Founded in 2019 by Luis Ruiz, Petra Stellam is putting the Houston, Texas fashion landscape on the map. Born from an organic exploration of garment alterations and sewing sessions between friends, it has grown over the years into an avant garde, experimental label sitting somewhere between modern couture and timeless ready-to-wear. Forever maintaining the curious spirit of the brand’s origins, Ruiz has translated those core values into textile and silhouette development, designing seasonless collections with artistry, craftsmanship, and storytelling at the heart of every look.

For Petra Stellam’s 2024 collection, “Romantic Hypothesis,” the story is particularly gripping. Centred around the symbiotic relationship between the creative director and the pattern-maker, it is split into two parts: one line of pieces made from actual pattern paper (which Ruiz treated with oil and lotion to make wearable!), and a second featuring those same pieces realised into fabric. “We removed the vital element of fabric, so when the audience sees the first half of the show they’ll be like, ‘oh, that would look beautiful in leather or wool or crepe silk.’” He pauses. “And then a few moments later you get to see it actually actualised.”

We spoke with Luis Ruiz about the highs and lows of starting his own brand, developing a rip-resistant, wearable fabric out of paper, and his future dreams of bringing buyers to Houston. Keep reading…

Hey! How are you?
Good, I’m in Texas — it’s hot!

What is the fashion industry like in Texas?
Very independent compared to New York and London. We have to kind of do everything by ourselves, finding the factories or workers.

Was that difficult when you were starting? Can you tell us about where things began for you and how the brand has evolved to where it is now?
There weren’t really any options for me to get cool clothes that I liked, so I would just tweak things here and there or make something from scratch. Ultimately, I kept going and started wanting to do something in fashion. But, like I said, there’s no real industry opportunities here so I just started doing my own thing and using that as a portfolio and making a name for myself.

I started it with two friends and then they separated, did their own things, and it’s just been me this whole time since. Back then, it was just an idea, you know? I was much younger and I didn’t really think about the reality of it or what could possibly come from it, so I didn’t take it seriously at all. We were just making little samples for each other. Now that I’ve taken it seriously, I’ve been studying and creating plans and actually implementing new strategies and doing little things here and there that have helped the brand tremendously.

What would you say are the core ethos of the brand?
Modernism, sophistication, and craftsmanship. We keep those three things in mind. Every time we’re designing something, I have those core values in my head because it helps us stay on track. It helps us remember what our intention is and where we’re aiming to direct the brand.

Do you have a typical design process?
The design process that we have is kind of step by step. We start off with a mood board and then we proceed by getting a bunch of textiles, random materials that we can kind of start playing with on the mannequin. We’ll take a picture of that and then we’ll print it out and then we’ll start sketching on that image of the mannequin. We’ll look at the silhouette abstractly, and then we fill it in and sketch it out and then make a refined sketch from there.

I read that, as a brand, you really view clothing as an art form. Could you tell me a bit about what that particularly means to you?
Margiela was a big inspiration for me when I was younger and seeing a lot of his early pieces in a museum being preserved drew my attention. I have no idea why, I think it was just cool to me. I don’t know if you saw the button dress that we made? It’s a dress full of buttons. That’s not practical, but I feel like no one’s really going to give that away for free, you know? I think if we make our clothes unique, people will have a connection to it rather than letting it go so freely. It’s more of a show for the fact of not being so disposable.

That also ties into the sustainability aspect of your brand. Is that the way you always thought about fashion?
For the most part. I’ll wear something until I can’t, and even then I’ll wear it. If it gets dirty, that’s part of the process and I just grow to love that. The bottom of my jeans are absolutely destroyed from heel drag, but that’s natural.

Tell me about some of the materials that you use! I particularly love the ballet flats that look like pattern paper. Where do you get all these ideas and what materials are you using?
From the first show, we decided to kind of just go against the grain with the whole idea of cohesion. So every single look was different. Hence it being titled “Material Stories and Other Objects.” We used various materials that told different stories and were complemented with other objects. And I don’t know why, but I think I just love design so much that I referenced design within itself – with pattern paper, you know, little details with the darts, pattern hooks, things like that.

We have one look in there that is made out of paper completely, which I then looked at specifically and expanded to make a whole collection based on that singular look.

Can you tell us more about that — your new collection?
The collection that we’re working on now, “A Romantic Hypothesis,” is all about pattern paper and the pattern drafter itself. I feel everyone’s always focused on the creative director, but you have a whole team – you have all these pattern makers that just get overlooked all the time and without them there would be no creative director. It’s a symbiotic relationship.

So we split the collection into two. The first half of the collection is all pattern paper everything, made from pattern paper itself which we experimented to create a technique that makes it actually wearable. It’s abstracted – we removed the vital element of fabric, so when the audience sees the first half of the show they’ll be like, ‘oh, that would look beautiful in leather or wool or crepe silk.’ And then a few moments later you get to see it actually actualised. Because the second half is a mirror collection – the pieces from the first half but made into actual fabrics, representing the creative director or designer side to the process.

How did you make the paper wearable?
I was on Instagram during COVID and I saw someone making a birthday card out of card-stock and it was a Japanese technique called mamagami where they put a little bit of oil on their hands, crinkled the paper, and then ironed it until it got all soft and flexible. I saved the video and then when I was working on the collection, I remembered it and I started doing that to the pattern paper itself. But it ripped, so I had to add three layers of paper and do an edge stitch around all the pattern pieces before doing that technique with a little bit of oil and a little bit of lotion. Ultimately, the lotion worked better than the oil because the oil made it yellow over time.

Were there any challenges that you faced starting your own brand that you hadn’t really considered when going in?
I think the biggest challenge has been, like, how can I be recognised as a real brand? And I feel like I’m still not even there yet. I’m still trying to figure that out.

What’s a dream that you have for yourself or for the brand in the future?
I don’t know if this is actually ever going to happen, but I have this idea that no matter how big we get, let’s say we move to Europe and we design out of Europe, that wherever we have a show, let’s say Paris for example, we’ll have that exact show in Houston as well. Every time. So if certain buyers or press want to go to the show, they would have to go to Houston first.

Visit petrastellam.com for more information.