Fashion Designer Fi Black Is Re-Coding Gender On The Runway

Where streetwear meets maximalism and conventional masculinity bends toward subversion, we find Fi Black (they/she/he) minting their one-of-one wearable art. Black gave GO a glimpse into the skull and bones of DYKEMINT—their sustainable, pop-culture-inspired brand—unpacking a vision that weaves rebellious streetwear, fandom subculture, and redesigned masculinity into their standout collection: HAND-ME-DOWNLOADED: RECOVERED AUTO-SAVES FROM A DIGITAL LANDFILL.

Black puts it best, “I’m a nonbinary, butch designer creating in an industry that still caters to the cishet male gaze. Fashion, at its core, has always been a way to define and defy gender, and yet so much of it is still stuck in binaries. My work doesn’t just reject that—it collages right over it.” Their collection, influenced by glitch culture, embodies a wardrobe caught between timelines—a refusal to conform. “Glitch culture, at its core, is about aestheticizing error—embracing the beauty of breakdown, distortion, and imperfection, particularly within digital and technological systems. It emerged as artists, coders, and designers began to intentionally exploit the flaws in software, hardware, or data processes—things like corrupted image files, video artifacts, or broken code—and reframe them as expressive, rather than defective,” Black tells GO. 

“In fashion, glitch culture manifests as a resistance to polish and predictability. It challenges the clean lines and commercial logic of traditional design by celebrating what’s unruly, layered, or chaotic. That might look like garments with visible mends, raw seams, digital misprints, or intentionally ‘clashing’ aesthetics. It’s also deeply intertwined with remix culture, fan practices, and internet-native identities—all of which are central to DYKEMINT.” 

HAND-ME-DOWNLOADED: RECOVERED AUTO-SAVES FROM A DIGITAL LANDFILL—Black’s Fall Winter ‘25 NYFW Collection made entirely of thrifted and pre-loved materials—was featured in the PopCouture Show by Plus Ultra Entertainment and My Studio Couture. “Every piece is a hand-me-downloaded anomaly, stitched, airbrushed, printed, embroidered, and salvaged from timelines that never synced properly. It’s a maximalist layering of forgotten aesthetics, a wearable rebellion of reworked one-of-one garments that will never exist the same way twice. This is character creation: hit randomize. And, if it doesn’t make sense? Try licking a graphics card.” 

At New York Fashion Week, Black recounted doing something bold, subversive, and entirely new for DYKEMINT: creating a 13-minute custom track specifically for the runway show. The track was produced by Giant Robot, with vocals from SirBabygirl, who Black notes to be a musical genius. The track was called “I Wanna Dyke for President”—after Zoe Leonard’s manifesto “I Want a President.” The track blasted the words “I WANT A DYKE FOR PRESIDENT”—echoing through the venue, making the message undeniable and inescapable. The track, looks, and creativity were “more than producing and showing off unique garments; it was a battle for visibility, autonomy, and the right to exist without compromise,” Black tells GO. 

The collection’s design process began in true hunter-gatherer fashion. Black recalled his PURPLE CHAOS COVERALLS—one of his favorites in the collection—as $2 pre-loved 6XL farmers coveralls waiting for them at the Milton thrift store right over the border in Oregon. Other pieces in the collection were loaded straight from the source—hand-me-downs from their mom. Their APT 707 TARTAN BLAZER DRESS was originally a boxy blazer given to them by their mom and reworked into a Vivienne Westwood-inspired red and black plaid blazer dress with lace details, blue and green plaid-counterpart shoulder pads, and a heart-framed Nana and Hachi visual on the back. The look was heavily inspired by Ai Yazawa’s Nana, a manga with many Vivienne Westwood references. 

Black notes that her collection intentionally had no through line. They wanted to make a statement with their pieces by creating material compositions that would stand out in color, texture, and playfulness. At the heart of her desire to remix the pervasive perspectives of masculinity in streetwear, and fashion in general, is their queerness—particularly in the context of the love-and-lust relationship between gender expression and fashion. They tell GO, “Fashion is a very male-dominated industry, especially streetwear. Streetwear has a lot of masculine silhouettes. Even sustainable wear and unisex wear [are] very much dominated by a man’s market.” 

Black tells GO about the ways in which existing outside of the male gaze as a butch, nonbinary creator has played an essential part in their craft. “You’re coming off this stereotype from the early 2000s—gay men? So fashionable. Lesbians? Very unfashionable… They wear flannels and they don’t care how they look. Butches aren’t subjected to the male gaze like a typical femme lesbian would be, which comes with its own set of problems that femme lesbians have—being objectified by the male gaze, but also the privilege where men will be nice to you.

“Men have never been nice to me. Butches exist on the outskirts of heteronormative society, but not necessarily in a positive way…Coming at this as a butch designer, I love making clothes for men. I love when men go, ‘Oh yeah, I’m wearing DYKEMINT.’ And I feel comfortable with anyone saying the name of my brand, it just means you f*ck with the dykes and you support me.” But, they note that at times the name of their brand can be challenging because “you get people who go, ‘Oh… DYKEMINT…?’” 

When men wear DYKEMINT, Black feels a sense of reclaimed authority over the construct of masculinity. “It lets me have authority to define what’s cool, in a way that men have never allowed before, because it’s always coming from this one perspective. So, as a butch designer, I have a different perspective on masculinity.” In her dedicated effort to create subversive streetwear, Black explores expansive dimensions of fashion that both harness and transcend gender—notably incorporating glitch culture. 

“For me, glitch isn’t just visual; it’s political. As a queer, nonbinary designer, I see glitch as a metaphor for living outside normative systems. It’s about breaking the binary—not just gender, but also ideas of high vs. low art, past vs. future, analog vs. digital. DYKEMINT pieces are often maximalist, collaged, and built from secondhand or “misfit” materials. They don’t aim to be perfect—they aim to be felt. A way to find joy and power in what mainstream systems would otherwise discard. In that way, glitch becomes not just a style, but a survival strategy.” 

Black explores color, texture, playfulness, and whimsy in tandem with the masculine silhouettes of their clothes. They tell GO about using these elements to broaden what masculinity means in a specific genre of streetwear that is typically dominated by men. As someone who was AFAB, Black’s love for what they do is grounded in having the power to dictate what’s “cool” for men to wear from their unique perspective.

Black’s art is largely inspired by Anime and fandom subculture. “Anime and fandoms were such a big part of my queer experience—the Tumblr of it all. I love fandoms, I love people who are in fandoms, and my brand is a love letter to the passionate people who reside in fandoms.” Steven Universe, an animated television series on Cartoon Network, was one of the most formative pieces of media they consumed that depicted “gay people being together.” Bubblegum and Marceline from Adventure Time, Pearl from Steven Universe, Catra and Adora from She-Ra and The Princesses of Power, and Korra and Asami from Avatar: The Legend of Korra were all figures who were crucial to their queer existence. They note, “Chloe and Max from Life is Strange in 2015… that game literally changed my life.” But in the broader conversation about Black’s inspirations, they melted our hearts when they named their partner—and newly-wedded wife—as their muse.

Gushing about their wife, Lita Bacus (she/her), Black emphasizes the crucial role she played in putting the NYFW ‘25 collection together in a time crunch. “My wife is my muse. She’s very cool. She wasn’t very nerdy, so I was like, ‘Oh noooo she’s gonna think I’m weird and a loser!! Like… I make anime clothes!!!’ But she was like, ‘Oh my god, you make money off of your art?’ I could not have made that fashion week collection without her. She’s very technical and has these meticulous skills. We complement each other very well.” Black and their wife got married in late April—and they may have pulled it off in the most iconic way imaginable. Ready for it? 

“My wife and I just got married for her undergraduate senior thesis.” Yes, you read that right. And, it gets better. When their wife proposed—figuratively and literally—that they get married for her thesis, Black asked, “What if you email the president of our college to get officiated…?” The president of Whitman College did indeed officiate the couple’s wedding. We dare you to source a better and gayer wedding story than this one.

Black beams as they relive the moment. “We made outfits, had wedding cake, a band, an aisle, and even an arch. We got married in front of, like, 300 people. It was live performance art as queer joy, and as a radical protest. People are like, ‘Why is this art?’ and I’m like, ‘Look at the time we’re living in.’” Their wife’s thesis titled Queerly Beloved drew inspiration from the Riot Grrrls—known for their reclamation of the lesbian slur, “dyke,” and the Guerilla Girls, a group of feminist artists and activists. The piece centered the dialogue and legislation of covenant marriages, and the bleak potential of reversing Obergefell v. Hodges—the 2015 ruling that that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in the U.S.  

The wedding was nothing less than spectacular. Bacus invited everyone to their Big Gay Wedding. “This piece is a performance, a protest and a celebration,” Bacus announced in a campus and community-wide email. “It’s about claiming (and holding) space, demanding visibility, queer love, survival, and celebrating something beautiful in the midst of everything going on in the world right now. It’s also a legal ceremony. I’m getting married—for real!” “I dos” and “dyke” rings were ready to be exchanged, and a “dyke decadence” dress code set the tone. Bacus came dressed in a purple and blue wedding dress with a custom doodle print made by Black, and Black wore a white suit with DYKEMINT’s logo on the back—seamlessly on brand for them. 

The inside scoop on Black’s life and recent work had GO dying to know where and when their creative drive found its engine. Black went to Whitman College, where they majored in art, and later met their wife. When COVID hit in their spring semester of sophomore year, they had to get creative. They stayed on campus and in Walla Walla for the entirety of the pandemic, but had no access to the metal or wood shop. Their professor gave them toilet paper and a glue stick—rough times for artists, and us regular people too. 

“Lesbian earrings were really big at the time, so I just got a bunch of garbage and started making a bunch of lesbian earrings. I did that for a while, but then I got bored. I was like, ‘what if… clothes?’” Black tells GO that fashion was a long-term friend of theirs, but in a different capacity. “I sewed my own cosplays when I was in high school, so a while into college I was like, ‘okay…sewing.’” As they got more into fashion in the chaotic midst of COVID, they half-joked, “It was my pandemic version of baking sourdough bread.”

The name DYKEMINT is unforgettable. “In COVID, I was a pothead. So, I was with some queer friends and we were smoking and I was like… ‘If I had a weed strain I would call it DYKEMINT,’” Black says. “DYKEMINT has a bunch of meanings to me. There are the boys that are like, ‘Yo, that’s mint bro’ like, ‘That’s cool.’ But, there’s also dykeminted, as in, to mint a coin—it’s minted by a dyke… the dyke mints.” To be a fly on the wall in that thought process… 

To our surprise and suspicion, Black tells us, “I wasn’t fashionable until four years ago… maybe even two years ago!” They elaborate, “I feel so free being able to experiment with my fashion.” Black is particularly interested in how micro, sub, and niche cultures can operate in the context of fashion. Subcultures like Acubi: clothing influenced by K-fashion, streetwear, and early-2000s cyberpunk elements; Coastal Grandma: influenced by quiet luxury, East Coast leisure, and “old-money summer;” and Fairy Kei: influenced by dreamy, kawaii, and escapist themes, are all intriguing to them. “I love that there are all these kinds of different fashion communities that operate similarly to fandoms,” Black tells GO. 

As they reflect on the origins of their creative process, they express that they never thought they would even get into fashion. “I didn’t think I’d be a fashion designer, and here I am with my fashion brand. I treat every piece like it’s a composition, because I have this background in material relation—what does this piece want to become?” Black plays with the idea that used clothing comes with a story and history that awaits to be expanded and subverted. “It takes me months, or years, after thrifting something to decide what should go on [a piece]. It becomes a textile medium of art—wearable art is what I treat it as. Even though some of my work is like…‘WHERE ARE MY BALLS,’” they joke—referencing their NYFW hand-bleached, green utility cargo jeans with the phrase sprawled out on the left leg. 

Only recently has Black started to gain notable recognition for their brand. Over the past four years, they had about 800 followers, almost exclusively in the DMV area, because of the anime convention Katsucon—where they would table and sell their clothes. Their momentum picked up last year. “Last April, I was getting really into digital collage and trying to make my clothes look cool on people. I would take photos of my friends in my clothes and edit it, so I made it into this tradeoff where I make a collage of someone for a follow. I ended up gaining 18k followers.” 

As Black continues to challenge traditional ideas around streetwear and masculinity, their refusal to conform to a binary emerges. By subverting conventional ideas of what is acceptable and appropriate in society, their work becomes an embodiment of the larger scope of gender in fashion. At a time when suppressing marginalized voices is becoming more rampant, fashion and self-expression are actors of truth-telling and serve as testimonies of resistance and selfhood. “In a time when art is being censored, policed, and commodified beyond recognition, continuing to create is an act of resistance,” Black tells GO. “It’s not just about making clothes—it’s about claiming space, loudly.”