St. Agnes Interviews with ltg

St. Agnes aka the patron saint of virgins aka Jennifer Wannaruche of WorshipWorthy chatted it up with ltg aka RYZ community manager aka Laura who is both sweeter and better looking that BOMBIN' Magazine, today to discuss the launch of her shoe, "Winner".  From discovering they are both from middle of nowhere towns in Washington, to religion, to discussing the finer details of great design, they cover it all . . .read on. . .

St. Agnes: hey Laura, it's Jennifer.

ltg: Hi Jennifer!  OK let’s start with you telling the RYZ community a little about yourself, your background in apparel/fashion, your occupation etc.

St. Agnes: k.  I was born into a family of a fashion, street wear, and Catholicism, my mom had an over flowing closet of luxury goods and clothing, my brother was a skateboarder and I became a snowboarder in high school and was on my college snowboard team, my sister is also in fashion, a merchandiser for huge mall chain stores.  yeah, pretty much surrounded by it

ltg: so Worshipworthy was inevitable, but we will get to that later, go on. . .

St. Agnes: I started designing in ‘98 at a place called reactor.  I started off as an intern there then the head designer started noticing me around the office cuz we sorta dressed alike , he was probably 8 years order than me and an experienced designer...at the time it was those maharishi cargo/parachute pants and new balance kicks

ltg: ha nice

St. Agnes: I loved that it was my first real job in fashion, working with some guy I had the same aesthetic with

ltg: so where did you go from there?

St. Agnes: I moved to NY after being there just over a year, to Triple 5 Soul

ltg: oops rewind, hometown plz?

St. Agnes: super small town, sorta country, sorta super smart called Kennewick it is a sister town of Hanford where they have the nuclear clean up from the Manhattan project. Kennewick, Washington

ltg: eeew interesting

St. Agnes: yuck!LOL

ltg: haaa well I have to admit, I was born in Yakima, WA

St. Agnes: holy shit!

ltg: which is not much better haha

St. Agnes: LOL

ltg: luckily I only lived there till I was 5.

St. Agnes: sooooo close to Kennewick, aaah, it's only like an hour away

ltg: god knows how I would have ended up if id grown up there all my life. yeah aka crackima, anyway, we are super off track! cheers to Washington and not living there.

St. Agnes: LOL, yuuuup!

ltg: tell me more about developing WW, I think its a very creative site and I especially love all the catholic references, mainly because I understand them being brought up catholic.

St. Agnes: k, so after all the design companies I worked for, I decided to launch WW

yes, I realized it was a good reflection of where I come from as far as lifestyle, fashion, and catholic school...anyways, WW started as an online portal for trends, forecasting, and we are also a design studio  we have started to push the design studio more in the last year but we've always been doing freelance for other clients

ltg: I see, is that your bread and butter then?

St. Agnes: yeah, we do sales for some street wear brands, event production, and design consulting... that's how we survive

ltg: so do you do all the designing of the worship worthy products then?

St. Agnes: yes, pretty much every single aspect I handle, design, production, sales, etc

ltg: wow a one-woman operation.  that’s very admirable

St. Agnes: I have a couple contributors to the site and used to have a biz partner but no longer

ltg: I think you are a woman of the future Jennifer!

St. Agnes: thanks, LOL, the future is NOW

ltg: so what do you enjoy doing the most?

St. Agnes: well, we're launching our apparel collection which is mainly graphic tees

for our first season this month I have to say that getting back into designing has been really fun

ltg: oh nice, tell me about designing your sneaker with RYZ

St. Agnes: it' completes the WW mission.  I was flattered when I was asked to be a part of RYZ and getting the chance to design a sneaker was exciting, I did some research in the RYZ gallery to see what some of my favorite submissions were and decided I really liked the graphic placement sneakers.  I am also a fan of more classic sneakers with nice details so I tried to combine the graphic placement with a few good details, the small crosses are supposed to give the effect of perforated leather or canvas in this case

ltg: cool, I liked that patterned element, it was subtle.

St. Agnes: and the ribbon is added humor with good placement.

ltg: yes I laughed at the title of your shoe "winner" a bit ironic since you didn’t actually have to compete ha

St. Agnes: yeah, I tried to make it a bit more subtle but hopefully people can feel that it was done with some design in mind, I was just waiting for RYZ to tell me I had to rename it!LOL

ltg: no way, we don't like to censor people's creative licenses.

St. Agnes: that's good

ltg: plus I think its a good thing to have a sense of humor about your work

St. Agnes: I think its funny so hopefully it will translate

ltg: yes for sure, our community is pretty savvy.

St. Agnes: yup, my friend Erin always says that

ltg: so what’s next for you?

St. Agnes: lots of stuff! I’m redesigning my site, so relaunch of worshipworthy.com

ltg: oh nice!

St. Agnes: worshipworthy apparel site is launching and, worshipworthy the agency is launching all this month!

ltg: holey moley triple threat, congrats with the launches!

St. Agnes: yeah, and the apparel site is looking killer it's more moody and it will really set the WW vibe same with the worshipworthy.com site. bye bye wordpress template!

ltg: wow Jennifer, you should be proud of yourself your kickin ace.

St. Agnes: gee, thanks!  it's a grind

ltg: so any last words or well wishes, props?

St. Agnes: even when you're doing things in NY it always feels like you have to do more, it's super tough, so many amazing people doing amazing things. I’m learning to hone it all in though, it's working so far I guess just make sure to share WW with everyone you love props: Erin from Madame.  she's my homie that helps stay focused

ltg: well RYZ wishes you luck and thanks you for your participation on our first creative panel!

St. Agnes: oh, can I give more props? lol

ltg: for sure, don’t forget to thank GOD, lol

St. Agnes: props to haze for being an inspiration and helping keeping me focused, my parents and fam for their support, and of course, GOD!  LOL oh, and jess for sticking with it!

ltg: Great thanks so much Jennifer, I think this will be great.

St. Agnes shoes are available for preorder now, get yours today.