The Boxy Tee with @panda_landa_studio

It’s no secret we’re obsessed with the new Boxy Circle Tee. Designed with your feedback in mind, it’s the tee you can love and wear doing anything. So we tapped some of our favorite creatives in the high desert to see how they’re styling theirs—this time, with multi-disciplinary artist Panda Landa.

Panda’s been living in the desert for eight years now, and it shows in every detail of their work—from the color palette pulled straight from sunrise skies to the way wind and rock formations shape their improvisational quilting style. “All the hues of sunrise and sunset inform the colors I dye my fabric,” they say. “The rocks and horizon lines inform the shapes, and the wind informs my improvisational style.”

Quilting wasn’t always on their radar; they’d never even owned a sewing machine until a dream nudged their in that direction. While pursuing their MFA in Film during the pandemic, Panda dreamed about taking their friend Cody’s improvisational quilt class on Zoom. “Before that, I had no interest in sewing or quilting,” they say. But the dream stuck—so much so that they checked Instagram the next morning and saw that Cody was teaching a class the very next week. They made their first quilt in a month and were hooked. “Getting my MFA in film was so head-focused, and improv quilting was the exact thing that allowed me to tap into my intuition,” they say. Without meaning to, that first quilt ended up resembling the editing timeline of the film they were working on.

The desert, with all its stillness and space, has been the perfect backdrop for Panda to explore and refine their creative voice. “I love the quiet, the wind, the coyotes, the smell of creosote, lying on a big flat rock, and a good cloudy day,” they say. And while they admit it’s easy to get caught in their routine out here, every time they leave and come back, it feels like coming home.

Up next, Panda’s turning their attention to even more layered, personal work. “I want to start making pieces that combine my textile work with the text, painting, and beading I do—to build a collection based on personal mythology, memory, and the body,” they say. In the meantime, you can catch them teaching an appliqué workshop at the Joshua Tree Music Festival on May 23rd. “Come and learn how to make your own clothes more exciting!”