9/10/2023 0 Comments Kiya winston![]() Kiya, a psychology major, balanced books with gymnastics, where she held the record in the uneven bars category for several years. Those scholarships made it possible for me to attend William & Mary as an out-of-state student.” I was offered an athletics and academic scholarship. “I had never heard of William & Mary, but I knew I wanted to do gymnastics. “I knew I didn’t want to stay in New Jersey, so I worked really hard to get a scholarship,” Kiya says. Her first trip to William & Mary was during a college tour the November of her senior year in high school. Kiya and her two siblings knew that to attend college outside of New Jersey they needed scholarships. I saw fashion designer.” A Tribe Called William & Mary “I didn’t want to discourage her, but I didn’t see it. “She was an excellent student, but I didn’t see the same passion for medicine in her as I did for fashion,” Winston says. Her mother tried to steer her toward fashion after high school, but Kiya wanted to be a doctor. I just considered it a fun and a creative outlet.” ![]() “I always wanted to be a surgeon,” Kiya says. Despite her natural skill and interest in making clothing, Kiya didn’t envision herself pursuing a career as a fashion designer. Then Kiya made her first garment: a chambray jumpsuit with tapered legs.īy the time Kiya reached middle school she was making her entire wardrobe, shifting back-to-school shopping from the mall to the neighborhood fabric store. First they made a stuffed duck in order to learn the basics. Winston dusted off her eighth-grade home economics skills, read the sewing machine’s manual and the two learned how to operate it together. The new sewing machine quickly became a regular fixture on the family’s kitchen table, says Susan Winston, Kiya’s mother. “I wanted to wear clothing that I would see fashionable people wear, but that type of clothing wasn’t available in children’s sizes, so I asked Santa for a sewing machine for Christmas,” Kiya says. Kiya, who grew up in northern New Jersey, began designing and making clothing at 10 years old for a practical reason she struggled to find clothes for her petite frame. “That seemed like success.” A Sewing Machine From Santa “In my heart I felt if I could design, manufacture and sell in one place, that would be a dream,” Kiya says. The expansion gives customers a rare glimpse into how clothing transforms from rolls of fabric in a factory to an outfit for work or play. In August of 2018, Kiya expanded her business by selling and manufacturing the brand’s clothing under one roof, opening the Kiya Tomlin Work/Shop in Etna, eight miles north of downtown Pittsburgh. ’08, and the mother of three, lives a similar life and wanted to make clothing for women to navigate their day with ease, comfort and class. ![]() Kiya, the wife of Pittsburgh Steelers Head Coach Mike Tomlin ’95, L.H.D. The durable, yet soft fabric of the garments drapes the body just enough to give the wearer an attractive silhouette without restricting her from carrying out life’s everyday tasks of working, going out to dinner with friends, taking the children to soccer practice or picking up a gallon of milk at the grocery store. Launched in 2014, the Kiya Tomlin fashion brand offers practical, versatile and stylish clothing. Kiya wants women to feel comfortable, confident and beautiful when they wear her designs, the same way she viewed Ross that summer day as a little girl. the vision of elegance, drape of the fabric and the ease of her sitting with us defines my brand concept to this day,” Kiya says. “The entire scene still replays like a slow motion dream to me. She had befriended one of Ross’s daughters at the summer program and Ross had come for a visit that day, says Kiya, who didn’t know before the meeting that her new friend’s mother was Diana Ross. It was the summer of 1982 in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, and Kiya was away from home at a gymnastics camp. I immediately recognized that it was Diana Ross.” “When she saw us, she came down to the grass level and sat directly on the grass with us - in all that white silk chiffon. She was wearing a voluminous, head-to-toe white silk chiffon outfit that was billowing in the breeze, along with an enormous halo of hair,” Kiya says.
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