Inside the Gombo Atelier

A Q&A with Zozo Huval

by

People & Places

I first encountered Zozo Huval and Pickled Okra Aesthetics at Festivals Acadiens et Créoles in 2022—where I purchased an upcycled white button down they had painted over with, in thick, bold strokes, a rendering of okra. In the years to come, I'd encounter them again—at Pride celebrations in downtown Lafayette, at Festival International de Louisiane, at the farmer's market, selling a growing and evolving inventory of jewelry and accoutrements made from Louisiana flora and fauna. Alligator teeth necklaces, passion flower bolo ties, cicada wing earrings, and okra on everything. The designs are simple, preserving and showcasing the inherent intrigue and wonder of these objects so emblematic to our home and heritage. (This is not to mention the fact that Huval creates the most culturally inspired, mythically-attuned courir de Mardi Gras costumes I've ever seen.) Stepping into their booth, wherever they may be, there's a sense of mysticism, of tradition at its deepest well and pushed to its farthest limits. There are stories in Huval's products, each one of them, especially the okra. Earlier this year, they announced a rebrand—stepping beyond the limitations of Pickled Okra and into a new era that better encompasses all that is held in their creative practice.

They call it: Gombo Atelier. 

Tell us about the first piece of jewelry that you created for what would become Pickled Okra.

Relatively speaking, I’ve just really started building a relationship with my creative self. I’ve always had a knack for curating looks, particularly spaces, but earlier in 2022 I had started reselling and curating vintage. It was a way to explore creative expression again, to regain my creative senses. Fall came around and our local fall festival season is one of my favorite times of the year. I’ve been a part of the Blackpot Camp community for the past decade. I’m a natural supporter, so I’m always helping on the back-end of things. Now, the last day of camp is all about cleaning, organizing, and packin’ everything up before heading to the festival. That year, the bar had lost the top to their pickled okra jar, and they were talking about just tossing it. Oh boy howdy, did I have some choice words for them! I grabbed that jar of pickled okra faster than a steadfast buckin’ bronc and tucked it under my arm like a lil’ bébé. My best friend and I then headed back to Lafayette. There was a guitar neck on my side and a cowboy boot on my lap. But I desperately wanted a pickled okra at that moment, so I went for it, and my hand got stuck. My best friend snapped a photo. We laughed for a solid ten minutes because, well, it was very on brand for me. The birth of Pickled Okra Aesthetics signaled a shift in creative prowess, from vintage resell and styling to actually creating and producing things for people to wear.

“The pieces that I produce aren’t simply inspired by Louisiana’s natural environment—they are Louisiana’s natural environment. Wild, boundless, and full of soul. Harvested from the very lands our ancestors toiled. Whispering tales of past knowledge, waiting to be heard once more.” —Zozo Huval 

At the end of that year’s growing season, a friend (who grows amazing flowers) gave me her spent okra plants. I harvested the pods and let them dry. For months, they sat. I would stare at them, stewing and thinking, “what type of ‘thing’ can I make out of real okra that represents the Pickled Okra brand?” It was probably four or five months until I started working with them. I ended up making earrings with the whole okra pod, sold the first few pairs around Festival International 2023, and the rest is history! I knew what I had created was original and sort of radical. So, I applied for Festivals Acadiens et Créoles 2023, made the last slot on the jurors’ list, and bought my dream truck (1975 Chevy Scottsdale in green) with the revenue from that festival. That was the event that set the tone for the future of my creative business. The birth of Pickled Okra Aesthetics signaled a shift in creative prowess, from vintage resell and styling to actually creating and producing things for people to wear.

Let’s talk about the rebrand—what provoked you to introduce Gombo Atelier?

What happened in between the birth of Pickled Okra Aesthetics and the re-brand were the hard moments of growing, figuring things out, artistic development, and making mistakes. But the real story starts at the culmination of Pickled Okra Aesthetics, which was marked with the realization that I (me, human Zozo) had become synonymous with “Pickled Okra.” People would refer to me as “Pickled Okra,” as if that was all that I was. My spirit had an extremely hard time with this, and it never sat right until I did something about it.

The more I processed that transitional era, the more I understood it all. My creativity is community—it is inspired and fueled by my creative friends who share their gifts with the world. My creativity is cultural—it is inherently aligned with the complexities that make up Louisiana’s (and the Deep South’s) cultural identities. My creativity is ancestral—it is directly derived from the soils and roots in which our past, present, and future exist. My creativity is me—I think of it as being a vessel of sorts; without me, it wouldn’t exist.

"Culture interacts with the environment around it to accomplish things in the physical (also spiritual, but that’s for another day) realm, those interactions are remembered, develop attachments, and are attributed cultural meaning. This type of knowledge isn’t just nice to have but absolutely necessary for the continuation of a community."

“Gombo,” derived from the Louisiana-French word for okra, symbolizes nourishment, community, and adaptability, while “Atelier,” French for studio, embodies collaboration, meticulous artistry, and bold expression. Together, these elements form a brand that celebrates the beauty of roots and the possibilities of reinvention.

Gombo Atelier embraces the unconventional and diverse paths through which individuals reclaim and celebrate their heritage—acknowledging that identity is not always linear or traditional but deeply personal and transformative. The result is wearable art that speaks to the soul, evokes memories, sparks dialogue, and creates a sense of belonging. At its core, Gombo Atelier is a celebration of remembering: the ordinary as the extraordinary, to play, to try new things, and to cherish tradition. It is a testament to the power of authentic expression, intuition, and storytelling—offering more than simple pieces; they are vessels of meaning, reflection, and connection.

My creativity represents the anthropological pillars of the Deep South: community, culture, and identity. Gombo Atelier captures the essence of my creativity in a holistic way that Pickled Okra Aesthetics would never have been capable of. This feels right, this is rite. Pickled Okra Aesthetics was needed, whereas Gombo Atelier was wanted. Maybe it’s the difference between merely surviving and really thriving, but who knows?

Your oeuvre is tied together by a distinct regionality. These are art pieces of and inspired by Louisiana’s natural environments. What draws you to using organic or heirloom materials?

I've thought about this sequence—what comes first in my creative processing? Regionality over organic material or vice-versa?

I’ve always had this innate connection to Louisiana, albeit spiritual—cosmic really. Surely, my surname is from Breaux Bridge (that in-between prairie and swamp type of Louisiana region), but I didn’t grow up there. I’d always say I’m a bit of a “nowhere” man—I was born in Calcasieu parish, moved to Illinois when I was four, five years later moved to Wisconsin, moved to Texas five years after that. I went to high school just west of San Antonio, and right after high school I moved to Lafayette. Growing up, we’d always take a few family trips to Louisiana each year, usually for the winter holidays and for the Crawfish Festival. I always looked forward to those trips, because it felt like being home. I never knew how to describe the feeling as a young’un’ but it was intense, always intense. So, moving to Lafayette when I had nowhere else to go? My soul was comin’ on home.

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Took me a good decade to settle in though—I had a helluva lot of healing to do before I was ready to see, understand, and use my creative gift. That started when I went back to finish my bachelor’s degree in anthropology. It was then that I was able to unravel and deconstruct the ideologies behind collective and autonomous identity (within a cultural sense). Geography plays an enormous role in how cultural identity is cultivated. Think of the words “prairie” and “swamp”—those words are loaded with so much cultural meaning, from foodways to language and music. Those cultural nuances are derived from the physical differences in their landscapes, from the actual soil they exist on. What was used in traditional foodways and medicines? Plants. And those plants? Regionally specific. Like how you’ll find horsetail rush (scouring-rush) in the swamp regions but not in the prairie, and how venéraire is known to only exist in specific prairie plots. This type of knowledge is culturally significant, or specific. And what better way to describe “something significant that is passed down from one generation to the next”? Heirloom.

Now, you might think, “heirlooms are physical objects.” Yes, that is correct. But think of it abstractly for a hot second. How do these objects come into physicality? By creative ingenuity that is ignited by knowledge. How is knowledge of landscapes any different? Culture interacts with the environment around it to accomplish things in the physical (also spiritual, but that’s for another day) realm, those interactions are remembered, develop attachments, and are attributed cultural meaning. This type of knowledge isn’t just nice to have but absolutely necessary for the continuation of a community. If people of Louisiana never learned to use their native landscapes, how would they have fed, treated, and clothed themselves? Surely, we wouldn’t be here today had they not learned.

So, why okra/gombo?

In my opinion, okra is the epitome of Louisiana symbolism. Resilience, proliferation, perseverance, and sustenance—okra thrives in the heat of Louisiana’s dreadfully hot summers. One plant can produce more than enough okra for a few folk (I have twelve plants this season), and if a stalk is thrashed around in a hurricane, it’ll just start growing right-side-up from wherever it was laid down. Okra represents the dynamic and complex histories of Louisiana’s cultural fabric. A fella once told me a folktale of how okra came to Louisiana—by a victim of the Atlantic Slave Trade, hiding their very last okra seed underneath the nailbed of their fingernail to make sure they were able to plant an okra plant once they made landfall. That folktale alone shares themes of resilience, proliferation, perseverance, and sustenance without all too many words.

Okra is the very essence of life, the very essence of spirituality. The Akan also believe that okra is cosmically connected to the ancestral realm. So, when I say this okra thing I have goin’ on is spiritual? I’m weirdly serious.

I’ve always had a connection with okra. I never really knew where it came from. One of my oldest tattoos is my okra, taken from my sketch book when I first moved to Lafayette. I’ve always grown it in my gardens, alongside cayenne pepper and loofah.

Once, I did some academic digging on “okra” and discovered that okra/a is the word used to describe the soul aspect of human existence within the Akan culture. To put it simply (though this concept is far from simple), the Akan belief system attributes two parts to the physical self—breath and soul. English soul translates to Akan okra, with okra representing divine masculine and okraa representing divine feminine. Okra is the very essence of life, the very essence of spirituality. The Akan also believe that okra is cosmically connected to the ancestral realm. So, when I say this okra thing I have goin’ on is spiritual? I’m weirdly serious.

Okra is intrinsically tied to Louisiana landscapes by familial connections to our native flora. Okra is in the malvaceae family—the same family as cotton, roselle, hibiscus, and mallow. Okra is not merely a staple of the South, but rather a vital link to our ancestral land. It holds fear, it holds love, it holds moments frozen in time. Okra makes our complex histories relatable and digestible in modern day Louisiana.

The pieces that I produce aren’t simply inspired by Louisiana’s natural environment—they are Louisiana’s natural environment. Wild, boundless, and full of soul. Harvested from the very lands our ancestors toiled. Whispering tales of past knowledge, waiting to be heard once more.

How do you “discover” and develop new products? What is that creative process like for you?

I’m an observer, a thinker, and a feeler. I wander and wonder a lot. It’s not so much about discovering as it is soulful listening. Listening with your soul is basically feeling, but amplified. Imagine using all of your senses simultaneously and processing them on an individual and collective level, but intertwining a critical consciousness to it all. Almost like going from three dimensions to four and having to make it all make sense. That’s what my creative brain is like.

What you might see as simply “spotted bee balm” (Monarda punctata), I see as a microcosm of divine design. Surely, I recognize the tiered sections that make up the “flower,” but I see the cluster layers as individuals. Getting deeper and closer, the clusters are made up of numerous minuscule pitcher-like flower heads, tightly packed together. They operate on a microscopic scale, each flower producing nectar, feeding the hungry pollinators; but collectively, they form this intricately beautiful inflorescence that provides such a rich source of life for an expansive list of insects. Bee balm has an intensely fragrant aroma, like wild mint met a whisper of citrus and sat down in the shade of a sunbaked cedar tree: cool, sharp, and just a little medicinal, like something the earth brewed up for its own healing. Now, bee balm might give off a frequency that humans can’t hear, but feeling the sense of sound is more about how the plant resonates with the environment around them. It’s about the way the landscape responds to its presence. The hums and buzzes and rustles chime into one another, creating a type of autonomous euphony.

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My creative brain processes all of these concepts to assess the meaning and significance of certain things because, quite frankly, if it ain’t got soul I have absolutely no desire to work it into my collections. The significance of the flora or fauna inspires the way it needs to be preserved, the type of design it needs to be, the final form it takes. Earrings are for the soul and mind connection, for memories and thoughts. Necklaces are for the feelings, for love and fear. Bolero ties are for the heart, for the confidence and acceptance of self.

When it comes to Monarda punctata, this plant is all soul and feeling—the way it provides for its visitors, feeding, hydrating, shading, healing. I work this plant into different earring and necklace designs, and they always sell themselves. I’m not in the business of convincing anyone to “like” my work. It’s a soul connection, really. We like to say to our clients: “Your okra chooses you.” Once you make that connection, it’s hard to forget about it.

My creativity is my soul’s purpose—divinely given. My creativity is cosmically aligned to provide a voice for the knowledge that is inherent in our landscapes. It’s merely a vessel for the stories that were left in the soil when the plants were uprooted for our culture to survive.

Knowledge of place is a long-forgotten heirloom of Louisiana’s collective identity. The land doesn’t forget, and my art serves to remind us of that. 

gomboatelier.com.