INTERVIEW of AMARILLA DIOSA by LOUISE DURANTES of LEAK NYC
PHOTOGRAPHY by PENELOPE DARIO
LOVE STORIES, LIKE FAIRYTALES, ARE ABOUT UNION. AND SEX, LIKE CREATIVITY, IS ABOUT GENESIS.
Ever since Audrey Hepburn and Hubert De Givenchy spawned their iconic collaboration for the 1954 film Sabrina, designers and starlets have been pairing up to give life to the public through the merging of their shared fantasies. The relationship between Amarilla Diosa and Louis Durantes of LEAK NYC not only speaks to this lineage, but to the binding ties of culture embedded in New York City’s social landscape. Amarilla a bonafide showgirl, exclusive companion, and creative visionary, and LEAK, a modern cult classic designer who is reinventing knitwear for today’s vixens come together this season for a visual and verbal kiki on their Central American roots, the power of clothing as a means for affirmation and transformation, and how honoring family and building community is the cornerstone of success and satisfaction in life.
AMARILLA DIOSA
Do you remember how we first met?
LOUIS DURANTES of LEAK NYC
I do! I remember I was living my beach fantasy. It was in July, it was hot, there I was just chatting with some friends, thinking there's no possible way I could be having a better time right now. And then I saw you, and you looked at me, and I don't know if we immediately kissed (laughter) or if there was any kind of build up to it, but I just remember being so elated to see you, even more than I was in the moment thinking this is the life. We just had a really powerful experience. It did not feel sexual, it was just beautiful and powerful. I'm so glad we kept in touch and kept discovering more about each other creatively and swapping notes about self-care, retail therapy. We just have so much in common.
I remember that too, a great way to break the ice, gay beach really brings people together [laughter]. I was just like, who is this really fabulous person? After kicking it for a bit, getting into your gig I knew I had to pick your brain more, it also just felt effortless and comfortable to be around you, that's something I look for in any relationship. I’m thankful to the universe for bringing us together...
So what's your background culturally?
My background culturally is like a melting pot, my father is Mexican and my mother is Native American and Irish. I grew up in the South, in Atlanta Georgia, where my grandmother and her husband raised me. They owned a farm right outside of the city, in the summers and winters my sisters and I had to work on it. Hated it as a kid, I always preferred city life, but now I'm so grateful for those experiences. My father was deported when I was a child and my mother was young and couldn't raise me on her own while she struggled to find her footing and stability in life. So that's why I say a melting pot, because I have so many references for inspiration that I feel shaped me as a person growing up.
As I get older I have a newfound appreciation for the places that I come from that made me who I am today. The South and I didn't always get along, it can be a tough place to live when you're someone like me but as of recently I've been visiting more and I'm falling in love with it again. I have a deep love for Georgia, It really turned me out, honestly, it gave me life-long friends, introduced me to different scenes and cultures, taught me valuable life lessons, grew up surrounded by beautiful nature, and it was also where I first dabbled in sex work. Plus I'm kind of a sucker these days for a southern accent. I used to not be but ya know, as we get older we learn to appreciate unique things about people.
What's your journey through sex work been?
Such an open question. My journey has really seen its highs and lows, thankfully more highs than lows. I've learned so many lessons over the years, acquired new skills, traveled to new places and met some pretty amazing and interesting people. SW helped me gain a deeper sense of self by tapping into my own uniqueness, natural skill set, and learning how to brand and market that. Which I feel also helps you recognize the importance of being yourself and the beauty of the little things that make you, you. It allowed me to reach financial stability and taught me how to run a business. Which really helped give me the ability to fund and focus on my dreams and physical transition, at a time where there weren't many employment options for a woman like me, I did the best with what I had until I was able to give myself more access.
Can you name a person or two that you've looked up to in the industry, or that's really helped in your profession creatively or in general?
I've always been so inspired by showgirls, strippers, music video vixens, bimbo porn stars, superheros, women with physically striking looks and exaggerated proportions . Whether it's the way they style themselves, their confidence, the way they move and use their body to create dialogue or convey emotion is really beautiful to me.
What's the earliest memory you have of creating, and what was it?
When I was three I would paint these water creatures, sharks and whales and stuff at my kindergarten. I would obsessively draw sting rays and these carnivorous sea creatures, until I ran out of paper and people annoyingly told me to stop.
Oh my gosh, that's so funny. I used to draw animals all the time too, but I was drawing unicorns and made up creatures, or maybe hybrids of animals. But I also love X-Men, I was always drawing the X Men characters—one of my favorites was Mystique, and her ability to change and morph into anything always fascinated me.
She was really fab.
I always had a fascination with things that can change, like butterflies, or things that go through a metamorphosis process.
Fascinating. I definitely had my fixation on comic books for a long time throughout middle school and into high school. I would get inspired. I guess you could say I'm still inspired by this heroesque silhouette,because a lot of superheroes wear body suits, right? Even now, I'm trying to recreate my own queer superhero with things that I put together and I assemble, so it’s fascinating you brought that up.
I love that. Yeah.
You mentioned the X-Men, which is so funny, because that was one of my favorite comic books.
Who was your favorite X-Men character?
I used to be really obsessed with Storm. I love Storm and Lady DeathStrike with the nails.
What would be your superpower if you were a superhero or a super villain?
I definitely wouldn't be one of the mind readers. I feel like that would destroy my mental health. I would be like Storm, someone who has these elemental powers to be more attuned with and sensitive to nature, the atmosphere, and feelings. If you had asked me when I was growing up I would have definitely been a Magneto, or something a little bit more destructive. I grew up outside Detroit, and it's so conservative there, for a long time I felt trapped and sheltered. When I moved to New York, I never looked back when I started getting to know other creatives in Brooklyn and the area. One of my favorite sources of inspiration was this genre of sex workers. When the pandemic hit all of my friends who were secretly doing sex work became a lot more open about it.
They were my superheroes during the pandemic, they fueled a lot of the creative process and helped me fully realize my queerness and really shaped the direction of the brand, and got me where I am today. I hope that makes sense.
It makes complete sense. Period. If I had a superpower, honestly, it would be like Mystique. Or have you ever seen Teen Titans; do you know Beast Boy? Ideally I'd have a combination of both their powers. I've always had an interest in body modification, and people who really take it in their own hands, more or less, to self create. It's no secret in this world that we're really all pigeonholed and told who we're supposed to be and what we're supposed to look like, and we have so many limitations put on us, not only by society, but sometimes we can be our own worst enemy and put so many things on ourselves. I have such a respect and love and admiration for anyone I see who is unique and letting their cunt out. That's one of the reasons why I love living in a city like New York. Wait, how long have you been in New York now? Would you consider yourself a New Yorker at this point?
I’ve been here for 13 years, at this point, it feels like home.
I've been here eight years, am I a New Yorker yet?
It’s more about how integrated you make yourself feel as a community member—that’s the most important thing, not so much the years, right? The quality of the life you're living. You’re not just trying it out anymore and disrupting and raising rent and gentrifying someplace. You're building culture.
That's such a good way to put it, building culture. I've always said that anyone can move to New York—but can you really tap into the magic? Because there really is this magic to this city, you can make anything happen. If you're an innovator, if you're a hustler, you can find so many different people and outlets here. There's so many unique opportunities. There's a lot of chances to do and try out different things. If you can really tap into the magic in New York City, you're in it. I feel really grateful that New York has, over the years, received me pretty well.
It's been amazing. Your show seemed like such a big moment for you to absorb the gravity of that moment. All of those fab artists and culture creators all together at once was really powerful.
Thank you, I really appreciate that. I'm honored I got to bring in some of my favorite performers who I have the privilege of calling my friends and chosen family. Never did I think that I would be producing a drag show [like Chiquitetas]. I'm so lucky to be surrounded by so many amazing people who have seen more potential in me than I saw in myself at times. I want to shout out my good sister, Angel Flores, her stage name is Chiquitita, who is a Brooklyn staple and legend in the drag community, and someone I'm so grateful to call family, and in 2020 put me in my first drag show. I've always been friends with drag queens and freaks and performance artists and creatures of the night. I'm such a huge admirer of the art of drag, performance was never really on my radar but she saw something in me and asked me to come be a part of her show. Getting to be open and vulnerable and trying something new really catapulted me and led me into such a whole new trajectory in life, which is really where we started. We've been friends, and we have our own relationship outside of creating and working together, but over the years of getting to do more performance and drag was really how we started to develop creative work together.
Experiencing nightlife, experiencing spaces in New York where creativity has such a high standard—you have to walk with knowledge of music, knowledge of the arts, knowledge of fabric and how it drapes on your body. Everything revolves around the appreciation for those things. That's what brought us together.
Absolutely. I've always been a huge admirer of your vision, which I want to touch on. Speaking of your vision and your brand LEAK—what drew you to fashion, styling, and textiles?
Great question. I went to Parsons. I focused on fashion and textiles pretty early on, it was an obsession. It became something that I really fixated on, fibers and draping and evening wear, and I thought I was gonna do gowns and red carpet stuff right when I graduated. But I ended up making a lot of sweaters and stretchy textiles, and that translated well into a lot of big corporate spaces. After some time working at those places I took all that knowledge and reinterpreted knitwear into how I thought it could exist in the world.
That translated into a lot of knit lace and knit meshes, and that’s what put us on the map specifically. Going back to your original question, essentially, I’m a textile designer, I look and see fabrics. I see the life force of fibers very differently, and I have so much respect for it. It's almost integrated as part of my spirituality, my respect for fabric. First and foremost, I consider myself a fiber artist. I take a lot of joy in that, even more than the garments, because I could see making other things, but it just translates well for clothes at this point in time. That's the core of the inspiration—textiles.
What really drew me to fashion and styling is being transgender. From an early age, how I looked on the outside really didn't align with how I felt on the inside. Whatever resources and tools I had around me, I would pull from and use to make me feel more comfortable being in the world and with myself in general. Clothes and accessories were one of the first outlets that allowed me to tap into self expression from a very early age. I grew up in a semi- conservative household; my parents would never buy me the clothes that I wanted. So at 16, my friend got me a job at this food place, and when I started making money I used it to buy what I wanted to wear without the hassle of trying to convince my parents. I really love all types of fashion, but I definitely have a special love for shoes. It can really be such a great tool, fashion that is, to help people gain a better sense of self and showcase themselves however they want to be.
That's so relatable—not getting the clothes you were supposed to be wearing. I'm still playing catch up, trying to get all the clothes that I wanted to wear.
Sometimes people ask me, how did you come up with this idea? What are you doing? I feel like I've had a lot of these ideas for decades, but I didn't have the means to make them or realize them. Thinking about the future—I think our journey here at LEAK is very much in its infancy, because after we flesh out all those ideas that we've had bottled up all these years, what's next? What is beyond this nostalgic yearning, and what do we want to see the world become in terms of fabric and fashion? That's where my mind is now after four years of just churning stuff out and getting to a place where I feel like I can just start to really think about newness and real innovation instead of playing catch up.
I mentioned earlier that textiles were also a part of my spiritual practice. I'm from Central America, Guatemala specifically. Fabric grounds our religion in a lot of ways. There are pillars in the K’iche Mayan genesis stories that involve fabric and the four corners of the map, and that very much influences how I approach my life and how I develop my own patterns, and how I carry myself. Every Indigenous community In Guatemala has their own language that's woven into fabrics. I'm in the process of developing my own language in the terms of how I create textiles, and how they're incorporated in my life. I'm very proud to take on that practice and that ancestral knowledge in a modern way. They used to hand dye all their cotton fibers and create specific motifs of mountains or deities. I take a lot of the fibers and incorporate what's happening now with textiles and engineering and I give it a very specific pattern. There's a lot of specific motifs and design details that I carry throughout the development. Everything feels very sacred. I do not use cheap material, I don't develop things in a way that's mass produced. It's always a careful process concerning what the content of the fiber is and where things are coming from. The business itself is family owned and run. My best friend from college started a factory in Bangkok, and we work very closely to create things in a beautiful, safe, and creative environment together, as a family.
One thing I love about my family and my culture is our need to keep in touch, but not just over text and the internet, but our urgency to stay together and meet at reunions and small parties year after year—our dedication to stay close as a family and not grow apart or feel distant. I'm very comfortable talking to my aunts and uncles. My grandmother had 12 brothers and sisters, after that our family really exploded. I have around 100 cousins, I have appreciation and love for all of them, and I get to see them frequently enough at gatherings, and it’s really amazing. We share stories, we share food, and that's not something you can do over a text message.
I feel like my whole life is one spiritual practice, honestly. One of my friends a long time ago said something that's always stuck with me, that self creation can be almost godlike. I think it's so easy in this day and age to lose sight of who you are—like I touched on earlier, we have all of these things that want to pigeon-hole us and tell us who we are and what we should be. Something that really grounds me is finding out more about myself, taking care of myself, and honoring my divine feminine and masculine energies. Being a first generation person here, something that I really love to do with my spiritual practice is decolonize my mind: to learn about where I come from, to learn about my family and ancestors and to learn about the peoples that I come from, and our practices and how the world has erased some of those things. What can I do to rebirth them in my own unique way, while still always honoring where they come from? Something that really keeps me grounded in my spirituality every day is to pray. I try to say a prayer outside of myself, to the universe, to the earth. I really try to be thankful for all of my blessings—it's so easy to get caught up in everything that you want or everything that you want to become, or the things that you don't have. So I always try to practice gratitude for everything that I have in this very moment, and remind myself that I am enough, while still allowing myself room for growth.
I also draw a lot of inspiration for my life and creativity from my ancestors and cultural identity. Something that has always inspired me about Mexican and Latin women in general is our love for beauty, our love for taking care of ourselves. I have the earliest and fondest memories of watching all the women in my life doing their hair and getting ready for church on Sundays, and anytime we had family outings, even if it was just going to the grocery store. They always wanted to look nice. It never seemed to be for other people, just for themselves. I think it's really admirable and important to be beautiful for yourself, first and foremost. Aside from the strength that women give and exude, something that also inspires me about Latin women and Mexican women is their softness and tenderness. Sometimes the world can praise these really strong, independent women without offering us a chance to just be soft, without having to be these superheroes, without having to be these extraordinary people. Most of the time, extraordinary people are shaped by really extraordinary circumstances, and that doesn't mean that those circumstances are necessarily good, but it also doesn't mean they're necessarily bad. Mexican culture can also be very misogynistic...
That was key for me too, growing up. My mother, my aunts, my extended family in Guatemala carry this beautiful balance of softness and strength. Despite the misogyny and the machismo energy that some of the men [are raised in], I was still able to explore the femininity that I had inside me, and they allowed it to flourish, and allowed me to fully realize myself without being afraid.
Pre-colonial Mexico is also something I try to imagine and hold space for. Mexico is such a diverse place, it has so many subgroups of people and Indigenous groups that have so many different practices. Something I find so beautiful about pre-colonial Mexico to be specific, is the recognition of a third gender, and offering space for not just a man and a woman, but also this third gender. There's different words for it, depending on the Indigenous group— in the south in Oaxaca, they have muxes who are recognized as a third gender, but definitely lean more to what people would classify as a woman or very feminine. It’s something that continuously inspires me to practice duality in my life and honor all parts of myself. For me, it's been a really big lesson to not only honor my femininity, but also honor my masculinity. For a very long time, during the beginning of my transition, I tried to erase and bury the masculine parts of myself. It really wasn't until my outside became more aligned with how I felt on the inside that I was able to then take a step back and really be thankful for all of me and all of my experiences. I make a joke to my friends all the time that I'm almost an avatar. I've lived life as a boy, I've lived life as a non-binary person, and now I get to live life as a woman.
I've really gotten to see the differences and how people treat you and how society treats you, depending on who you are and what you look like. That really inspires my femininity and also my character as a whole, the beauty of where I come from, it reminds me to love all parts of myself.
What's something you love about your culture and your people, and something that you hope to see grow? Whether it's human liberation or cultural or economic resources in the country?
My wish for my people is that we could tear down all the walls, period. All the borders and passports situation, no more artificial land borders, it’s something I've been thinking about a lot lately. The “immigrant problem” is completely fabricated—it’s fear mongering.
Plus all of the pick-mes—people who have made it to this country and somehow now hate immigrants. There are people from all over Latin America that have come to North America for a better life and opportunity, and now develop the same prejudices that were once projected onto them. It's all out of the scarcity mindset, this illusion that we don't have enough resources to help people or feed people, or house people, or healthcare, which is total bullshit.
Something I love about my culture and my people, first and foremost, is the food. Who doesn't love Mexican food? UNESCO just declared it an essential ingredient for humanity haha, It's really always been such a meeting point for my family and I, how we show our love together and how we sit down over a meal, catch up, talk, work out our problems, specifically for my grandma. Shout out to my grandma, one of my most favorite people in my life. I know everyone says their grandma is the best cook, but she really is. It's her love language to feed me, to feed our family and to cook; you can taste the love in her food, which is also something I love about my people in general, is our warmth and our laughter. Our ability to look past all of the negative connotations that can be put onto Mexican people and all of the challenges we face, whether it be individually or collectively as a people, that we still remain in such great spirits and always have the time to acknowledge and help each other out. That's always been an important lesson my family taught me, is that you always have enough time to help your people. What I hope for my people is more acceptance and open-mindedness and a better love of diversity and decolonizing our brains.
The older I get the more I tap into myself and my creativity and really appreciate the duality of everything. It's down with the patriarchy, but also not up with the matriarchy. Beautiful things look like a great balance of both. I would love to see us move forward as a society, adapting duality to all of our lives and honoring all parts of ourselves.
Shifting gears to a personal level, performance is another spiritual practice for me, it allows me to tap into the depths of my soul and put it all out and be vulnerable, especially in front of an audience—letting myself be free for whatever that moment is, letting myself release, whether it be my sadness, my anger, my frustrations, but also my joy and my happiness and just letting it all out and not keeping it bottled up in my body. Something that was really special about this specific collaboration with you, Louis, was getting to tap into parts of myself that I had never really tapped into, and getting to create together and draw together and design outfits. As someone who has such a love for fashion, it's really not something I got to dive into much, so it was so much fun to get to see the mechanical part of it, to see how things are made and constructed—to watch them come to fruition from a sketch all the way to the photoshoot.
It was very beautiful and therapeutic creatively, but it was also really exhilarating too. I don't know if that was intentional, but when we were making the corset and putting all the epoxy on it, I was like “girl, we have one shot to get this right.” We had to mold it so it fit on your body before it got hard. It was a little stressful, but fun.
Thank you for that. It's really special.
Thank you for pushing me to work outside of my comfortable mediums too. Things like that really sprout— whatever the next creative endeavors are I want to [keep pushing myself.] That's how I started the brand, making custom pieces for myself and my friends. It feels really good to come back to that and not just mass produce or have the intention to mass produce.
Something that I found really special is that I was able to pull from so many of my own references: my love of vintage fashion, my love of silhouettes, my love of showgirls, to create these sketches and then give them to you, whether it be the sketches or my reference photos you always put your own unique twist on it. I really admire your vision. I really admire your ability to take something and to make it your own, without it being lost, without the integrity of what we were going for being lost. And always expanding my brain too, and what could look good or what we could play with. Getting to try out ways of textile manipulation that weren't even on my radar, it was a lot of fun.
I think it translated beautifully. I can't wait to do it again soon.
Same.
They're getting more ambitious.
Right? What are your next creative goals?
LEAK has always been a super accessible brand, and one of my goals creatively is to continue to get inspired by our people spearheading culture and fashion here in Brooklyn. Like Raul Lopez and Willie Norris, they're doing amazing things. I would like to be a little more attentive and hone my craft even more like they have done, and not focus as much on the commercial aspect. I have to appreciate that past, because it's allowed me the freedom to be more creative and work with you and work with other artists that I don't think I would have been able to before, and now I can really hone in on the craft even more so because we created a business that can sustain the creativity.
Shout out to Willie Norris for the pants. What's coming up for me next, creatively and professionally you ask? Creatively I think of projects like this that push me out of my comfort zone and allow me to do things that I've never done before, and also things that weren’t even in my line of sight, that I didn't even think I would ever want to do. In life, whenever I'm open and whenever I'm receptive to trying out new things is when the magic happens. Professionally, well, I'm just trying to make a lot of money and build a house and own land. Produce more shows and perform more.
Can you get a house in Mexico so we can just kiki?
I'm working on it right now haha. Soon I'll expect an invite to your summer house in Guatemala, with a pool and a waterfall. A jungle in the backyard, the whole gig.
Done!
In the meantime, dinner at my place next Tuesday?
See you there!
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