Mazel Higa has always been the child worried about the aesthetics of "playing house", or more like, "ou klaib" as described in her native tongue, Tekoi er Belau (Palauan). As a child, the neighborhood kids were running around getting dirty, and she was more worried about what her toys looked like, instead of how they functioned.
At the age of 10, dial-up internet became a frenzy. She managed to find a jewelry supplies store online, asked her mother to order $40 worth of beads and findings, and the rest is history.
Higa is one of 20,000 people, hailing from the island of Belau. Her childhood was spent between the island of Saipan where she was most of the year, and in Belau where she spent her summers. At the age of 14, her family packed up and moved across the world to West Covina, CA - a suburb of Los Angeles. She saw this as an opportunity to start over - aesthetically. She spent all of her high school paychecks (shout-out to Domino's Pizza!), at the local Community Thrift Store, usually on Wednesday mornings, when they had student discount. She would buy things and re-construct them. It was then she realized that a career in fashion was the direction she needed to follow.
After taking fashion classes at Pasadena City College with the intentions of becoming a Fashion Designer, she realized that although she loved fabric, she didn't enjoy making clothes. She always loved jewelry, but Jewelry Designing came as an accident. One day she made a pair of earrings with fabric and beads large enough to distract from her swollen face (getting your wisdoms removed is Horrid!), went out, was approached by a wardrobe stylist who went on to buy a pair and realized this is where her passion lies.
Mazel's thought process is best described as organized clutter. When creating jewelry, she lays everything out on the floor, and it all unravels She never has an original plan in mind, and whenever she does, something else, something better always comes out of it. "Life's luck is based on accidental situations. I like to believe that my pieces are all accidents. Sometimes accidents aren't always a bad thing." says Mazel.
There is no real way to describe Mayzani's inspiration aside from saying, "everything", from culture to what happened a minute ago, Mayzani Jewelry is always going to have a piece of the moment in it.