CityState: Business
Allison Kirwan surrounded by her designs.
Wild Things
Wild World of Ak pushes the fashion envelope with provocative celebrity-themed
artwork printed on clothing and accessories. By Jackie Ignall
It all started in a figure drawing class at Newport’s Salve Regina University when Allison Kirwan sketched an
After graduating college in 2014 with a studio arts degree, Kirwan
was not sure what to do next. She opened an Etsy shop and printed
the Biggie and Tupac mermaids on a run of T-shirts and phone
cases. Shortly after, her imaginative products were selling out.
Kirwan now makes more than ninety mermaid designs of rappers
and celebrities, and loves talking to repeat customers about what
to make next. “People always ask if there is a deeper meaning to
the mermaids, and it’s like the Blades of Glory quote: ‘No one knows
what it means, but it’s provocative. It gets the people going!’ ”
Her clothing line has expanded to include jewelry and home
accessories as well as sweatshirts, sweatpants, onesies and slippers
with bold cutouts of celebrity faces such as Cardi B, Kanye West,
Tom Brady and Kris Jenner. “I hope my pieces provide some sort
of reaction,” Kirwan says. “I am a big fan of novelties in general
so that is a theme tied into all my work.”
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MARCH 2020
All Wild World of Ak designs are made by hand in Kirwan’s
basement studio in East Providence. The popular mermaid series
starts with a marker drawing, which gets scanned onto vinyl then
cut and heat-pressed onto the items, while her trending face cutouts
(the Guy Fieri slippers are a bestseller) start with images off the
web, reworked in Photoshop, printed on vinyl, and cut and heat-
pressed onto the fabric in a playful way. “It’s a tedious process, but
it makes it easy to create a custom product in any size, design or
color,” she says.
Kirwan’s wearable pieces of art can be found at local craft fairs,
fashion shows, flea markets and boutiques as well as on her website
and Etsy shop. “I enjoy making clothing, but want to branch out
into art shows and installations,” she says. “It would be really cool
to make a big ol’ mural or sculpture somewhere.” shopworldofak.com;
etsy.com/shop/wildworldofak
illustration that would kick off her buzzing clothing business, Wild World of Ak. Her first whimsical drawing was of rapper
Biggie Smalls, aka the Notorious B.I.G., clad in a gold crown, sunglasses, a colorful shirt and a mermaid tail in blue, green and
black scales. Then she started drawing other celebrity sketches, including the rapper, Tupac. She liked the Biggie mermaid
drawing so much (so did her classmates and professor) that she made a six-foot canvas painting of it for her class’s final project.