[SM: What’s your design process like? Are there any aesthetic principles you adhere to while designing?]

LT: I’m inspired by everything, so it’s all about creating vision boards to bring the concepts together. My principles are pretty basic: learn from my mistakes, evolve, and design smarter every season.

[SM: Do you collect anything?]

LT: Jewelry, books, special pieces of clothing, art my friends make, fabric, blankets, letters.

[SM: Do you have an artistic circle or any co-conspirators that you collaborate with or bounce ideas off of?]

LT: Olivia Malone, Crystal Moselle, Anna Sheffield, Douglas Little, Susannah Wainhouse, Ruby Canner (Some Odd Rubies) Bryn Mckay, Stacey Berry, Jessie Breeden.

[SM: You studied Philosophy at UCSB – can you speak to how your study of philosophy impacts your work as a designer? Do you read philosophy any more?]

LT: I think the fundamentals of philosophy teach us to question everything, which I apply to design and the business of design. I’m always trying to understand existence from all angles but I don’t really study the classics anymore. I’m more apt to pick up the occasional self help book… Women Who Run with Wolves, oddly enough I get a lot from Tony Robbins books. Reality for me is about moving forward with grace and gratitude; whatever tool I need to achieve those principals, I’m game.

[SM: How do you get away - from work, the city, stress, etc:]

LT: Moksha yoga, a lot of travel, wine with friends.

[SM: Can you tell us a few artists you admire – musicians, writers, designers, filmmakers, etc?]

LT: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Paul Thomas Anderson, Andy Goldsworthy, Ron Fricke, Luca Guadagnino, Frida Kahlo, David Lynch, Jean Rollin, Kenneth Anger, John Lennon, The Beattles, CAN, Jonny Greenwood, Talking Heads, Drake, etc.

[SM: Nature has played an important inspirational role to so many creators.  What kind of view do you take on nature, and how does it inform your designs? Do you incorporate nature’s inspiration in a more harmonious Emersonian relationship, or a Black Lodge nature-as-danger kind of role?]

LT: I think a good amount of designers that live in city environments look to nature as a refuge.  Silence in nature is a treasure when your daily life is relentless noise, constant human interaction, and very little, if any interactions with greenery (beside a kale salad). Nature is a fleeting luxury. A fair amount of my designs have travel in mind, how to travel around the city or how to travel from this continent to Africa; ultimately, how to get back to nature. We’ve based campaigns in nature because the dream for us is not the cityscape. It’s to be closer to what makes us calm, and that’s nature. I also reference nature for color palettes – nature always does color best.

[SM: Any favorite pieces at Spanish Moss?]

LT: Turquoise Pools Ceramic Bull Skull, SUZANNAH WAINHOUSE Valor Pendant, SUZANNAH WAINHOUSE Extra Large Cross Earrings,  MANIAMANIA Telepathic Necklace, and the MANIAMANIA Astral Plane Immortals Ring

(Turquoise Pools Ceramic Bull Skull, Suzannah Wainhouse Valor Pendant and Extra Large Cross Earrings)

(MANIAMANIA Telepathic Necklace, MANIAMANIA Astral Plane Immortals Ring)

[SM: What's your best advice for an artist facing an artistic block?]

LT: Walk away from the pressure of having to create and do something else.  Once you’ve eliminated the stress the block will lift. Fashion deadlines are always so tight it’s not foreign to feel a blockage at some point. You never know when the desire to create is going to flow so you can’t force it, you have to move with it.