PICO RIVERA, Calif. — Instead of words, Criseida Serpas draws and with every design, she’s sending a message of sorts to her father: A message that she’s still inspired and following her dream.
Serpas says her father Adolfo Serpas is “The one that kind of put the idea in my head that I could be a fashion designer. He would always compliment my outfits, how I put colors together, how I made the best out of whatever I could find at the thrift shop or the church donation box.”
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Serpas graduated from Cal State Long Beach with a degree in fashion merchandising and worked as a designer’s assistant. In order to make ends meet, she started bartending at the Guardsman Lounge in Downey.
As for her father, he was in and out of her life.
“Like lot of Vietnam veterans he went into a period of homelessness and drug abuse,” said Serpas. “So he left my life for quite some time, but about five years ago, he got really ill and I decided to take him into my home, take care of him.”
Her father had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
It was then she devoted her life to caring for him and in a strange twist of fate, that also gave her the time to think about her fashion career.
“I remember I was crying and I was super frustrated and I said ‘This is it, I gotta start,’ and I started the next day,” said Serpas.
She dove straight into designing pin-up style dresses and even sent them to TV personalities including Dodgers sports reporter, Alanna Rizzo.
Serpas is a Dodgers fan who admires Rizzo’s support of veterans and her work with animals. It was around then that Serpas got a message she never expected.
“I was actually working, I was on shift, she got the package early in the day, she told me she was going to wear it. I started screaming. I yelled at everyone at the bar, ‘Hey! Alanna is going to wear my dress we game on!’ She was there, it was just awesome, the crowd went wild,” said Serpas.
The gesture inspired her and now Serpas gets orders from around the world through her Instagram account. But her father never got to see any of her fashion shows. He passed away in October of 2019.
She says she’s continuing her journey in honor of her father and hoping one day to have her own boutique. She is getting ready to showcase her designs at Viva Las Vegas, the largest rockabilly event in the world, this spring.
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