The Circle Tee with @chain_driven_apparel

Our best-selling Circle Tee is everything we love about a go-to: easy, expressive, and intentional. It’s also what we love about some of our favorite high-desert creatives, who we asked to show us how they wear theirs. Next up is Amanda Zo, designer, seamstress, and founder of Chain Driven Apparel.

Amanda relocated from New Orleans to the desert in 2021, bringing with her a couple of bikes and 14 industrial sewing machines. “I was looking for my own little paradise,” she says. And she’s found it here among the open roads, creative community, and desert quiet. “The balance of creative people and chaotic characters. I’ve found some of my closest friends here.”

She’s been sewing since she was 10 (thanks to lessons from her mom) and working professionally since 19. Over the years, she’s run sewing factories, tailored, and built multiple clothing businesses—but Chain Driven Apparel is her favorite yet. It’s the perfect blend of craftsmanship, desert grit, and biker culture.

Her love of the desert goes way back to family road trips as a child in their beat-up lime-green VW bus. So while she’s always been inspired by the desert aesthetic, she’s been able to build on it further since moving here. She says, “My aesthetic hasn’t really changed, just found its context and has benefited from being immersed.”

When she’s not designing, she’s busy giving back to the place she calls home, whether that’s relocating snakes, volunteering at the shelter, or helping clean up the desert. “I’ve been finding ways to be more impactful with my time,” she says.

You can shop Chain Driven Apparel online or in her Joshua Tree showroom inside Time Echo Vintage. And if you’re looking to see her work in person, keep an eye out for upcoming events—like a costume and set design project debuting at the Mojave Gold music video release party for This Lonesome Paradise on October 10, or the Jacumba Breakdown Chopper Show October 18–19.