Created by nonbinary lesbian Fi Black and her partner Lita Bacus, DYKEMINT is a fashion brand that utilizes thrifted and pre-loved materials as well as “chaotic maximalist collage compositional pieces” to create size-inclusive clothing inspired by anime and other subcultures. INTO’s Penn recently sat down with Fi Black for an exciting discussion about DYKEMINT’s origins, the power of fashion, and influential anime aesthetics.
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Hi Fi! It’s so nice to be speaking with you!
FI BLACK: Back at you friend!! I love your mag/org! It’s so cool!!!
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Dykemint was created by you and your partner Lita Bacus. How did the fashion brand come about?
DYKEMINT started as just me in 2020—pandemic lockdown, stuck in Walla Walla with no access to the sculpture studio, (I was an art student at Whitman college) just a glue stick and some toilet paper (provided class materials for zoom art school). I was a broke, gay art major with too much time and too many ideas, so I started making lesbian earrings out of literal garbage. That spiraled into clothes and from there it turned into a world. A glitchy, maximalist, unboxable world of thrifted material, anime references, and 2000s nostalgia.
Lita came into the picture in 2022, and she changed everything. She’s a meticulous, brilliant artist—very technical, where I’m chaos—and when we started building collections together, especially the NYFW one, it became clear we weren’t just partners, we were creative partners. Now, DYKEMINT is ours. It still runs on that original engine of queer survival and play, but it’s bigger now—more refined in its rawness, if that makes sense. Lita brings so much care and precision to the madness. I make the mess and designs, she makes it polished.
DYKEMINT made their major runway debut during New York Fashion Week in February 2025, walking a 35-piece fall-winter collection for Plus Ultra Entertainment’s “PopCouture” Show, “HAND ME DOWNLOADED: RECOVERED AUTOSAVES FROM A DIGITAL LANDFILL.” What was the preparation process for this like?
FI BLACK: Oh god—chaotic, devotional, and completely unreal. We didn’t have a studio. I’d graduated in 2022, and Lita was still finishing school, so we were looking at quite literally building a NYFW debut collection out of my bedroom!! It wasn’t until my former professor and forever mentor, Daniel Forbes—a trans elder and patron saint of local queer art—helped us secure a temporary workspace: the derelict home of Dick Rasmussen, a Walla Walla art legend. The place was wild—overflowing with remnants of decades of creation. His daughter, Lisa, gave us her blessing to transform it. It felt like creating new art into a lovingly haunted art house—like the house (and the ghost of Dick) was happy new things were being made in it once again.
On New Year’s Day, Daniel and I cleared out a room full of dusty boxes, and by January 2nd, Lita and I were working 12–16 hour days, every day. We had exactly 30 days to design and build 35 entirely one-of-one looks—using only thrifted, salvaged, or gifted materials. Every piece we touched already had a story embedded in it, and our job was to glitch it—to rewrite its code and make it part of this maximalist, aestheticless (in so that things don’t all follow the same “style or vibe” which is the DYKEMINT ethos) hodge podge collection. The clothes weren’t blank canvases—they were collaborators/relics we were invited to repair and reimagine.
That first look we completed—the tartan Vivienne Westwood–inspired blazer dress, layered with lace and anime, with the collages tie scarf babooshka—it looked better than half the stuff on the Met Gala carpet this year. We made it with threadbare tools and borrowed time. Honestly, the entire process felt like queer world-building through fashion: reclamation, labor, love. It was exhausting. And also sacred but also a little possessed. Which is to say—it was very on brand for DYKEMINT. We’re very processed based.
That’s incredible! In fact, one of the things I noticed about DYKEMINT is that it takes anime & video game characters and personal collages to put a queer, creative spin on them. Why do you think clothing & fashion can be used to express ideas and identities that may go unacknowledged by others?
For me, fashion—like fanfiction—is a form of narrative reclamation. It’s not just about clothing the body, it’s about scripting identity into visibility. So much of mainstream fashion—and mainstream media—still orbits around cisheteronormativity, and when you’re queer, that absence is felt. DYKEMINT functions as a love letter to fandom and to the passionate people who live inside it. Fandoms are queer spaces, whether or not the source material is. They’re places where people reimagine the world in their own image because the world as-is has rarely made space for them.
That’s why clothing is such a powerful medium—it lets people express parts of themselves that may not otherwise be recognized, named, or understood. And for me, especially as a nonbinary butch, that expression is inherently political. My work explores masculinity through a lens that isn’t bound by cis male expectations. Because I wasn’t socialized to receive masculinity’s privileges, I have no investment in preserving its traditional power structures. That gives me the freedom to redesign it—make it colorful, playful, tender, even whimsical.
I love making clothes for men, but not for the performance of dominance. I’m drawn to masculine silhouettes as softness, as vulnerability. My butchness gives me a unique vantage point—one that understands masculinity intimately, but sideways. When men wear DYKEMINT, they’re stepping into a masculinity refracted through queerness, not patriarchy. It becomes more expressive, more fun, more expansive. It becomes something they can choose, not inherit.
Well said! Your words and DYKEMINT remind me of how fashion, queerness, and anime & manga have long been intertwined through works such as Ai Yazawa’s Paradise Kiss and Keito Gaku’s Boys Run The Riot. Some of these works take inspiration from real-life fashion such as Vivienne Westwood, while others use queerness and gender identity to flip the script. With that in mind, what have been DYKEMINT’s biggest influences as far as anime or subcultures?
It’s funny you mention that, because I’ve actually done a lot of research on the way anime uses fashion as a narrative device—and how that overlaps with queerness, identity construction, and world-building. Anime doesn’t just clothe its characters; it tells us who they are through what they wear. Whether it’s Killua from Hunter x Hunter shedding his family’s assassin uniform through a wardrobe that constantly shifts with his character arc, or Utena Tenjou literally dressing like a prince to disrupt gender roles in Revolutionary Girl Utena, the clothes aren’t secondary—they’re part of the story engine. That’s exactly how I treat DYKEMINT.
Like anime characters, DYKEMINT evolves. We’re a streetwear brand on paper, but aesthetically we shapeshift all the time. One drop might be for the emos and scene kids; the next is cottagecore or Y2K or hyperpop ravewear. That fluidity isn’t random—it’s about honoring subculture, honoring fandoms, and giving people the freedom to try on new selves.
As for major inspirations for the brand, my main “ingredients” are as follows:
Ai Yazawa’s NANA was a foundational influence for me. Not just because the clothes are iconic (they are—punk meets Vivienne Westwood with heartbreaking specificity), but because Yazawa understood that fashion can mirror and magnify who someone is becoming. Nana Osaki wears her armor—leather, chains, platforms—like it’s holding her together, even as she’s falling apart.
And also, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure—that series is a masterclass in aesthetic transformation. The way it reinvents itself with each arc, not just in story but in color, silhouette, and art style—it’s a huge inspiration for how DYKEMINT refuses visual stasis. JoJo proves that fashion can be world-building, genre, and plot device all at once. That energy is all over my work: exaggerated proportions, layering, maximalism, the texture mixing, etc.
All of this is really cool to know, esp. as a fellow NANA, Utena, and Sailor Moon fan! In regards to the aforementioned panel as well as DYKEMINT’s future plans, where are you going next?
Thank you! As for what’s next for DYKEMINT: we’re deep in what we’ve been calling our summer tour, with a packed schedule of shows, vending booths (in artist alleys and exhibitors halls), and new collections all across the East Coast-ish Area.
We’re kicking things off as fashion show coordinators at PopCon Indy (June 27–29), where we’re also vending and showcasing alongside a group of amazing indie designers we helped gather. (We’re the coordinators and architects of PopCon Indy’s first ever fashion show!) Then we head to Tekko Con (July 18–20) as featured guest designers—with a panel, a full vending setup, and more chaos in store. From there, it’s Otakon (August 8–10), where we’re vending and debuting a new collection in their fashion show, followed by Anime NYC (August 21–24), where we’ll be back at it with the booth in their artist alley.
September is big—we’re doing potentially two shows during NYFW, including the 10th anniversary of DapperQ’s LGBTQ+ fashion show at the Brooklyn Museum on September 11. After that, we’re heading to Anime Ink Richmond (October 3–5) and Nekocon (October 31–November 2), both of which include vending and a full DYKEMINT runway moment.
In total, we’re planning to debut five—maybe six!—brand new collections, one for every major show. Each drop explores a different aesthetic or concept, but they’re all unmistakably DYKEMINT: maximalist, glitched-out, and built from the bones of thrifted chaos. We’re so excited to share our work, and keep turning every venue into our own little fandom-fueled fashion universe. ♦
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