Mikayla Salmon
Young Addiction - Scraps, Stitches, and a Gift From God
The Neighbor With the Fabric Scraps
I was born and raised in May Pen, Clarendon, and I was six years old when fashion first found me.
My neighbor was a swimwear designer, and she used to give me her fabric scraps. Not out of obligation, just out of kindness, the way adults sometimes recognize something in a child before the child can see it themselves. I took those scraps and I hand-sewed outfits for my dolls. Tiny garments, made with small hands and a seriousness that probably looked funny from the outside. But it wasn’t funny to me. It was the most important thing I was doing.
I carried that feeling all the way through Denbigh High School, where the passion didn’t fade the way childhood interests sometimes do. It deepened. By the time I left, I already knew, with the kind of certainty that doesn’t need to be argued for, that fashion was where I was supposed to be.
Garmex, a Home Studio, and a Competition
After high school I was already working. Almost a full year before I ever set foot in a classroom for it, I was operating professionally as a designer and seamstress, making custom outfits for my peers out of a small home-based setup. Those designs kept starting conversations online in ways I hadn’t fully anticipated. Then I went to the Garmex HEART Academy to formalize what my hands already knew. People responded. They shared. The work traveled further than I had sent it.
I was always captivated by fashion events and competitions on television, and eventually I stopped watching from the outside and entered a few myself. In 2018 I placed first in the Campari Pop Style competition, and something settled in me in that moment. This was not a hobby I was good at. This was a gift, and I understood it as exactly that: something given, something I was responsible for. I could not imagine a single day without fashion being part of my life, and after that competition, I stopped trying to imagine one.
Where Jamaica and West Africa Meet
My designs are anchored in two places at once: the Jamaica of the 1990s and the West Africa that lives in our bloodline.
Iconic 90s Jamaican fashion is bold, expressive, unafraid. It channels what people around the world have always known about us: that Jamaicans define what it means to be effortlessly cool. Our street culture, our social style, the way we move through any space we enter, all of that is present in every piece I make. But underneath that Jamaican energy is something older, something that runs deeper than trends. The African roots are there too, and I want people to feel both when they wear Young Addiction.
I am inspired by contemporary African designers: Kilentar, Dye Lab, Kai Collective. Not just for the aesthetics, but for what those brands stand for. Their attention to social responsibility, to the green economy, to sustainability. That is the direction I am building toward as well.
A One-Woman Show
When I am in pure creative flow, the day disappears.
I am sketching, tailoring, working through silhouettes, trying to hold the balance between trend-forward and accessible, between the cultural references I am drawing from and the global audience I am designing for. Because I am a one-woman operation right now, I handle everything: customer relationships, marketing, branding, the design itself, and the hands-on work of cutting, sewing, and fitting. Every part of the business moves through me.
That is not a complaint. It is the reality of building something from the ground up, and it has made me understand every inch of what I am creating in a way I don’t think I could have otherwise.
The Problems Nobody Talks About Enough
There are two challenges I have been vocal about for years, because they are not personal struggles. They are structural ones that hold back every local designer in Jamaica.
The first is fabric. The variety available locally is severely limited, which means designers end up working from the same pool of materials, which stifles the very creativity our culture is known for producing. My answer to this has been to use resist-dyeing techniques to create custom fabrics that are genuinely mine. But that is a workaround, not a solution.
The second is logistics. Shipping costs for international customers are prohibitively high, and they create a ceiling on what local brands can realistically build. I advocate openly for structural change, including the government reviving investment in former industrial zones like the Garmex Free Zone, rebuilding a local fashion economy that can export efficiently and compete on the global stage.
And then there is the thing I had to fight inside myself: the self-doubt that comes with being a girl from a small town trying to step onto a global stage. That battle was real. I had to choose, more than once, to keep going anyway.
Representation Is the Design
I design with a heavy focus on representation, and I am proud to call myself a plus-size advocate in the fashion industry.
I visualize everyday people who want to feel confident, trendy, and genuinely seen. Not as an afterthought. Not in a version of the style that has been softened or minimized to make it more acceptable. Fully seen, in pieces that were made with their bodies and their boldness in mind.
For the person in the Diaspora who hasn’t been home in years, I want the moment they see a Young Addiction piece to feel like immediate recognition. Of Jamaica. Of their African roots. Of the unfiltered creativity and confidence that this culture has always carried and exported to the world, whether the world gave us credit for it or not.
From May Pen to the World
Being part of Things Jamaican is something I did not take for granted for a single moment.
I am a girl from a small town who is constantly trying to bring something positive to her parish, her community, the people around her. To be considered part of a brand that represents Jamaican excellence at that level is a highlight I carry with real weight. The visibility it creates for Young Addiction, the doors it opens toward a global audience, these things matter enormously for what I am trying to build.
Five years from now, ultimate success looks like a thriving, sustainable fashion economy where Jamaican designers are not limited by materials, by labour, by funding, or by the cost of getting their work into the world. That is the vision beyond the brand: a changed landscape for everyone who comes after me.
My journey from a May Pen home studio to the shelves of a global retailer is proof that it is possible. Not because everything went smoothly. Because I started anyway. A single piece of raw creativity can command the attention of the entire world when the person behind it refuses to let self-doubt be the final word.
You will not have everything figured out before you begin. Start with the passion. Everything else will be taught to you along the way.
Young Addiction is available at Things Jamaican.
