Austin Zito
Who are you and what have you been creating lately?
My name is Austin Zito, and I make custom hats! Mostly I work on custom orders exclusively, but recently I’ve carved out some time to create some wild concept hats for the shop.
Where are you from and how does it influence your art?
I’m originally from San Diego, but recently moved back from a 5 year stay in Texas. I would say that the marrying of these two places would be a great description of my personal aesthetic and current design direction. I like to toe the line between the practical and traditional shapes and techniques of western hats and the effortless style of California beach culture. Highly wearable but always deserving of a double take.
What is your creative process?
My creative process centers mostly around my individual clients since all of my hats are custom made for each person. I like to chat with each person for a while to get a sense of their style, vibe and what they’re looking for. I find inspiration for each hat by combining my skill and techniques with a little bit of each client’s personality. This differs greatly from my process for my ready made & try on hats. Most of these come to me in a dream, or spontaneously as I’m making it.
What piece are you most proud of?
The hats I’m most proud of are typically the ones that my clients can’t seem to stop wearing. The highest compliment I can receive is someone incorporating their custom hat into their every day uniform.
How do you define success as an artist?
Success as an artist for me is also necessarily run through a filter of being a business owner. I define success in those terms by the feeling of pride I get knowing that I provided immense value to my client, well beyond the monetary price paid for my art. Refined through purely just an artist perspective, success for me is just a feeling of stoke from physically manifesting a thought from my head, into reality. One of my life’s mantras is, “If you can hold it in your head, you can hold it in your hands”. From the initial thought, to the physical creation process, to the finished work of art, these are all simultaneously, individually and as a whole, the entire reason I do it.
