Bio
Catering to clients around the world, The Bad Button provides the custom art garment experience. With an emphasis on modern corsetry and intricate detail, Alisha Martin creates a wide variety of wearable art. As it is often difficult to separate the painter from the painting, it is difficult to distinguish where the aesthetics of Martin end and the actual product begins.
The idea of the company that would become The Bad Button was born in a museum among the vintage textiles and costume collections. Martin was fascinated with textiles and museum artifacts from a young age, thanks to a rather bohemian upbringing spent in the museums of Europe. Due to many serendipitous jobs in institutions with great costume collections, she was able to pursue her passion as well as a profession.
Before ever attempting her first corset, Martin studied extant museum garments to gain a deeper knowledge and appreciation of historic construction techniques. Interpreted through the lens of modern tools, her corsets echo the corsetry of the past while allowing for a range of modern bespoke finishing. With such labor-intensive techniques as beading and hand-stitching, custom pieces can be confections of wearable art or starkly elegant.
Coupled with this emphasis on aesthetics is Martin’s training in human anatomy, with a focus on the skeletal system. Academic training and lab work contributed further to her understanding of the body. By focusing on the desired shape and the body's structure, she creates maximum comfort. By working with the client’s physique, rather than against it, the skeleton isn’t compressed and the conventional problems of historic corsetry can be alleviated — resulting in a feeling most often described as a comfortably tight embrace.