Equihua's sleepwear line goes beyond pajamas. It's 'Dreamware'

Years ago, there was a recurring dream that fashion designer Brenda Equihua couldn't shake. In the dream there was always a flood. Sometimes, she was the one who was dragged along; other times, he watched from above as friends and family became trapped in the flood water. No matter what she did, the swirling water suffocated her and everything she knew.

The dreams perplexed and somewhat scared Equihua, who could not understand what they could mean. Until his mother showed up. Equihua's mother passed away in 2013 but appears in his dreams, often with a message. This time, she was floating on the floodwater, eyes closed and at peace despite the chaos.

“I felt like she was telling me, surrender“says Equihua.”Don't try to stop it. Even if you are afraid, you can't stop it. Let life wash over you and be at peace with that..”

He realized that the floods represented his overwhelming desire to control the uncontrollable aspects of his life. If she listened to her mother and let herself go, she would be able to manage her life better. Then he thought, “What would happen if I listened to my dreams more and let them guide me?” Since he saw his mother, the floods stopped in Equihua's dreams. But that hasn't stopped his dreams from influencing his life and work.

“I wasn't thinking about designing pajamas. I was thinking about creating dreams.”

Equihua founded her eponymous fashion brand in 2015. Her brand rose to fame thanks to its innovative blanket jackets, which used the culturally beloved St. Mark's blankets as material. The result was a comforting yet bold intersection of Mexican heritage, nostalgia and streetwear. His work has been worn by the likes of Bad Bunny, Kehlani, and Rauw Alejandro, among many other stars.

Often at the crossroads of memory and art, Equihua's story-rich designs begin with a vision. Designs from the past have come to her suddenly and vividly, from car rides to conversations, usually leading her to work to execute this specific imagination for hours on end. The Santa Barbara native says that over the brand's 10 years, she's gotten better at “embracing her craziness.”

“The lessons my mother gave me growing up impacted my work and how I treat the world,” Equihua says. “Because now these visions, these ideas, I learn to trust that they came to me because they are for Me and my job is to be the translator of this.”

I meet Equihua next to a waterfall in the lush courtyard of Jackson Market and Deli, a house-turned-store located in the Culver City neighborhood. Equihua's thoughts moved as fluidly as the current beside us, from the drowning memories of her past to the buzz of excitement over where her dreams will take her next.

He had just finished teaching art to teenagers at Culver Park High School, an activity he picked up alongside his design work. Youth informs their most evocative and personal designs. His childhood is an endless gold mine to mine and take advantage of, and in his work he tries to reconnect people with childhood joy.

Zariya wears a Dreamware by Equihua Amethyst Crystal sleep slip dress and Rebeca Equihua hoop earrings. Katherine wears a Dreamware by Equihua Malachite Crystal pajama shorts set, a vintage necklace, and her own earrings and bracelets.

Armor is wearing the Dreamware by Equihua Red Garnet Crystal pajamas.

“Something that I find really important in my designs is that people feel closer to themselves,” says Equihua. “I think a big part of feeling closer to ourselves is an act of remembering, which for me is childhood. When we're kids, we just trust ourselves. When you were a kid, you would draw a picture and say, 'I'm an amazing artist.' I want to reconnect people with that trust.”

Equihua's self-confidence is what took her from a scholarship at Parsons School of Design to in-house designer for luxury womenswear brands to diving headlong into her own brand. It's what led her, lying in bed and dreaming of her ideal pajamas, to design one.

Once upon a time Equihua scoffed at the idea of ​​designing pajamas. She too had fallen under the spell of believing that they were simple and formless. His disillusionment began when he was fresh out of college and interviewing for a pajama company.

“All the pajamas were horribly ugly,” he says. “I started thinking, 'I don't want to design pajamas if they're like that.' But now that I have my own brand and I can do whatever I want, I think, 'I could design the kind of pajamas I want to see in the world.'”

Equihua is reinventing the frumpy image of adult pajamas, last-minute cotton shirts and worn-out lovers' shorts that would never see the light of day. He wants to create a world with his designs where pajamas have a purpose: to provide calm and concentration to the wearer while enjoying the most important part of the day: sleeping. In sensuality and comfort, Equihua creates pajamas from and for dreams.

“I've started thinking a lot about how the world is so focused on productivity. We focus on the waking world. It's about the morning routine. But we don't really talk about relaxation,” says Equihua. “I was inspired to create from that moment: Cleanse our energy, clear our mind and a certain level of appreciation for life. Tomorrow is a new day, where you can dream something new.”

During dreams, Equihua connections form and he sees things like never before. He has hundreds of entries in his dream journal, which he returns to and refers to frequently. In creative work, dreams are your muses and your lens through which to see your visions more clearly.

“This subconscious comes alive because it is not restricted,” says Equihua. “A lot of things we keep in the back of our brain. We don't want to think about them. We're suppressing a lot of things. In the dream world, we can't do that. We're not in charge anymore.”

At first glance, sleepwear seems like a difficult pivot from where Equihua as a brand has carved out a niche for itself. But if you look closer, you'll notice that Equihua's work has always had a theme of comfort.

The morning of the photo shoot for her new sleepwear line, Dreamware, Equihua was in her apartment, surrounded by colorful organized chaos. Papers and fabrics lined the tables as she and her sister inspected a pair of completely handmade wings they had devised from pipes, feathers and even car parts.

They were thinking about how to avoid costume-type suspenders when their sister remembered a car magnet she had on the back of her truck. The wings were born, attached to a wide elastic waistband that Equihua had from a previous project.

Equihua's inspiration for the wings was once again rooted in childhood, drawing on early 2000s fairy queen artist Amy Brown's feminine dark fantasy illustrations.

“Although much of the work comes from my memories, I am also thinking about creating our future memories. Because when we dream, we also try to create a future memory,” says Equihua.

In the dining room, makeup artist Gabrielle Alvarez reveled in carefully placed pops of color and galactic glow.

Crystals, in spirituality, help their user direct energy. What if pajamas could do the same? What if we could sleep more purposefully and use fashion to direct the tone of our sleep?

“Could we make it a little more alien? I want them to look out of this world,” Equihua directed.

We found ourselves again in the leafy trees of Griffith Park, veering off the trails into beds of fallen leaves and twisted branches. The Equihua crew were easy to spot as huge colorful wings peeked out from the trees.

Equihua's Dreamware is made up of three silhouettes, a bias cami dress, a short-sleeved pajama set, and a long-sleeved pajama set, inspired by amethyst, malachite, and red garnet crystals and featuring three unique prints for each crystal, which Equihua sees as three distinct personalities.

Crystals, in spirituality, help their user direct energy. In Dreamware, Equihua asks: What if pajamas could do the same? What if we could sleep more purposefully and use fashion to direct the tone of our sleep?

There, in the forest, the models looked at home as fairies in pajamas with swirling prints and bursts of light. Her wings, in shades of lavender, green, and red, represented certain crystals and traits: amethyst for calm and purity, malachite for protection, and pink garnet for healing and love.

“I wasn't thinking about wanting to design pajamas,” Equihua said of the line. “I was thinking about creating dreams.”

As he watched the models lounge, jump, and spin their pajamas in the daylight, Equihua reflected that he had the feeling of being in a dream.