Post-pandemic, when I needed an upgrade from my sweatpants, I bought a black coverall jumpsuit from a company called Chain Driven Apparel. Made with stretch denim and hand-cut white velvet flowers sewed beneath the collarbones, it caught me mid-scroll. I didn’t even look at the size chart when I ordered it. When the garment arrived four weeks later, it didn’t zip. My dream of looking like one of the Instagram models was shattered, or so I thought.
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I direct-messaged Amanda Zo, Chain Driven Apparel’s solo entrepreneur and seamstress, and she instantly replied that I could exchange it in the mail or swing by her home studio in Yucca Valley to get fitted for a replacement. I happened to be going to Joshua Tree the following week, so I took Zo up on the offer.
When I arrived at her pleasantly landscaped home with her motorcycle parked in front, Zo answered the door dressed necktie to barbed-wire-hemmed skirt in her own design. I recognized Zo immediately because she frequently models her own clothing in her Instagram feed, which features snapshots of her dressed in stylish high-waisted pants and halter tops interspersed with images of her small-batch creations. She also delights in sharing pictures of her customers and friends flaunting her threads.
Women like East Coast native Sarah Shelton, who met Zo at a pop-up market in Pioneertown and was so inspired by Chain Driven Apparel that she asked to model. “Our shoots are always like a fun desert hang with a photographer present to capture the magic, and we became fast friends,” says Shelton. “I exude the most badass femme version of myself when I wear her clothes.”
At her home, Zo exuded a friendliness that belied her heavy metal–inspired clothes and her motorcycle-riding lifestyle. I instantly felt comfortable around her. Zo has six industrial sewing machines in her sunroom and seven more lining the walls of her garage. For no extra charge, she measured me and sent me a customized jumpsuit weeks later. Nothing has ever fit my body better.
“It should look really cool and also be able to handle whatever comes at you,” Zo told me recently as we sat by the firepit at Màs O Menos, a café and bar in Joshua Tree. “You never know when you’re going to need to, like, hop a fence in your cute little jumpsuit.”
For this reason, Zo prefers to use durable fabrics like leather and denim, which have some stretch to accentuate the contours of various body types. Each stitch pattern and detail passes through her two hands. Her designs put a feminine spin on Nudie Cohn’s famous Nudie suits, the highly decorative western suits beloved by rodeo riders and country rockers alike. And like Cohn, who made his name dressing rock royalty, Zo has attracted musicians like Elle King, Jenny Lewis, and members of Amyl and the Sniffers with her custom clothing.
Zo grew up in a log cabin that her parents built in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains in Washington State. Thunder Creek ran through her backyard, and she and her two siblings grew up watching salmon spawn instead of television. Her dad passed away when she was 2, which left her mother to teach her how to sew and work on cars. (Her first car was a 1960s Plymouth.) At 19, she got a full-time job at an alterations shop in a mall in Mount Vernon, Washington. There, she learned to make patterns by disassembling garments.
Realizing she could make more money on her own, Zo hit up vintage stores with pull-tab flyers with her number on them and an invitation to “Give me a call if you need something altered or something custom made.” She built up enough customers that the owner of a vintage shop in Bellingham, Washington, rented the back annex to her.
Zo’s work ethic and DIY approach are inspired by punk rock, evident in her pieces featuring chains and barbed wire motifs. She moved to Seattle, clocking 80 hours a week cutting and sewing raw goods assembly-style on a band saw, stopping one time only to get her severed fingertip sewed back on at urgent care. She returned three hours later to finish the order she was working on.
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In 2019, Zo experienced a life-altering accident. She was riding her motorcycle in New Orleans and had an inkling that her helmet wasn’t strapped. She pulled over to fix it, and moments later, she was T-boned by a truck. The collision shattered her knees, broke her femur and hip bones, and fractured her jaw in three places. Recalling this story to me, she attributes her survival to her dad watching over her. If she hadn’t had her helmet on, she wouldn’t be alive.
Zo’s passion for motorcycles endures. She recently filmed season two of Moto Maidens, a docuseries for the Harley-Davidson app, in which Zo is one of the five women who drive 1,000 miles in seven days. The first season was set in Montana, the second season in Florida.
Obviously, Zo built her own bike for the show. “It’s like a hunk of junk, many hunks of many junks that I’ve put together to make this motorcycle that breaks down for every Moto Maidens trip. But it’s cool because I did all the work and it’s an old bike.” Zo crafts custom leather motorcycle seats and plans to start building custom bikes.
Chain Driven Apparel served as her side hustle while she worked full-time at a factory in New Orleans, but wanting to fully commit to her vision and buy her own home, she moved to the Mojave Desert in 2020. “My heart has always been in the desert,” Zo tells me. “I knew I was cut out for it.”•
Jennifer Lewis is the editor in chief and publisher of Red Light Lit, a small press and reading series established in 2013. She is the author of the short story collection The New Low, published by Black Lawrence Press.
