An Emily^2 Collaboration
One of the beautiful things about STARtorialist is how many people are involved in making our products a reality. In fact, a pillar of our mission is supporting science-inspired artists, designer, and creators! Today for March's first #MaskUpMonday, we're highlighting Emily Levine (a.k.a. Em), who designed the fabric for our gorgeous Star Formation Face Masks.
Part textile artist and part graphic designer, Em has experience with graphics work, color work, printing on fabric, vinyl, and paper, and custom fabric printing techniques. She uses Photoshop and Illustrator, and knows the tricks for tinkering with printers. But how did she get into space fashion?!
Em's brother, Brian Levine (a.k.a. MC Tycho Brewhaha), is a long-time organizer of NYC's Astronomy on Tap (AoT), which our very own Emily Rice (moonlighting as DJ Carly Sagan) co-founded back in 2013. Em says, "as a result of his career path, I've been exposed to a lot of astro and other science. I'm more science-adjacent... I do have a number of tech friends who love astronomy and other things, so I'm always trying to drag friends to AoT or the museum", aka American Museum of Natural Hsitory, where Brian and Emily first met.
Em became a regular at AoT and even started volunteering at the events, handing out game cards, stickers and other prizes, among other things. Since she was so involved, her brother had her choose a stage name: "Sally Starrider" (get it?!?!). She even made gorgeous galaxy cupcakes for NYC AoT's 5th Orbitversary!
Her love of star-themed fashion didn't start with AoT, though—she had many star-themed things from annual vacations to Star Island. She started buying some starry fabrics to make things to bring to Star Island, including her famous glow-in-the-dark apron that is now Sally Starrider's signature fashion item (seen in the above photo!). At the start of the pandemic, she used some of this space fabric to make masks when face coverings were still hard to come by.
With her mask-making experience and their connection from AoT, Emily reached out to Em about making custom, unique masks with real space images. Emily provided the images, and Em designed the layout, optimized the images for printing on fabric, and made the files needed for printing. She even sewed the first batch of 20 from the test print fabric!
We think they turned out absolutely stellar, and we're glad we could collaborate with Em to make them happen. You can check out the final products here!