We sat down with Crystal and Rico Worl, the creators of the "The Trickster Company".
What are you showing here at IFWTO?
We have mainly athletic wear for ladies and some accessories, but if you look online, we also have products for men, women, children, toddlers, even babies. We have books, skateboards, longboards, skis, snowboards, and even basketballs that have the formline, the pacific northwest coastal style art on it. My brother and I design everything and we ship everywhere.
How did Trickster Company get started?
Well, my brother Rico and I run Trickster Company together. We started Trickster Company skateboards about 6 years ago. My brother started just by hand painting skateboard decks and selling them. At the time, I was finishing my Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Institute of the American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. As soon as I got my degree in 2013, I moved back to Alaska, and we opened up a shop in downtown Juneau. About two years ago, I started travelling and doing pop-up shops and fashion shows because that’s when I started designing the athletic wear for women.
Why athletic wear?
I travel a lot doing aerial arts, circus arts and performance, so I really wanted to do clothing that could show the really cool designs I do in my art, but be able to wear them while I’m practicing and performing. Yoga pants are a really hot trend right now, people sleep in them, they lounge in them, they workout in them, they go to work in them, you can literally do everything in one pair of pants.
What’s Trickster Company’s motto?
Trickster Company is an innovative Indigenous graphic design and art gift shop based in Juneau, Alaska. But we do create a platform for indigenous artists in Alaska, so we do a lot of collaborations with Native artists from everywhere, for example, we have one pair of leggings that was a collaboration between my design and Jared Yazzie. He is Navajo and owns a business called OXDX Clothing. He also sells leggings with Navajo patterns on them, so I reached out and said let’s do a collaboration. We’ve worked with other artists from surrounding villages to do designs for skateboards and longboards, and we’re growing on that. We also sell jewellry from other Native artists throughout Alaska, we want to be a platform for Indigenous Peoples up north, that’s part of our involvement with the community as well.
Why do you think IFWTO is important?
If you look at our economy, everything is about clothing, shopping for clothing, and for Native people we’ve always made a living making clothing. Since time immemorial we’ve identified ourselves with how we dress, how we make our clothing, how we gift our clothing to each other, so that has great symbolism in it right there. And the fact that we can survive in the modern day continuing to do our designs, but with a fresh interpretation and maybe new materials like yoga pants, it’s definitely important to highlight that and to get that out into the world so people can support Indigenous artists, not ‘inspired Native art.’
To shop Trickster Company, visit www.trickstercompany.com
Facebook: @TricksterCompany
Instagram: @trickstercompany
Twitter: @TricksterCo
Photo Credits:
Runway: Nadya Kwandibens - Red Works Photography
Cover Photo: Trickster Company
Front Page Cover Photo: Courtesy Crystal Worl