For most of her life, people have asked Alisha Amnesia the same three questions: Are you in a band? Do you have a motorcycle? And can I have a cigarette?
Amnesia doesn’t smoke and isn’t in a band, but she did play music as a teenager. “And I did have a motorcycle,” she says with a laugh.
It’s understandable why people make assumptions when they meet Amnesia ( given name Alisha Alexender): She looks like a rock star.
On a recent afternoon at Punk Majesty, the upcycled clothing and accessories shop in Lower Nob Hill that she opened last November, Amnesia wore a studded biker jacket and a heavy-duty chain with a padlock around her neck. Her brightly dyed red hair was swept up into a Rockabilly-ish hillock, her red lipstick and cat-eye makeup laser precise. “My whole life, I’ve had a lot of fashion sense,” she told me.
While she may not be in a band, Amnesia could style one with her one-of-a-kind of pieces. Punk Majesty specializes in vintage items that have been altered and embellished by Amnesia with stitches, studs, safety pins, and handwritten messages like DO MORE THAN EXIST, THE FUTURE IS UNKNOWN, and I DO IT MY WAY. (Amnesia leans towards positive messages, noting that her father was a motivational speaker.)
Amnesia started making her pieces in her apartment during a period when she lost her voice and couldn’t tend bar at venues like the Red Devil Lounge. (She has also worked as a publicist and fashion show director.) “I was just entertaining myself and then it turned into my friends telling me to start a brand.”
That brand calls to mind the DIY looks that might’ve been cobbled together by the baddest of badasses in your high school’s smoking area. The pieces are tough, but made with care. Inspired by the heyday of MTV, Amnesia says she’s been into punk since she was 14. Minus the smoking, she may have been that badass. “Everything I’ve done my whole life has maybe created some scrutiny from outside and I don’t really care,” she said.
Amnesia describes Punk Majesty’s storefront at 1124 Sutter St. as an extension of her home, but to my eyes, it felt like a clubhouse, the kind of place where records spin, bands crash, and The Decline of Western Civilization runs on a loop until the VHS busts.
With a little help from Amnesia, I took a tour of the space and checked out some of its wares.
