Devan Markiewicz – The Stitch That Holds Everything Together
Some brands are built on aesthetics. Others are built on survival. DMarxx Design is both, yet neither word fully describes it. Out of leather, needle, and cord, Devan Markiewicz has built something closer to a lifeline. The business exists because she got sober; her sobriety endures because the business exists. The stories are not separate. They are the same stitch, pulled tight from both ends.
Devan is a leather goods designer and the owner of DMarxx Design. It is a Norwalk-based handcrafted bag brand. To those of us in the EQH community, she is a familiar face and a creative ally. Her energy is tangible when she walks into the room. Her bags have lived in the equalshumans Sustainable Creative Hub. Her work sits exactly at the intersection of everything EQH has always believed in. Fashion can carry meaning. Making something by hand is an act of intention. The people behind the objects matter as much as the objects themselves.
This is Devan’s story—a story that, like her work, is stitched together from meaningful connections. And it begins, as all the best ones do, with grandmother.
The Bag That Started It All
Devan was in design school in her early twenties, working in leather and accessories, beginning to find her voice as a maker. Her Italian grandmother — a woman she describes as hard on her, particularly during a rough patch after her father died — had been watching. Quietly, she noticed what Devan was doing. She noticed the leather.
When Devan graduated, her grandmother gave her an old bag, something that had come over from Italy; Tucked in a dresser drawer, a burlap-and-straw heirloom that had traveled across an ocean without anyone thinking much of it. Her grandmother handed it over simply, without ceremony: “I know you love leather. Maybe you could do something with this one day.”
Devan brought the bag to Brooklyn when she moved there for an internship. She didn’t have the proper materials or a studio. Just the bag, some faux leather scraps, a needle and thread, and a sewing machine. What started as a side project quietly became a passion. She refined the pattern. Later, she found a laser cutter on Craigslist and met Matt, a craftsman who still cuts her leather today, now out of Eastern Pennsylvania. The original bag now hangs framed in her studio. It keeps the self-closing feature and the same soul. The whip stitch and branding came later.
“I owe a lot to her for giving me that original bag,” Devan says, and the weight behind it is real. Their relationship had been complicated. But before her grandmother passed, they found their way back to each other. Devan got sober. Things became good. And the bag — that quiet, unceremonious gift — became the foundation of everything.
Sobriety and the Brand Are the Same Thing
It would be easy to describe DMarxx Design as a brand inspired by Devan’s recovery journey. But that framing undersells it. The business and the sobriety don’t just inform each other — they sustain each other. Remove one, and the other collapses.
“If I don’t stay sober, then in my history, I lose everything,” Devan explains. “So I wouldn’t have the business without that piece. But at the same time, the business is what helps me stay sober. One doesn’t work without the other for me.”
Hand-sewing, specifically, is the practice that keeps her present. There is no room for future-tripping or for dragging yourself through past regrets when focused on a stitch in front of you. The needle demands attention. The cord pulls you back to now. For someone in recovery, so much of the danger lives in the past and future. It hides in everything except the present moment. For Devan, this is not a minor thing. She says it is the therapeutic core of her work.
“Rather than falling back into my drinking and drug use, I cope using the creative,” she says. “I channel all my shit into it. And I take it out on the brand rather than on other things.”
Her collections reflect this intimacy. The themes, color names, and textures come from her actual life. DMarxx Design does not hide its humans behind product photography. The human is the product, in the best possible sense.
Her newest collection is called Just Trust — and she named it after the place she finds herself in right now: no rigid plan, no anxiety about what comes next, just faith that her higher power will point the direction and that she’ll show up when it does.
“I’m trying not to overthink it,” she says. “Whatever it is, I will be showing up to do the work and enjoy it.”
How the Leather Gets Made
There is a particular kind of joy in watching someone describe their process when the process is also their peace. Ask Devan how a DMarxx bag comes to life, and she lights up — because this is the part that is entirely hers.
It starts with the leather itself. In her early days in Brooklyn, Devan worked at a global sourcing company in Manhattan. She made friends with the facilities staff — the people who took discarded materials to the dumpsters before they were hauled away. Big-name brands would reject entire hides over minor flaws, such as a color that didn’t match the approved sample. Perfect leather, destined for the trash. Devan intercepted it. She filled two filing cabinets behind her desk. She made her first two collections from what the industry was throwing away.
She now sources primarily through a domestic company with New England locations she can drive to. She shops the sale rack with the same intentionality she brings to everything else: whatever the hide is, that’s the color for the season. Eventually, whatever she ends up getting, she describes as her higher power wanting her to have it. And that usually tends to be the best one.
Once she has her leather, it goes to Matt. She sends the full hides and tells him her priorities — how many minis, OGs, and carry-alls. He lays them out on the laser cutter to maximize every inch. The hides are all different sizes, so it’s always a negotiation. Sometimes he comes back: “I can get you three minis and two vests. What’s the priority?”
There is no waste. The leftover pieces become her accessories. Small goods use what’s left, so nothing is discarded.
The teeny bag — her smallest size — actually came into existence this way. Everyone in the room dubs it a “medicine bag,” or, in Devan’s words, it's “teeny like a martini.” An homage to a drink she no longer needs. Matt noticed a gap in the pattern that wasn’t being filled. They designed a bag that fit the shape of what was being left behind. Now it’s one of her most popular pieces.
After laser cutting comes the hand-sewing. Every bag is sewn by Devan herself, with the exposed whip stitch cord that has become her signature. It is slow, careful, meditative work. It is also the whole point.
A Higher Power Thing — How EQH and DMarxx Found Each Other
The EQH community and Devan did not find each other through a pitch or a business proposal. They found each other through people, through energy, through what can only be described as the kind of alignment that doesn’t feel like a coincidence.
“When I come into the equalshumans store,” Devan reflects, “I’m driving there from 95, going the back way, and when I get there, I really do feel this really good energy. I get excited. That’s what I tap into.”
It started with the RISE and Bloom fashion show. Vernice connected them, and from there the threads began to pull together. Alison and Devan found mutual people in their circles. Friends knew friends. Connections had been there all along, unnoticed. The first time DMarxx bags sat alongside EQH pieces in a shared space, the green bag camouflaged into EQH’s green accents as if it had been planned that way. It hadn’t been.
“That freaks me out,” Devan says, laughing. “Look how cool that is!”
There is a word Devan returns to again and again when she talks about the people in her life, the connections that have shaped her business, the path that has led her here: higher power. It is not a word she uses lightly. For someone whose recovery is rooted in faith — in the idea that something larger than herself has a hand in where she ends up — the EQH community feels like evidence of that. People brought together by art, by fashion, by a shared belief that what you make and how you make it should reflect something true.
The Bigger Dream: Building for the Recovery Community
If Devan’s current story is about trust and showing up, her deeper mission is clear: DMarxx Design seeks to empower the recovery community, embodying how creative work and healing are woven together. One of Devan’s primary goals is to employ people from the recovery community, using her brand as a platform to share the healing power of hand-sewing.
This is not simply a hiring vision. It is a philosophy about what the making process can do for someone who is fighting to stay present.
“Sewing the bags is so healing,” she explains. “It could help them stay sober. It’s a mindful process that helps you get present in the moment. When you’re present in the moment, it’s impossible to have anxiety — because you’re not future-tripping and you’re not regretting the past.”
For people in early recovery, Devan notes, the hardest part is exactly that: staying out of what was and what might be. The stitch pulls you back and anchors you. Beyond therapy, there is a practical side. Some people in recovery have records or histories, and they face circumstances that make traditional employment difficult to get and/or maintain. Devan wants to build something that meets them where they are. It will provide income, build a skill, and give them a community to belong to.
“I would love to empower that community by having them be the ones to sew the bags with me,” she says. “Pay them, give them this mindfulness process to help heal, and then use it as a launching pad to go after their goals and dreams and live a great life.”
She is currently pursuing grants to help make this possible, including a Norwalk City grant for which she reached the top ten last year. A grant, she reasons, would free up operating costs and create the margin to bring someone in. From there, the domino effect begins: more hands, more bags, more impact. She is patient about it and undeterred.
As Devan looks to the future, she is seeking support in several key areas: funding, connections to organizations that support people in recovery, and introductions to individuals interested in learning hand-sewing as part of their own recovery journey. Volunteers, business mentors, and community partners can play a vital role in advancing this vision.
“I already feel like I’m very grateful for everything that’s already happened,” she says. “But I think if that were to happen, that would really just be like the cherry on top.”
“Just Trust”
Right now, Devan is living in the middle of something exciting. She recently won the 2026 OnWashington Entrepreneur Contest — a competitive, community-centered initiative in South Norwalk — and spent the entire month of May operating a pop-up boutique and creative studio at 108 Washington Street in SoNo, hosting workshops in watercolor, shell painting, handbag design, and open studio sessions where anyone could come in and make something. The space became exactly what she envisioned: not just a store, but a gathering place.
She doesn’t know what comes next, and she is making peace with that.
“My plan is to just be living in the gratitude of what this is,” she says. “Whatever happens next is again like — the distress is off of me. I believe that my higher power will provide for me what that is. And then I’ll just say yes to that.”
Her advice to anyone else building something from the ground up, navigating the hard stretches, sitting with the uncertainty?
“Trust, and literally go for it and grow through it. Don’t be afraid — the growth is the part. I don’t believe I’ve ever failed, even when I was in a jail cell. That was part of what it took for me to get here. Don’t give up on the dream. Don’t give up on the goal. Trust the journey. Stay open. Don’t take your eye off the prize. And remain teachable. Remain teachable!”
Shop DMarxx at EQH
Devan’s handcrafted leather bags, including the signature Canteen Clutch in all its sizes from the teeny to the carry-all crossbody, are available through the equalshuman Creative Hub and online. Each one is cut from 100 percent genuine leather, hand-sewn with an exposed whipstitch cord, and built to last. Each one carries a story. Custom orders are welcome, and Devan is open to collaborations with anyone interested in co-creating a special piece. Reach out to explore unique and personalized options.
equalshuman is proud to carry DMarxx Design as part of our in-store and online collection. Supporting Devan means supporting slow fashion, intentional craft, and a vision of what fashion can do when it is rooted in real life.
