The Story Behind "Almost Alchemy" Oakland, 2020
It was August 2020, and I was in my house in West Oakland with a pile of old denim and nowhere to be. The world had stopped. Everyone needed a mask, and I had a pair of jeans that had been sitting in a corner for months. I started cutting. The math was simple the waistband and pockets made a crop top, the legs made a mask. One garment became two things. Discarded became wanted. I sat there looking at what my hands had made and I remember thinking: this is it. This is what I'm supposed to be doing. Not because it was profitable or because I had a plan just because for the first time I could feel exactly how my hands connected to something that mattered. That feeling has a name. I just had to find it.
What Alchemy Actually Means
The word "alchemy" is old traced back to at least 300 AD in Hellenized Egypt, where early practitioners like the philosopher Zosimos of Panopolis described it not just as a chemical process, but as a spiritual one. The goal was transmutation: taking something base, something ordinary, something discarded and transforming it into something of profound value. The legendary Philosopher's Stone was never really about gold. It was about the belief that transformation was possible. That nothing was permanently worthless.
I thought about that a lot when I was naming this brand. Because the crisis we're in right now is essentially the opposite of alchemy. According to a 2017 report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, every single second, the equivalent of a full garbage truck of clothing is either buried in a landfill or burned. Less than 1% of the clothing that gets collected for reuse is ever turned into new clothing. The United States alone generated 17 million tons of textile waste in 2018, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency an increase of more than 50% since the year 2000. We are producing more, wearing things fewer times, and throwing away more than any generation in history.
And here's the part that sits with me: producing a single new pair of jeans requires approximately 10,000 liters of water. The planet is choking on clothes it barely wore. That's not industry failure that's a failure of imagination. The alchemists had more faith in transformation than we do.
What Almost Alchemy Is Actually Doing
"Almost Alchemy" isn't a brand name I came up with at a desk. It's a description of what I was already doing. Almost because I'm not a magician. I can't make something from nothing. But I can take what already exists donated denim, old windbreakers, fabric scraps, the legs off a pair of jeans and put my hands on it until it becomes something a person wants to carry with them. That's the whole operation. We're not manufacturing. We're transforming.
Every piece starts with material that was headed somewhere it shouldn't go. I think about the water it took to make that fabric. I think about whoever wore it before. And then I think about what it can become next. That's the alchemy. It's almost because the original alchemists never quite achieved what they were after. But they kept working. So do I.
The Piece: West Oakland, August 2020
The piece in the photo at the top of this post is one of the earliest things I made a denim crop top and matching face mask, hand-sewn in August 2020 in my house in West Oakland. Both came from the same pair of jeans. The waistband and pockets became the top; the legs became the mask. I didn't have a name for it then. I barely had a brand. What I had was a clear afternoon, some scissors, and the feeling that I was finally doing something that made sense.
It's functional and it's fashion which is exactly what Almost Alchemy has always been trying to be. The mask isn't a costume it was made during a moment when everyone needed one. The crop top isn't just scraps it's a complete garment with a history. That denim lived a life before it came to me. Now it lives another one.
What You Can Do
Look at something you were going to throw away. Go through your closet this week and find one piece of clothing you haven't worn in over a year. Before you donate or discard it, look at it as material not as a garment. What's it made of? What could it become?
Watch The True Cost. Directed by Andrew Morgan (2015), this documentary traces where fast fashion actually comes from and where it goes. It's the most honest 90 minutes you can spend understanding why this matters. Available on streaming.
Find your local textile drop-off. In California, many H&M locations accept donations regardless of brand or condition for recycling. Use the search tool at Earth911.com to find the closest drop-off to you.
The Name Stuck
I still think about that afternoon in West Oakland sometimes. The pile of denim on the floor, the quiet, the feeling of something locking into place. The name came later Almost Alchemy but the idea was already there in my hands before I had words for it. It's been there ever since.
Somewhere between the first cut and the finished piece, something transforms. Not just the fabric. Something in the person making it, too.
Sources
Ellen MacArthur Foundation. "A New Textiles Economy: Redesigning Fashion's Future." Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2017. ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/a-new-textiles-economy
United States Environmental Protection Agency. "Textiles: Material-Specific Data." EPA, 2023. epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/textiles-material-specific-data
Science History Institute. "Gold, Secrecy, and Prestige." Science History Institute Magazine. sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/gold-secrecy-and-prestige
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Alchemy." Encyclopædia Britannica. britannica.com/topic/alchemy
Morgan, Andrew, dir. The True Cost. Life Is My Movie Entertainment, 2015.
Stanton, Isabelle. "Pandemic Sewing Surge Is a Chance to Rediscover the Practical Arts." The Conversation, 2021. theconversation.com/pandemic-sewing-surge-is-a-chance-to-rediscover-the-practical-arts-148246
