sewing
Here is something I don’t always say out loud: when I decided to start designing, I didn’t know how to sew properly.
I had owned my sewing machine for years, almost as long as I had been dreaming about going into fashion and design. But owning a machine and knowing how to use it are two different things. A little over a year ago I finally built up the courage to really try, and I failed at it for the better part of that year. The things I made did not look like what I had sketched. They did not look like what I had imagined.
But I kept taking small steps, and somewhere in those small steps, the pieces started becoming more like themselves. I started understanding which fabrics behaved in which ways. I started learning what I hadn’t known to ask yet. That is the thing about dreaming: you cannot know where an idea will reach unless you attempt it. The skills come with the doing. The secret is to enjoy each of those small steps without judging yourself against people who already have the skill.
Art taught me that. The slow enjoyment of process. It is the same principle behind the Japanese concept of kaizen, which I first came across in sixth form: continuous improvement through small, consistent steps. I had the word for it. I was simply finally living it.
The Work Designs Itself
A full day of creation starts at six in the morning, with coffee and a few minutes of quiet appreciation for the stillness before the day begins.
I keep a log book for objectives and another with light sketches of new ideas. On sewing days I start cutting from patterns after breakfast, which is one of my favourite parts because that is when the selection of fabrics and colours happens. I love working with floral and patterned prints. Then comes the assembly, which takes the longest and is where most interruptions live, pausing to be a mother, reworking a design that isn’t sitting right, problem-solving in real time. A good day ends with the finished pieces hanging on a rack in the studio, and me standing there smiling at them.
Writing days are different. No music, just complete silence. I get into a listening mode, waiting for the words, putting them on the page as soon as they arrive.
When I sketch new designs, I am not picturing a specific person. The work mostly designs itself, rising from the materials, from how fabrics and textures speak to each other, from a feeling: would the person who wears this feel bold? Confident? Seen? That is the question I am always asking.
To Feel Strong in It
For the person in the Diaspora who hasn’t been home in years, I want the moment they put on something from theyellowroom_studio to feel like ownership. Like the piece was made for them specifically. I want them to think, this is so me, this represents me well. I want them to feel strong in it, beautiful in it, completely and unapologetically seen.
Things Jamaican opened my eyes to parts of the business I had been too deep in the design work to fully see. The conversations, the training, the guidance on branding and marketing, the placement in the stores: all of it gave the studio a structure it needed to grow. It is remarkable what a single phone call can shift when the right people are on the other end.
Five years from now, success for theyellowroom_studio does not look like scale for the sake of scale. It looks like staying small and intentional, local or international, whatever the work calls for. It looks like pieces that are loved for years. It looks like a brand that models a more sustainable way of doing things, quietly and consistently, through every piece it makes.
To anyone who feels pulled toward art, fashion, design: jump into it, but jump in with intention. Know your personal why first. Do it for yourself first. And love it into existence. That is the only way any of this actually works.
theyellowroom_studio is available at Things Jamaican.
