Furniture Designer Aimee Inouye

 

It seems like a romantic notion to grow up and spend the rest of you life with your high school sweetheart. But what if your paramour was your craft? Aimee Inouye took a Hawaiian crafts woodworking course while in high school in Honolulu and was taken with it.
After college, Aimee left Hawaii to pursue her education even further. From San Francisco to Portland, it’s been a long journey of building knowledge and skills. Merging her background in architecture, furniture design, and woodworking, Aimee hopes to move towards the furniture/product design field as a well-rounded maker.
She can now approach projects from start to finish with every aspect of the process in mind. Beautiful sketches fill her studio, each one reflecting the Shaker belief that “beauty rests in utility.” Woodchips cover the floor as design meets chisel.
In a time when woodworking as a profession is rare, let alone female woodworkers, it’s moving to sit and watch the sawdust fly. Perhaps it’s time to look at benches and bed frames in a whole new light. A labor of love comes from the handmade.
How much passion comes packaged in a ready-to-assemble bookshelf?

Take a closer look at Aimee’s stunning work here.
What Aimee’s wearing: Carhartt Women’s Dunlow Sweatshirt, Calumet Crewneck T-Shirt, Women’s Slim-Fit Nyona Jeans, & Duck Nail Apron.

Building Hugger Amy Nicole Swift

Recycling and reusing building materials is the ideal way to go about repairing old houses and architecture. In a time when so much excess waste proliferates, as strong proponents of green construction arise, they need our support. Amy Nicole Swift is just that. When she’s not teaching at the university, she’s working to restore vacant Detroit properties. It’s a dirty and exhausting job, but crucial to rebuilding this iconic city. She founded Building Hugger, an architectural design-build firm, to give back to the community and breath new life into old spaces.

Check out Amy’s spring time work gear: Carhartt Mountrail Jacket, Force Performance Quarter-Zip Shirt, Sibley Denim Shorts, Soft Hands Gloves, and Wellington Boots.