“Doctor. Designer. Daredevil” Sara Howell Does It All.

Peerless People, an interview series by Peerless Magazine

Sara Howell’s Instagram bio––“doctor. designer. daredevil”––has outlasted Twitter’s X rebrand, years' worth of TikTok aesthetics, and every fleeting micro trend the algorithm’s ever created. But then again, timelessness tends to follow anyone who manifests their way to the Met Gala.

For nearly five years, as a self-taught designer preparing for her fourth collection, Sara has evolved Pax Marila from a luxury brand for women of color to the label rooted in the intersection of fashion, education, and global culture, dressing the internet’s most angelic it-girls in florals, silk, and her one of one insta-famous feather-worked corsets. The brand has evolved from a team to a one woman show, undergone a rebrand (from pAx to Pax Marila), and refined its focus, but if anything’s remained consistent, it’s been Sara’s vision to empower people of color across the globe, and educate above all else as a dual-degree Ivy League and HBCU graduate.

Pax Marila is a true luxury brand in the sense that real culture is, and should be, expensive. In a world driving cyclical trends and algorithm-driven aesthetics, where AI and the internet have made cultural signifiers easier to borrow but harder to understand, Pax Marila epitomizes how authenticity and mutual learning are what actually endure. The brand is, simply, peerless.

Our conversation serves as a masterclass in cultural competence, what it means to be a lifelong learner, and how exactly you live your life in service to others, whether it’s through illuminating the lives of others through wearable art, or in her casual words, “we have one week of orientation, then I start saving lives.” Below, Sara reflects on how she manages to do it all––and what five years of building a brand from scratch has taught her just in time for Pax’s anniversary.

Congrats on graduating med school, you live in North Carolina now right?

Yeah, I’m in North Carolina but not many people know exactly where I am, so, um, when I got to [REDACTED], I was like, what possibly… what could I possibly find? No one does fashion here.

So I put out a $3 ad on Craigslist, and was like, ‘does anybody have fashion experience?’ I was calling all of these seamstress stores and tailors in the area to find someone to help with production, but they weren’t the right fit. And finally this one guy, responded to me on Craigslist and he's like, ‘I've worked in New York. I've been a manufacturer for over 25 years. I've worked with many designers. I know how to do everything.’ 

I feel like I’m in a place in my life where God is providing everything I need when I need it, I just have to trust. 

So it’s not ‘New York or nowhere’ for the fashion crowd it seems…you can find what you need anywhere with the right approach. How has your approach to building a team changed?

I would not take a referral from just anybody now. I do my homework. Like the smallest little bit of incompatibility, I'm looking for someone else.

It’s one thing to just do a job, but it's another thing to know the brand, to understand the point, to understand our trajectory, and right now, the collection we're working on represents indigenous Mexico. There’s another seamstress that I’m working with now who’s Mexican, so she's like, not only a seamstress, but acting as a consultant, and like so many things in the last couple of weeks have just been falling together.

Not many people know this about me, but I’ve also been getting into real estate. My partner and I were looking for land to build on and we get on the phone with this agent. This is the very first call and she’s already talking about how she can't do something...like how our ideas weren’t going to work. It was an immediate turn off. And so now I'm just, like I said, I'm very sensitive to things that don't feel right.

So it’s been five years since Pax’s inception. How has the brand evolved?

The message is very clear now, and it's informative, it's educational, it's fun. It's only going to get better and better. And I feel like this is like a really important turning point for the brand. 

I just remember how I started Pax and I was like, oh, this is gonna be so easy. And I had the rudest awakening for five years. I was running into problems that I had never run into before to the point where I was like, ‘is this actually gonna get the best of me?’

I realized Pax is truly just a vector, and I think it works best as a vector, because then people see themselves authentically reflected in our designs. In the beginning, I felt like there was a need for a team and I had to rely on different people to do different things, and it all fell apart to be quite honest. For quite some time now, it's just been me, and I remember there were some nights, boy there were some nights… where I was just terrified. But what that did? My confidence grew so much because now I know how to do everything. I know exactly what it's supposed to look like. I realized fear and action can coexist, and no matter how I’m feeling in a moment, I can always grow through it.

Even for social media, I just had to let go of a lot of preconceptions that it had to be super supervised, and it had to be exactly what I wanted when in reality the brand just needs to be geared towards growth, and so when my priorities changed, the brand took off.

Your collections are always centered on women of color, or stories of color, and research and education have always been integral in your design process. Have you ever run into any complications teetering the line between appropriation and appreciation?

Absolutely––all of last year. We were researching the Maori community and the Maori culture, and they are super underrepresented to the point where I would tell people about Maori culture and people would be like ‘where are they?’ ‘Who are they?’ Looking back, I'm glad that was my first experience, because it really taught me quickly how to navigate culture respectfully in a way that's appreciative and not appropriative. At that point, I finally knew what I wanted Pax to accomplish, and that was to educate through fashion. At first, I was like, okay, well, let me find an underrepresented community and we're just gonna go full steam ahead. I was so energized and so excited, not realizing that them being an underserved community, and being marginalized, and, experiencing a lot of the things that African Americans or black people experience, they have traumas, and they have hesitations, and they easily scrutinize when it comes to the intentions of outsiders. 

I met that quickly; There was a lot of resistance, especially with the older population. I found younger Maori women who helped me but at first I honestly got a lot of hate for it. People would say, ‘you know, this doesn't even represent our culture.’ Like, actual Maori people, would say, ‘I just saw this design, and I cringed.’ ‘This is appropriation. It was bad. It was really, really rough. Looking back, I think it was the order in which I was trying to do things, and the energy I was coming with. Essentially, I sat down, I personally did some research, I made some pieces, and then I basically shopped it to them you know, and that didn't go over so well. There’s this Erica Badu quote that I like that’s like, “I'm an artist, and I'm sensitive about my shit,” and it is so true. 

How did that experience shift your approach to business operations?

Now, we dedicate the first 3, 4, 5 , months, even well into production, to talking, to collaborating, to just hearing their stories. So now, when I'm designing, like for this indigenous Mexican collection, I'm no longer designing my interpretation of their culture; I'm designing based off of what they're telling me.

As the designer, I took it upon myself to be the one engaging with these communities firsthand. So before we started anything, we went to the Mexican Cultural Institute. I asked them for resources. I was like ‘okay, who can I talk to,’ ‘what do I say?’ ‘How do I ask?’ Fortunately, I speak Spanish, so it's been a little bit easier communicating. After that, they pointed me to some dance organization so I went and I took a class with DC Folklorico in DC, and then I went to El Sol Mexican restaurant and cooked with them in the kitchen. It's so much more of a partnership with the culture and so much safer now for the cultures involved, and they trust the brand, and I'm having a great time.

Kerby Jean-Raymond, founder of Pyer Moss has been your mentor for quite some time now right? Are you guys still in contact?

It’s so funny; we’ve been in contact since 2021, but in 2024, Pyer Moss was doing a PR thing where the brand was letting fans loot out his old collections and a medical classmate of mine told me ‘Sara, you have to go.’ And I was like, ‘he’s not even gonna be there,’ you know, like, it's just to get some clothes, but she's like, you have to go. So, I paid 300 dollars for a five minute ticket and I'm really not expecting much, but I get there, and not only is he there, but I get his contact information, get connected, and ever since then, that was May of 2024, ever since then, he’s been incredibly helpful to me as a mentor. Just an awesome individual. He wrote me a letter of recommendation for residency. We just had lunch in Miami a couple months ago. So now yea, we're really good. 

Having graduated from both Princeton and Howard since that moment, could you speak to how (or if) going to a PWI versus an HBCU shaped the way you approach Pax and forming personal relationships?

Princeton really did cultivate my ambition. It taught me to dream big. It taught me that there are no limits. It taught me how to network and things like that.

Howard is like the exact opposite in that everyone advances together, and it's a beautiful thing, really. It's something that I've just never really known because it was my first experience being at an HBCU and being surrounded by that energy; I didn’t grow up like that. There really is an art to being compassionate and there's an art to how to genuinely be somebody's friend rather just use them as a stepping stone. And that's something that only a place like Howard can teach you, because you genuinely feel like we are all in this together. So when I win, you win and vice versa. It taught me how to be collaborative and how to put others before myself.

Is there a thorough line between your work as a soon-to-be anesthesiologist and a designer?

When I'm at the hospital, I'm at the hospital. When I'm doing Pax, I'm doing Pax. And I try to keep those lives separate. It just helps me to stay organized

I often have to work like six days straight, 12 hour shifts and it's a lot, it's exhausting. I come home and I can just create and imagine something. And vice versa, when I have a creative block, I can go to the hospital and literally save lives. So I personally like to keep the medicine and the fashion separate. I like to keep them both sacred.

Not to be that person….but how many hours of sleep do you get a night. Like really, how do you do both?

Funny enough, I get a minimum of six, but I typically get like seven, eight. Over the years, I've really homed in on how I make it happen. I feel like right now I'm living in this really sweet spot where things are just really working out, and I have this solid system. So I'm gonna personally be sharing content about that.

I package sleep in with self care. I've learned that like, this actually might be a bar, but I am God's greatest asset. Like, He doesn't care about the work that I'm doing. He doesn't care about the businesses I'm making. I am his greatest possession, you know? And so he wants me to take care of myself.

So I always put myself first, even like my nails right now I have to feel like myself. I'm in a hospital, and  we gotta be sterile and whatever, but when I can, I do these little things, these little gifts to myself to make me feel like me.

When did you finally have that feeling that you made it?

It was an email from Kerby that said: 'I'm so proud of you, truly. Both the residency and the Met Gala opportunity are huge milestones. The fact that you're doing them simultaneously speaks volumes about your talent, work ethic and faith, and you earned every bit of this.'

And then he gave me advice and then ended it with 'sending love right back from my family. Keep trusting, keep building, you're doing it.' And I don't know why the ‘you're doing it,’–– I read that and I was like, ‘oh my gosh, I'm doing it.’ I was like, wait, hey, he's so right, everything I’ve been working towards, all the hard work is paying off! Like it all made sense. It was literally like, oh my gosh, I am actually doing it.

And are…now that you’re here, and still building, what are your top tips for any designer, doctor, or daredevil in your shoes five years ago?

1. Protect your time.

2. Do not be scared when things don’t pan out how you think they should and don’t be afraid to do things alone. Frankly, do not take advice from your parents, or even your friends sometimes. If they haven't done it, they're not gonna be a source of good information. 

3. Find good mentorship–– one or two people who know what the fuck they’re doing.