ARTIST & DESIGNER TO KNOW: MEL CORCHADO
Photography: Avery Savage; Creative Direction & Production: Bianca Jean-Pierre & Avery Savage
As part of our ongoing collaboration with The Shed to spotlight artists from the Open Call: Portals exhibition (June 27-August 24), SHEER had the chance to visit the Brooklyn studio of fashion designer and artist Mel Corchado ahead of her exhibition debut.
Mel’s practice is rooted in slowness and intention. Whether she’s sewing by hand, gathering with community, or experimenting with unconventional materials like sugar, her work invites us to think beyond product and into process, care, and cultural memory.
Her installation for Open Call: Portals, titled $TICKY $IN$, features garments made of hardened sugar. These glimmering, fragile structures explore the material’s ties to colonial labor, Puerto Rican identity, and the shifting nature of time. In person, they feel less like clothes and more like quiet vessels of transformation. During our studio visit and interview, we talked about impermanence, inherited labor, family photos, and the power of slowing down with intention.
This feature is part of a broader look into how emerging artists across New York City are creating new portals for resistance, restoration, and reimagining. Below, Mel reflects on the emotional process of working with sugar, the legacy behind her label ITA, and how building small can still make a world-shifting statement.
Mel Corchado interviewed by Bianca Jean-Pierre and photographed by Avery Savage for SHEER.
Bianca Jean-Pierre: As part of The Shed’s Open Call: Portals, your installation “$TICKY $IN$” presents garments you constructed out of sugar, a material rich with personal, cultural, and historical meaning, especially in relation to Caribbean identity and the legacy of labor and land exploitation. Beyond its symbolism, sugar is also a transformative material that is fragile, sticky, shifting with time. What was the emotional and technical process of working with it? Were there any moments in the making that revealed something new or unexpected, either about the material or yourself?
Mel Corchado: Whew—yes. The emotional process was just as transformative as the material itself. Sugar as a medium is incredibly delicate and its constantly changing. Technically, I had to let go of so many ideas that simply didn’t work. I began working with sugar in 2022, making thin, wearable bodices, but they couldn’t hold up to the conditions of a long-term exhibition. I had to pivot, surrender, and meet the material on its own terms. That process mirrored something internal. Sugar forced me to accept impermanence and imperfection—not just as a concept, but as a condition for growth, for creation, and for self-understanding.
Bianca: Much of your work resists fast fashion and the extractive systems that dominate the industry and your garments often feel like living documents bearing traces of research, memory, and transformation. During our studio visit, I was struck by how much physical tenderness your sugar pieces held. How do you think about impermanence in your work, the way materials break down, shift, or reveal new forms with time?
Mel: Impermanence is embedded in the process. What emerged over time was a sort of reverse metaphor: the fashion industry’s endless production of disposable, synthetic garments—worn once or twice, then discarded, yet destined to last forever in landfills—stood in sharp contrast to sugar’s honest ephemerality. Sugar does what it does. It changes, it breaks down, it becomes something else but it doesn’t deeply harm an ecosystem. That felt honest.
“Sugar forced me to accept impermanence and imperfection—not just as a concept, but as a condition for growth, for creation, and for self-understanding.”
Bianca: ITA feels like more than a fashion brand, it’s a statement. Can you speak to the name’s meaning and how the label functions as a platform for community-based experimentation, storytelling, and decolonial practice?
Mel: Ita is my grandmother’s nickname. She is 4’9” and was a garment worker in New York City after immigrating from Puerto Rico. Her father cut sugar cane. For me, being a fashion designer and artist is a privilege—a wildly indulgent path not available to my grandparents or even my parents, who made more practical choices to sustain themselves and our family. ITA honors that legacy. It’s an ode to my family’s labor, resilience, and dreams. And in Spanish, “-ita” is a diminutive, a nod to smallness. That aligns not only with my grandmother's height, but with the label’s ethos: slow, small-batch fashion, intentionally and ethically made.
Bianca: As a Boricua designer and artist raised between multiple lineages and landscapes, how does your identity show up in your creative decisions—from the stories you tell to the textures and silhouettes you choose? Do you feel like your work offers a kind of homecoming or resistance to displacement?
Mel: Absolutely both. There’s always been a thread of resistance in my work—questioning systems, confronting erasure. But lately, I’m leaning more into homecoming: building alternatives instead of just identifying the problem. And really, to build affirming, community-rooted alternatives is resistance—it’s just resistance with joy, with togetherness, with vision.
Bianca: You’ve collaborated on research projects like “Power at the Seams” and organized mending workshops with We Finna Sew. How do these community-based, educational initiatives inform your solo design work? Do you see activism and design as separate or interdependent practices?
Mel: Designing is inherently relational—it’s about listening, interpreting, serving someone or something. Community-based work grounds me in what’s possible when we co-create. Collaborating with others, whether through skill-sharing, storytelling, or physical labor, shifts design from product to process. That’s what we’re doing on July 27 at The Shed with a public clothing swap. It’s a live alternative to the fashion industrial complex. It's not theoretical—it’s embodied. We’re not just critiquing the system; we’re practicing something else, together. So, come by! Bring one or two items that no longer serve you, and swap them for something new (to you!).
“I’m leaning more into homecoming: building alternatives instead of just identifying the problem. And really, to build affirming, community-rooted alternatives is resistance—it’s just resistance with joy, with togetherness, with vision.”
“Sugar does what it does. It changes, it breaks down, it becomes something else but it doesn’t deeply harm an ecosystem. That felt honest.”
Bianca: In an industry where timelines are tight and profit is prioritized, how do you stay rooted in slow, intentional methods like hand-knitting, couture construction, and upcycling? Are there specific rituals or boundaries you’ve had to develop to protect your creative integrity?
Mel: I’m constantly balancing urgency and intention. Deadlines are a double-edged sword—they can push me through perfectionism, but the industry’s obsession with speed rarely produces meaningful work. I’ve had to draw real boundaries around my creative process and supplement my practice with freelance work that gives me financial flexibility. I also try to create slowness structurally—through how I sew, source, and plan. Slowness isn’t a delay; it’s a value system. It’s how I honor both the materials and the stories I hope to tell with them.
Bianca: While at your studio, I noticed fabric scraps, handwritten notes, and family photographs, objects that felt like anchors to memory, process, and identity. Are there any specific materials or objects in your space right now that hold particular emotional or symbolic weight for you, or that feels reflective of where you are in your practice?
Mel: Yes—there’s a photo that has guided this entire body of work. It’s of my dad’s family at his military boot camp graduation. My mom is in it too, and it’s one of the only images I have of them together—I have had divorced parents ever since I can remember. My family, on both sides, has a deep military lineage, and there’s a tension in that—resistance, resentment... But I’m drawn to what this photo represents beyond a critical lens, what it makes me feel is togetherness, even if temporary. It sits in contrast to the fragility of sugar, but also complements it. Sugar breaks down, but it glimmers first, it's so sweet. That photo reminds me that even fractured histories can be reframed with tenderness.
“Ita is my grandmother’s nickname. She is 4’9” and was a garment worker in New York City after immigrating from Puerto Rico. Her father cut sugar cane.”
Bianca: Portals are about transformation and resistance to broken systems, two forces that feel central to your work. What “portals” have shaped your creative journey most, whether moments, people, or places?
Mel: The Shed itself has been a massive portal. Just a few months ago, I was working 50+ hours a week in a corporate fashion design job. During my first studio visit with Dejá (the curator), I had borrowed space, a few sugar samples, and very little confidence. Now, I’m living the life I dreamed of—stress and all. This opportunity didn’t just shift my career; it shifted my self-perception. I walked through that door unsure if I belonged, and I’m walking out knowing I do.
“Slowness isn’t a delay; it’s a value system. It’s how I honor both the materials and the stories I hope to tell with them.”
Bianca: If you could open a portal for emerging artists coming up behind you, what knowledge or tools would you want to pass through?
Mel: Two things. First, relationships. Build real ones. Reach out to people with genuine curiosity. Seek opportunities with care, not just hunger. Authentic connections will carry you further than any cold submission. Second—know that, for some of us, doubt is part of the process. I’ve felt not good enough more times than I can count. Talking to others who feel the same but whose work I deeply admire has been my best medicine. Grit your teeth. Keep going. There will be no’s. But there will also be doors.
FOLLOW & SUPPORT MEL'S WORK BELOW
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FOLLOW & SUPPORT MEL'S WORK BELOW |
Check out Open Call: Portals at The Shed NYC now on view until August 24th. Mel Corchado will also host special clothing swap for Portals on July 27th to show firsthand how we can build a more sustainable fashion ecosystem through community by putting theory into practice.
