Gonzáles Ginestra’s parents grew up in modest homes in the Central Valley, harvesting fruit and vegetables on farms alongside her grandparents. They were the first in their families to earn college degrees and later moved into the middle class.
It brought along a new set of pressures, Gonzáles Ginestra told me.
“We were the Mexican family in the affluent San José neighborhood. We weren’t allowed to look schlubby.”
That meant having her hair long and perfectly in place, and wearing clean, pressed — even if they were hand-me-downs. In high school, Gonzalez Ginestra longed to cut her hair short and wear all black, embracing an emo aesthetic that went against her parents’ wishes. Her mother taught her to sew, opening up her artistic sensibilities.
“I was the one emo kid on the Folklorico team, and I was up there with a fake bun in my hair because my hair was so short, I couldn’t put it in a high pony. We made it work,” she said.
“It was easier to be myself if I had control of making the clothes and making the look rather than just buying off the shelf. That agency really brought me peace. I fell in love with clothes and with shaping myself to be who I wanted to be rather than how someone else was telling me to be.”
After high school, she enrolled at UC Santa Cruz, where she was excited to take Chicano studies classes and, as she put it, “be radicalized.” And, as the first person in her family to attend a UC, just being there felt like an accomplishment. But within a year and a half, her enthusiasm dissipated when she realized reading books and writing papers was not how she wanted to spend her college years.
Her then-boyfriend, now husband, Alex Ginestra, encouraged her to transfer to the school where he was studying — the Academy of Art in San Francisco — to pursue fashion design. Her parents were opposed at first, but finally agreed after months of pleading and making the case that she would be able to find a job after graduation.
During her time in college, she landed an internship with Kenneth Cole and spent time in London, Paris and New York doing internships and short-term jobs before returning to the Bay Area. She eventually took a job with Pottery Barn, then worked for four years at Tart Collections, a local brand, until she was laid off in 2018, three months after returning from maternity leave.
