MINIPNG Sketches Out A Vision For Brick And Mortar

Eiress Hammond, the designer behind MINIPNG. Lucy Gellman Photos.

The pieces seem alive even even on their hangers, as if they might spring up and begin dancing in place. A ribbed green turtleneck has transformed into a cropped statement piece, with chunky white buttons and a black-and-white patch beneath the collar. A red t-shirt opens into creamy crocheted sleeves, their ends so wispy and delicate they look like chiffon spiderwebs. A pair of white knitted boot covers appears luminous, a swan song to winter as March tiptoes into warmth.   

All of them are creations of MINIPNG, the petite, explosively creative 23-year-old New Haven-based designer Eiress Hammond. This spring, she is working to grow her sustainable fashion footprint in New Haven’s East Rock neighborhood, where she lives with her boyfriend, Thrifted Hugs founder Elijah Blanchard. She has her eye on a brick-and-mortar storefront at 528 Orange St., in the former home of JJ Cleaners. In part, she sees it as giving back to the state that raised her, instead of moving her business to New York City.   

“It’s something I’ve wanted to do since I was a child,” she said in an interview outside Blue State Coffee on Orange Street. “I feel like as I progress, I’m trying to do things that I’ve wanted to do [for years]. Now that I have a foundation and am meeting different people and opportunity is present, I’m doing my best to make stuff happen that I’ve always wanted to make happen.”

For something of an online fashion sensation—the first time she sold at a vendor fair in New York City in 2020, she met a group of young women who had flown from London to see her work—Hammond is extremely unassuming, with a penchant for large pockets, cargo pants, and Doc Martens that is hard not to get on board with. When she's not posing in front of the camera, she's behind a sewing machine, planning her next design. She hustles to keep up with demand, from vendor expos in New York City to estate sales across the region. 

In large part, her keen eye is decades in the making. Raised by her grandparents in Middletown, Hammond loved fashion even as a young kid. By middle school, she had started a small business selling hair bows and matching shorts for lunch money. Her grandparents are both musical, and nurtured her love for clarinet, piano and figure skating even as she gravitated toward design.

"If you look at yearbooks, I was always wearing something super crazy and funky," she said with a laugh. "I would put on striped stockings with like, a poofy skirt. I was so crazy like that. A child's brain is so innocent—I don't think I gave a crap about what people thought."

It wasn't until after high school that the framework for MINIPNG came fully into existence. Hammond started her brand in 2019 "just for fun," with a colorful Instagram and a Depop account. At the time, she was studying prelaw and art at Wittenberg University, and sold clothes right out of her closet as a way to make extra money. It didn't strike her that it could become a full-fledged brand, she said. Instead, she channeled her energy into her schoolwork, proud to call herself a first-generation college student.

In the spring of 2019, she was "freshly 20 years old" and struck by the idea to start doodling faces on a tank top while still in school. It became the blueprint for her "In The City" tank, a clean, white design with dozens of faces that climb up the right side, opening their eyes right on a person’s ribcage. After "something just told me that that individual piece was gonna, like, get a lot of attention," she copyrighted the design. She had only heard whispers of artists’ work being stolen—examples of which have plagued New Haven’s arts community before—but had never experienced it.

Meanwhile—and unbeknownst to Hammond—Covid-19 was moving towards the United States. When it hit in 2020, sending her classes online, it turned her academic world upside down. She chose to take a break from school, channeling the "mental exhaustion" she felt from the pandemic into her creative work. As a first generation college student, she said, she didn’t make the decision lightly—but ultimately felt that it was the right thing for her to do in the moment.

Hammond outside the property she now dreams of renting out. 

"When more people were kind of sitting in their house, not doing much, I wanted to create things that brought light to the world and made people happy," she said. "I wanted to create an outlet where people have a piece that they purchase from me where they can express what they feel. I always try to emphasize that individuality in my work."

The pandemic meant that she could put all of her energy into MINIPNG, she said. Her pieces, tightly stitched jigsaw puzzles of fabric, thread, and original designs sourced from secondhand tops and sweaters, began taking off. Then a few months in, she saw that the brand Aliexpress was printing “In The City” tank—without any sort of attribution or compensation.

In a video on Instagram, she told followers what was happening. Over two million people watched and shared it. Many of them went to Aliexpress's social media accounts to demand that the design be taken down.

For over a week, she became a cause célèbre in the DIY fashion world. She watched as her follower numbers rose into the thousands, then past 10,000. It gave her a foundation to build on. She was able to see, for the first time, that fashion might be an economically viable career path.

"I was freaking so upset, but what happened was it brought a lot of attention to my brand," she said. "It felt empowering, honestly. They [Aliexpress] always steal everybody's staff, so it was kind of like 'Oh yes.' I didn't plan it. It just kind of happened."

In June 2020 she secured a lawyer who offered to represent her pro-bono as a small, Black-owned and woman-owned business. She also incorporated formally as an LLC. It turned out to be a good primer for what was to come: Hammond has seen knockoffs of her work appear on Amazon, Shein, and several third-party budget retailers selling the designs “for like 99 cents.” In the process of defending her own work, she's also connected with similar women-run online businesses across the globe, from Maddy Page Knitwear to Kiki The Brand to Les Miss NYC's Leah Gans. 

She called Kiki The Brand founder Kiana Davis "my number one inspiration," because Davis started with the same small-batch concept, and grew her design to viral popularity. She now owns a boat and has been able to hire several employees in Miami.

That’s the headspace she was in earlier this year, when she saw that JJ Cleaners had become a casualty of the pandemic. Hammond, who lives nearby on Pearl Street, goes to Blue State wit Blanchard for a coffee almost every day. When she saw the sign, she felt like the location was fate. Not only was it cheaper than anything in New York—the storefront is $1,495 per month, while New York Rents start at $3,000—but it was in her backyard.

The 972 square foot space is already set up to accommodate clothing, and she can see it being a home for live design "drops" that currently sell out on social media, she said. She hopes to share the storefront with Blanchard, who runs the vintage brand Thrifted Hugs through Instagram and Depop. She also envisions turning it into a space where she can feature New Haven's visual and performing artists, from singers and live bands to screenprinters. 

"I think people would be super into it," she said. "When I drive around Connecticut, I don't find anything that is that interesting. I want to bring a New York style clothing store here. Not just vintage—something that will have people lining up outside."

Follow MINIPNG's work here.