In Season 3 Episode 5 of I So Appreciate You!, co-hosts Nadege Souvenir and Melanie Hoffert talk to Rammy Mohamed, the designer and founder of Ramadhan Designs who is making waves in the Twin Cities fashion industry and beyond.
From a young age, Rammy Mohammed showed a predilection for art and to this day, she credits fine art for much of what inspires her designs. Despite always having a clear eye for design, she wasn’t on the path to becoming a fashion designer when she went to school. Out of a sense of practicality, Rammy pursued a degree in business, yet found herself coming back to fashion in her early professional years, going to fashion school so she could learn how to make clothing and eventually have her own boutique. For Rammy, fashion is everywhere, and thus hard to avoid. She sees creativity behind everything, even in the functionality of seemingly unfashionable things, like a surgeon’s gown. She sees fashion and function as inseparable.
“Art and fashion are as important as the doctor. If the doctor is doing the surgery, he’s most likely wearing a gown that’s made by someone like myself. It came from our industry. You need creatives, you need innovation.”
But functionality is only one facet of Rammy’s intricate designs. She seamlessly blends her own cultural background into the very fabric of her clothes, bridging her East African heritage with her Midwestern community. As a Muslim woman of Oromo descent, Rammy acknowledges that the culture lends itself to modest designs, but she doesn’t see that as limited just to Muslim community members as people from all cultures may gravitate towards modesty. Rammy’s clothes are accessible to a broad range of people and are at the intersection of fashion where for some their imagination would never let them go before. In her eyes, she’s bringing cultural perspective to high-end fashion and doing it all in Saint Paul, Minnesota, her home that she credits for helping get her business off the ground.
In this episode, co-hosts Nadege Souvenir and Melanie Hoffert talk to Rammy about what inspires her—from the artists she follows to her cultural background that is woven through every piece she makes. They discuss her connections to Saint Paul, how she got her storefront in the downtown skyway, and how she’s not only helping to revitalize downtown but also her big plans to make Saint Paul the next epicenter of fashion. Rammy also advises on how to make fashion less intimidating and shares what exciting new projects she has up her sleeve.
Links
Ferrari Sheppard – Artist’s Instagram
Marcel Duchamp “Fountain” 1917/1964
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