‘To provoke thought and feeling’

Published 9:30 pm Tuesday, November 25, 2025

Homer youth David Sims began altering garments as a way to make regular clothes fit him the way he prefers. This hobby has, over the past several years, grown into him making his own custom-designed clothing.

“It started with just making clothes fit me the way I wanted because I was really into the baggier silhouette and I like to layer and make myself look bigger than I am,” Sims said. “That eventually evolved into me putting wacky, crazy stuff onto pants and jackets.”

His first piece of altered clothing was a provocative piece he made when he was a junior in high school.

“That was a pair of jeans with the name of a popular stimulant and other distasteful words that I couldn’t wear to school again,” he said.

His more recent customized pieces include a trench coat with Burberry material scraps sewn onto the hood, sleeve and body, a pair of altered jeans with cow hide incorporated onto the back pockets and patches on the front and a pair of torn jeans with faux leather placed under the rips and faux wolf hide along the bottom cuffs.

Sims gets most of his materials from thrift stores, purchasing more specialized materials like leathers or furs from online sources. Beyond simply altering the original design of clothing, Sims intends for his work to be wearable art that could be worn to a rave, concert or party, rather than everyday clothing worn to the store or to run errands. He also intends for his customized clothing to both catch the eye and evoke thoughts and feelings — like the pair of pants and top he altered last year by cutting holes in them and sewing behind the holes pieces of denim fabric that resembled snakeskin.

“This was a visual representation of what’s on the inside is always different to the outside,” he said.

In 2023, Sims participated in the local Wearable Arts showcase, showcasing two outfits. One was a denim vest and pants that were covered with bits of scrap fabric he got from a local thrift store. The other was a white button-down shirt and pants altered so they appeared to be full of bullet holes.

“I put the holes in with a heat pen and used mop head paint marker to make the blood drip affect,” Sims said. “That outfit shocked the audience and was exactly what I’d intended — to provoke people and make them uncomfortable. That show was really fun and I’m glad I got to be a part of it.”

Originally from upstate New York, Sims and his family moved to Homer four years ago when he was 16 years old. Completely self-taught, he bought a sewing machine three years ago and has been experimenting with his designs ever since, preferring his ideas to be organic.

“I get some ideas online for what I can do and how far I can take it, but I try to not be influenced by what I see on the internet too much,” he said. “I might see something at the thrift store and come up with an idea, or the idea will come to me later on.

“I just really enjoy creating, thinking out of the box and being challenged. Altering clothes keeps me coming back to it. The challenge is doing what I can with what I have.”

While he isn’t inspired specifically by fashion designers, a few do encourage him to push himself, including Mercedes Mata, Demna Gvalaslia and Carol Christian Powell. Sims said he appreciates that they all take what people think of as high fashion to what he sees as the extreme.

“Carol Christian Powell makes garments that play with the moral boundaries of the buyers, like his leather pants that were dyed with the blood of the animal the leather was harvested from,” Sims said. “The idea was that if you wear leather products, you shouldn’t have a problem with this. Mercedes is closer to the stuff I make, and Demna took Balenciaga to another level with his internet-infused pieces and AI generated runway show. I like how they aren’t afraid of the expectations of others and that they make whatever they want and present it as such.”

Living and working in a separate space behind his parents’ home, the main tools of his creativity include a sewing machine, scissors and notes. The walls of his studio are covered in self-portrait comic books that he enjoys for their cool cover art, pages from fashion magazines and miscellaneous drawings he is drawn to. Using his name, David Patrick, written as davidpatrick as his brand name, he also incorporates his initials, DP, onto all of the items he customizes.

While Sims enjoys designing, altering and customizing clothing, he is also interested in the business of styling and modeling.

“With my clothes being so obscure and weird, it really challenges me to make them look good on a person,” he said. “The way my pieces turn out is almost never intentional, but that’s the beauty of it. My goal is styling and dressing people, and not to make something someone will necessarily wear, but to provoke thought and feeling.”

One piece of clothing Sims would like to alter is an Autumn Winter 2001 Raf Simmons Riot Riot Riot jacket.

“If you know, you know,” he said.

At some point down the road, he would like to have a runway show, but he said that he sees that as being years away.

Sims does not model his custom designs as his everyday wear, saving them for special occasions. On any given day he prefers slim jeans with a graphic tee and a zip up jacket, or swapping the slim jeans for baggier jeans.

“I’ve never liked clothes that fit me correctly,” he said. “I just like messing around with silhouettes, like baggy jeans, tight shirts, oversized hoodies and skinny jeans. I like to think about it like I’m customizing my character as if I’m in a video game, or like a costume of some sort. It’s all very fun.”

When he is not altering garments and customizing clothing, Sims enjoys playing video games, listening to music and skateboarding.

Find his work on Instagram @1notclocking.