Aya Iwasaki, a veteran server at Aldo’s Italian Restaurant, 1031 State St. in Santa Barbara, walks over to greet one of her lunchtime tables, armed with her ebullient personality and contagious smile. As she introduces herself, a woman at the table cuts her off.
“Oh, my gosh! I just have to tell you that I love your earrings,” the woman says. “Where did you get them?”
Iwasaki chuckles and flashes another broad smile, having fielded this question literally hundreds of times before.
“Thank you so much,” she replies. “I make them myself, actually.”
It’s a scene that plays out in some fashion at least once a day for Iwasaki. So last year, she decided to parlay the allure of her handcrafted feather earrings into a small side business named AyaPapaya, after a lifelong nickname of hers. Today, Iwasaki has a growing Internet business and she contracts with several local vendors — even a major international pop star sports her wares. But if you ask the budding young entrepreneur, it all started from just doing what she really enjoyed.
“I started making feather earrings just because I wanted to wear them,” Iwasaki said. “In the beginning, I never really had any intention of selling them.”
Last October, Iwasaki says she was preparing to attend a Burning Man decompression party in San Francisco and — being no stranger to fashioning some of her own clothing — she decided she really wanted to make a unique pair of earrings for the event. She bought a bunch of different feathers, a length of leather string and sterling silver hooks. She tried a few combinations before settling on a pair. The response was immediate.
“I got so many positive comments from people throughout the entire event, wanting to know where I had gotten them, and then a bunch of my girlfriends wanted pairs, and I started selling them and giving them away, and it just kind of went from there,” Iwasaki said.
During the past several months, Iwasaki has slowly spread the word through Santa Barbara about her blossoming business. Her earrings have been featured in several local art shows, and in addition to sales generated by her Web site, she also boasts displays in shops such as Tienda Ho, Yoga Soup, The Underground Salon and Hempwise. Fuzion on State Street soon will join the list of vendors peddling her jewelry.
In addition to working as a server and making earrings, Iwasaki also happens to be an avid hula hooper. “Hooping” is a growing form of modern dance, and Iwasaki and her dance partner, Kit, have been playing both paid and unpaid hooping gigs for the past several months.
“I got into hooping about a year ago for fun and exercise and dancing, and for me it’s a healing tool,” Iwasaki said.
Recently, her terpsichorean endeavors provided an unexpected synergy with her earring business. When international singing sensation Imogen Heap played a concert at The Granada a couple months ago, Iwasaki was asked by the production crew to hoop at the after-party on Heap’s last night in the country. At the end of the night, Iwasaki got the opportunity to speak briefly with the star, and she gave Heap a pair of her earrings. Heap told Iwasaki that she loved them, and that she would wear them at her next concert in Glastonbury, England.
Sure enough, when Iwasaki looked at the online video of Heap performing at the Glastonbury Festival the next week, Heap had AyaPapaya bling swinging from her ears.
Looking ahead, Iwasaki said she hopes to expand her jewelry creations, and that she already has been tinkering with prototypes for feather necklaces, which she thinks may be a bit more cost-effective. In the meantime, the 27-year-old is just going with the flow and continuing to create positive vibes through beautiful art — and above all, doing what she enjoys.
“I have a firm belief that every woman is beautiful and that there is an intense beauty in every single person that just needs to be released,” Iwasaki said. “There are different tools to draw that out, and we get so bogged down by insecurities and by our own experiences sometimes — but as materialistic and silly as clothing can be, it can also be a tool to draw out our inner beauty.
“If you’re wearing something unique or beautiful, it makes you feel beautiful.”
— Noozhawk contributor Kevin McFadden can be reached at kmcfadden@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk or @NoozhawkNews.