Susan Alexandra Is Bringing Her Celeb-Favourite Luggage to the Metaverse

It is February 2020 and the world has but to be upended by the coronavirus pandemic. Whereas designers, within the throes of New York Vogue Week, are sending stone-faced fashions down the runway, Susan Alexandra (née Korn) is staging a musical. There’s full of life dancing, performing, and singing, peppered by a refrain of snickers from the often stoic viewers. Each onstage and within the crowd, you possibly can see a splattering of her well-known beaded luggage: in rainbow checkered print, in watermelon colours, suffering from cherries or clouds or butterflies. This burst of unadulterated pleasure — at a time earlier than we even knew we would have liked it — is a core a part of Susan Alexandra’s model ethos.

Launched in 2017, her beaded purses are broadly thought of collector’s objects. Rendered in animal print or kaleidoscopic shade, they’re beloved by on a regular basis consumers, influencers, and celebrities alike, even popping up on supermodels like Gigi Hadid.

Her beaded jewellery will get the identical reward and adoration: Pete Davidson wears his Susan Alexandra “Pete” pearl necklace recurrently. “To have that validation from celebrities is actually thrilling. I am an enormous popular culture fanatic,” she tells POPSUGAR over Zoom. “There are fairly just a few individuals from Euphoria which have items, which is actually thrilling to me as a result of I believe that they are what’s subsequent.”

Susan Alexandra lives on the cusp of what is subsequent, perennially one step forward of the remainder of the trade. Take into account this: a number of designers are nonetheless skeptical of the metaverse, however Alexandra is diving proper in. Her newest profession transfer is creating NFT wearables for Absolut’s Coachella venture. The digital style equipment reside in Absolut.Land the place followers (21+) are inspired to attach over shared digital drinks and outfit their avatars in customized pageant style items. Amongst Alexandra’s digital designs, you may discover a pair of watermelon earrings with an Absolut cocktail appeal, resembling her favourite drink: a unclean martini.

“What I like in regards to the metaverse is there isn’t any restrictions on what’s doable,” she says. “If it is a shoe, it would not need to be comfy. If it is an earring, it would not need to be light-weight. I might simply make it complete fantasy and that is a dream as a designer.”

Fantasy might quickly transcend into actual life: Susan Alexandra now plans to foray into the shoe class. “For the metaverse [project], I made these footwear and so they have an Absolut cocktail heel,” she says. “And I am like, ‘OK, I am dying to do footwear now.'”

Clothes is on her radar as properly, and he or she’s thrilled for a way road model — significantly at festivals — is evolving. “One thing that is occurring proper now could be lots of people simply exhibiting their our bodies no matter dimension,” she says, naming cutouts as a pageant style development she loves. “I really feel there’s this unselfconscious manner that individuals are dressing now. And there is this openness and acceptance. And I actually love the thought of genderless style; I believe that is one thing that is actually thrilling, too.”

Forward of Coachella Weekend 1, Susan Alexandra chatted with POPSUGAR about designing for the metaverse, increasing her beloved model, and the one superstar she actually desires to work with. Learn our full interview forward.