Remezcla Meets is a video and editorial series that takes audiences inside the studios of groundbreaking creators, documenting their craft and exploring how their upbringing and Latine heritage shape their work. Through intimate conversations and immersive visuals, this series highlights the voices pushing the boundaries of film, art, culture, and identity.
For this Remezcla Meets we traveled to the studio of Dominican-American fashion designer Kevin Leonel in Staten Island. An intimate space, Leonel has transformed his studio into a place that feels warm yet burstling with reminders of his love for sports like the hockey sticks mounted on the wall behind his sewing machine station. And it’s that love for sports that is central to this designer’s work and has led to partnerships he never expected like Apple, Gillete, or Teeling Whiskey.
“I started this journey because there wasn’t much of things that I love to make or wear,” Leonel told Remezcla. That led to him buying his first sewing machine during COVID and exploring his creative side for the first time. “I was really just like bored, stuck at home, and I wanted to find a way to do something that I really love doing.” But just because he bought his first sewing machine in 2020, doesn’t mean his love for sports or sustainability, key tennants of his work, started then.
As of 2025, Leonel has created multiple branded collections of relaxed uni-sex jackets from unique materials for different teams across the NHL, NBA, and MLB. And it’s the love for baseball as a child that set him on the path he’s on today.
“Growing up, I wanted to be a Major League Baseball player and my parents would take me to training every day. We’d do baseball hitting tee, we’d do vitilla,” Leonel said. When he realized he wasn’t going to be a baseball player, he pivoted into fashion. “It’s that same energy I [had] when I was grinding in baseball that [I’m] doing now with my creative vision and just allowing myself to get indulged into like patchwork and in the colors, like making things work. So […] my big connection and my artistry comes from baseball.”
And when it comes to sustainability within Leonel’s work (he often works with lace, patches, or upcycled materials) that’s also tied to his Dominican-American upbringing.
“At the time, upcycling wasn’t a thing I knew. It was just a thing we did. Like, for example, you opened the cookie jar and there was, like, pins and nails in it,” Leonel said, sharing an experience many immigrants are familiar with when it comes to the repurposing our families did to make it through the day. As a kid he felt duped that there weren’t cookies in the blue tin we all know. “But now it’s like, wait, they were teaching us how to refurbish things, not to just throw things out.”
Fast-forward to 2025 and Kevin Leonel feels like he made it to the Majors. And he uses every single person or brand he’s worked with as a reminder that he’s made it. “It’s a reminder like “No, you’re at that level now. You made the Majors. So I like to use those moments as a time to really just get myself going again. If I need more motivation that’s always a reminder.”
