Craft Lake City celebrates the diversity in our arts community by highlighting our diverse community of local makers each month, including this week’s featured artisan: Deedee Sathianthammawit of W.B. THAMM. Read our full interview with Deedee below to learn about her craft, her mission and more!
What is your medium?
Clothing (mostly), wearable art such as hand-appliqué and embroidery.
What inspires you to create?
After my 13-year long career as a fashion designer in NYC, I’ve experienced firsthand the profound impact of the fashion industry on the environment. Throughout the years, I have started a mission to make clothes using reclaimed materials, giving new life and purpose to existing fabrics.
Have you found more or less freedom to create whatever you want since leaving NYC’s fashion scene for Salt Lake City?
Before–when I was in NYC–I worked for clothing brands. So there are certain things that I need to follow such as design directions, trends or concepts/stories that the brand projected for each season. Now, I’m working for myself. The brand direction or any type of creativity, I have in my control. So I have so much freedom to create anything that reflects my personality and preferences.
What does your creative process look like? Can you tell us a little bit about that?
It starts from sketches. I would come up with scraped drawings, some notes for the details of a garment, ideas. [Then I make] paper patterns, developing the samples, and might have to do more samples if there’s adjustments on the fit. Then it will come to the final products and cutting the pattern on vintage materials.
How has your heritage impacted your work, if at all?
I wouldn’t say that my work is connected to my heritage directly. Though, my grandmother was a
seamstress and she’s the one [who drew] me to the interest of sewing; [that’s] the starting point of my whole creations.
How young were you when you started sewing? Do you remember any of your earliest sewing creations?
I don’t really remember how young I was when I started sewing. Definitely sometime when I was in elementary school. We always had a sewing machine at home and I just played around with it and it got better over time. I think my first creation was my Barbie’s clothes.
What made you decide to name your business W.B. THAMM? Is the ‘THAMM’ from the middle of Sathianthammawit?
“W.B.” are my mom (Wasana) and my dad (Boonsong)’s initials combined and yes, “THAMM” is the partial of our last name “Sathiantammawit” . I want to honor them [because of] how lucky I am to be their daughter.
Is there anything else about you that you would like our audience to know?
I’m originally from Bangkok, Thailand.
And how can they best find/support your work?
Please check out my website https://wb-thamm.com/ or follow me on Instagram @wbthamm or browse products on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/WBTHAMM.
Also, you can read on the recently article that Etsy has featured me on their blog https://www.etsy.com/blog/featured-shop-wb-thamm
Craft Lake City’s artist features highlighting national DEIA Awareness Months will continue throughout the year on our social media channels (@craftlakecity) and here on our blog. Stay tuned to hear from other local creatives working to make Utah a more vibrant and accepting place to live, work and create!