I was born in Mallorca and grew up here by the sea. My parents moved to England to my father’s village, but my mother, she’s Filipina, couldn’t stand the rainy grey days there so they decided to move to Mallorca.
I officially started The Cocowear in the pandemic. It was a project I wanted to do for a long time but I was putting it off and when the pandemic came I thought it would be a great time to start and work on my own projects, there was no excuse anymore because we were stuck at home. I studied Fashion Design at University, but there are so many branches in the fashion world and when I finished my career I had a love-hate relationship with the industry and how it worked, and yet, I wanted to know about it all, so I started working in all sectors, from being an apprentice, to sales, visual merchandising, at fashion events, as a stylist. In my free time I started painting and eventually realised that I could unite both of my passions: art and fashion and that led to The Cocowear.
I am a person that needs visual order. To think clearly I need to organise my exterior first to concentrate in my interior.. I realise that creating patterns on paper helps me centre my thoughts and feelings. Painting shapes and figures that have an order, balance and meaning between one another. The hard part came when I had to add colour. When I started painting I was terrible at combining colours, I had to make a lot of mistakes and really study how colours worked and complemented each other, so it hasn’t always been intuitive, I had to ruin a lot of paintings first. Now I feel that when I paint for myself and with my intuition, it flows and the colours and elements just naturally come together. Because the most important thing when you paint is to always do it for yourself first, without thinking if others will like it.
Painting for me is like writing in a diary, except with shapes and colours. I have never been good with expressing my thoughts and feelings with words, so every painting is like a piece of my personal life, some of them more intimate than others, and every element and animal has a deep meaning of the emotions and experiences I live in that moment. At the same time I love the fact that the interpreter can feel different emotions and also takes them to an imaginary world. But most of the time, the animals and mermaids represent myself, sometimes I’m an angry dragon spitting fire, others I’m a tiger hungry for action, or a mermaid who is free and swimming with the current.
I love the island life and being surrounded by nature and the sea. I feel very inspired by the slow vibes of the Mallorquin life and by my Asian roots.
Since Kenzo was born in summer 2023, I have focused most of my time on my baby boy and I haven’t had so much time to paint. But this summer 2024 I will release my new Cocowear collection and I am so excited, I couldn’t be more happier with the colours, the new prints and adding more garments to the brand. Also I hope that by the end of the year I will have finished painting my new series of artworks called ‘Mama’.
I live in Valldemossa and I am in love with the Tramuntana mountains. My escape places are the little hidden calitas between Deia and Soller. Also in summer you will catch me most afternoons in Puerto de Valldemossa watching the best sunsets there.
I am a big fan of COFFEE. I go to La Molienda and Mama Carmen’s every time I go to Palma. I enjoy my natural wines in Bar La Sang on Friday nights and I love the tapas in Toque de Queda. I can never spend enough hours at The Babel library shop and I always want to buy the whole shop when I go to CLUB Palma.
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