Overview:
Denver designer Fresh Sam brings her sustainable label INFATUÉ home, aiming to elevate the city’s fashion scene.
When Denver fashion designer Fresh Sam discusses her work, she maintains the same calm confidence that defines her style. As Fresh Sam describes a custom leather fit she built for Imani of The Pharcyde, a 40-piece lambskin look she designed from the ground up for his Coachella performance, she does so with a laid-back, nonchalant demeanor.
“It was really challenging,” she said. “It took 30 hours or more, and it challenged me. Typically, I envision it first and then create it. But it’s a whole other thing. When you’re taking something from scratch and making it into a garment that’s wearable, it’s a puzzle, so that was really fun. Then seeing it on the stage, seeing him be so uplifted by it—I’ve talked about this before, but that was probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced in my life.”
That moment, though, is worlds away from where she started. Today, Fresh Sam is one of Denver’s most distinctive emerging designers as the founder of sustainable fashion label INFATUÉ, a wardrobe stylist and a creative director whose work has appeared on red carpets, global stages and in campaigns for brands like Netflix, Bose, Puma, and Reebok.
After nearly a decade splitting her time between Los Angeles and Denver, she has returned home. “My family is number one,” she said. “I hit a point in my career where I was like, ‘I could have all the success in the world, but if I don’t have the people I love to share it with, what does it matter?’ It was a real slap in the face, so I came back to be closer to my family.”
Fresh Sam’s path back to Denver came after years of honing her craft, touring and taking on major creative collaborations. But long before the red carpets and brand partnerships, INFATUÉ was born from a moment that forced her to decide what kind of life she wanted to build.
Although she created the name INFATUÉ back in middle school, it didn’t become real until she was 18. At the time, she says, she was “a troubled kid,” hanging out with people who were heading down dangerous paths. One night, she found herself in a police station taking a mugshot. A detective looked at her and asked why she was wasting her potential.
“That was truly the first time I was like, ‘Okay, I got to do this by any means necessary,’” Fresh Sam explains. “Starting my brand was a way for me to not get in trouble, do something productive with my life and use my art as therapy. It’s one of the things that saved my life, because I was kind of a troubled kid, and it helped me find purpose and direction for my life.”
With little money and no access to the fashion infrastructure that exists in places like New York or Los Angeles, she taught herself to design using whatever she could find at thrift stores. For her, upcycling wasn’t a trend; it was survival. She would buy a $10 denim jacket and transform it with paint, deconstruction or embellishment, building early collections piece by piece.
“I started my business with like $100 as an 18-year-old,” she said. “Creativity doesn’t have to be expensive. It’s God-given … Upcycling and reimagining, or whatever the words are called these days—taking something you find that’s already made and repurposing it—that wasn’t a concept, but it was my only way of getting out what I wanted in my head and putting it on clothing.”
Later, when she learned that producing a single denim jacket takes 1,200 gallons of water, sustainability stopped being just a workaround and became a part of her ethos. Today, it informs everything she creates, from custom stage looks to her work as a wardrobe stylist.
“When I go in people’s closets and do a closet cleanse, I start with what they have,” she said. “I try to help them see how they can reuse what they already have, versus continually consuming new stuff.”
Even now, with her work featured in campaigns for global brands and worn by artists like Method Man, Solange, Ashanti, Smino, Too Short and The Pharcyde, her creative process remains rooted in intuition. She doesn’t scroll fashion magazines or chase trends. Instead, she takes long walks, focusing on the patterns and textures in ordinary things.
“I don’t go seek inspiration. I really let it come to me,” Fresh Sam said. “It’s very intuitive and from my heart and soul. I really draw a lot of inspiration from nature and the patterns of the world.”
Growing up in Brighton forced her to become resourceful. Denver wasn’t a fashion city, and she didn’t have access to the materials and mentorship young designers find elsewhere. Her only fabric store was Joann’s, and Instagram was barely starting, so she built from nothing, sharpening skills that would later set her apart in Los Angeles.
“It did something to me,” she said. “Denver made me really good at turning nothing into something. That’s how Denver really shaped me. We don’t really have a lot of fashion here in Denver, still to this day, so it’s not somewhere I look for inspiration. But like I said, my main inspiration is nature, which we have a lot of, so it’s cool. I take that and I am really grateful.”
Coming home now feels like a full-circle moment. She’s planning workshops, fashion shows and community programs, and she recently released a line of Denver-inspired hats as a way of repping the city she loves.
“I love my city. That’s why I’m here,” she said. “It’s cool to be from a small city. I can be anywhere, and people are like, ‘Wait, you’re from Denver?’ It’s really cool to be able to rep my city in a unique way. And I’m not a professional athlete; athletes rep our city on their bodies, literally, and I’m a fashion designer who does it in a different way.”
Her goal is simple: to redefine Denver’s fashion scene. And as she settles back into the city that shaped her, Sam is channeling that mission into concrete action.
“I’m really eager to uplift the fashion scene however I can,” Fresh Sam said. “And yeah, I look forward to continuing to push Denver outside the box.”
