Iconic Threads Reimagined

Michal Rezoni approaches fashion as a system to be dismantled and rebuilt, thread by thread. A multidisciplinary designer, her work bridges fashion history, material innovation, and cultural storytelling—shaped by a background in embroidery, construction design, and real estate development. At Academy of Art University, she refined that inquiry into a clear point of view, using design to question how value is assigned—and how it can be redefined.

Her MFA thesis, Iconic Threads Reimagined, reconstructs historically significant garments from the 1870s to the 1970s using repurposed denim and reclaimed silk. Rather than treating sustainability as aesthetic, she positions it as method. “Sustainability is not merely an ethical responsibility,” she explains, “but a critical design strategy.”

Denim, a workwear textile, replaces traditional luxury fabrics, shifting the conversation around hierarchy, labor, and consumption. “By reconstructing historically coded luxury silhouettes in discarded materials,” she challenges the systems that define value in fashion.

The collection becomes a dialogue between past and present, where structure and proportion are preserved, yet materials tell a different story. Each garment carries the tension of transformation—heritage recast through reuse, craftsmanship meeting constraint.

Her practice extends beyond the runway through Miri and Jade’s New Clothes, a children’s book introducing textile waste and creative transformation—connecting design, education, and the future of fashion.

Where Curiosity Begins

Growing up, Simone was conditioned to assimilate, quietly denying her West African roots to fit in. Her mother resisted—wearing bejeweled embellishments on her white coat—reconditioning Simone to be unapologetically herself. This collection draws from that quiet resistance, honoring ancestry through West African motifs and silhouettes. Her thesis centers on generational intent and the act of standing out within a preconceived environment—an ode to her mother’s personhood and to a history not taught in school: her own.

The work began with a portrait of her great-grandmother in traditional garments. For newly independent West Africans, portraiture became a way to reclaim identity after French colonization. Influenced by Malian photographers Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé, Simone explored textile traditions, including the boubou, cowrie currencies, and native flowers.

Material became message. Latex, a nod to her mother’s medical career, became both challenge and statement—difficult to source and shape as a draping material. Once obtained, Simone layered Igbo Uli symbols by hand, drawing directly from her mother’s Nigerian heritage, alongside Adinkra motifs and rare South African florals.

Nine looks form a cohesive narrative—each piece carrying history forward. This is more than a collection. It’s a reclaiming of identity, a visual archive of heritage, and a portfolio that proves both voice and vision.

Rewriting the Uniform

Before Brittany Patterson was a designer, she wore a uniform—serving in the U.S. Air Force, where individuality gave way to sameness. It was there, teaching herself to sew, that she began to understand both the power and the limits of clothing.

Her collection transforms that experience, reworking military codes—camo, pockets, buckles—into something unapologetically personal. “I enjoy color. I want to be different,” she says, and it shows. Camouflage shifts into bold palettes, silhouettes push beyond regulation, and poppy flowers—symbols of remembrance—appear throughout as markers of both past and progress.

Patterson calls her designs “fabric puzzles,” built to help people feel confident and seen. Handmade paper flowers replace the expected, adding texture and intention.

This isn’t about blending in.

It’s about taking the uniform—and making it your own.

Between the Shadows and Darkness

Mackenzie Alberts, BFA Fashion Design, creates work that lives in the tension between concealment and exposure—where storytelling shapes every silhouette. Inspired by Persephone, her collection traces a transformation from innocence to power, reflecting a journey that feels both mythic and deeply modern.

Rooted in early experiences knitting with her grandmother and later studying opera, Mackenzie brings narrative and craft together with intention. Knitwear becomes a foundational language in her designs—historical, tactile, and expressive.

The collection unfolds in stages. Childlike forms evoke innocence. Structured silhouettes and bold color shifts capture conflict and identity. The collection concludes with light, flowing pieces that depict an ethereal woman who has found her strength and exudes divinity.

Constructed entirely from natural fibers, each piece reflects the complexity of womanhood. Mackenzie designs with purpose—to tell stories that resonate, connect, and prove both vision and voice.

Rooted

Katherine Von Kraut has been preparing for this collection since she was five—she just didn’t know it.

As a child, she made dresses from leaves and mud for imagined creatures, instinctively treating nature as both material and muse. Raised in Colorado by two artists, she learned to build a life around art—an idea that now evolves into a collection where fashion becomes sculpture.

Rooted in wood, the work began with resistance. She first tried to imitate it with fabric—until a simple realization: if it’s about wood, it must be wood. Gathering bark from Golden Gate Park, her process shifted into experimentation and risk.

Resin-cast forms become the foundation for layered bark, to create sculptural silhouettes—breastplates, structured bodies—layered with raw wood.

“The collection tells the story of someone entering the woods and being slowly reshaped by it.”

Across seven looks, the body is overtaken, transformed, and remade.

The Mesmerizing Moby Dick

From as far back as she could tell time, Olivia Pletkin dreamed of becoming a fashion designer.

Growing up in Santa Rosa, she studied cultural shifts in style, how fabrics contour different bodies, and the evolution of historical dress. That curiosity—about people, form, and storytelling—is what fueled her imagination and led her to the Academy of Art University.

Now, she’s turning that vision into work. Her latest collection draws from Moby-Dick, translating its world into shipwrecked silhouettes through drawing, draping, and patternmaking.

Materials like duck canvas, linen, and rope echo life at sea. Fabrics were chosen for their toughness and durability, mirroring the force of whale-hunting waves. Distressing techniques add depth—garments that feel worn, lived-in, and real without becoming costume.

This is hands-on design in motion. Olivia’s goal is to design with intention—breaking stereotypes and embracing all sizes, aesthetics, and lifestyles—creating work that is as inclusive as it is powerful.

From Biology to Fashion

When we think of fashion, we picture elegance and glamour—not worms. But for designer Jimena Villalobos, these overlooked creatures become a compelling source of inspiration.

A Mexican-American designer, Jimena’s connection to fashion began in childhood, sewing alongside her mother and creating clothes for Bratz dolls. Though she once planned to study Wildlife Conservation at UC Davis, pre-college courses at the Academy of Art shifted everything. “This is something I could really do,” she realized.

Her graduate collection draws on worms and ecosystems, inspired by research into terrariums and the vital role worms play in sustaining them. Focusing on sea worms, she translates their vibrant colors and unusual textures into knitwear.

These techniques create layered textures using silky threads, soft mohair, metallic yarns, and vivid, almost fluorescent colors inspired by nature. Each garment is built from individually crafted pieces, assembled to suggest movement and environments like flowing water. The process is labor-intensive—some panels, like those in a sweater dress, take five to six hours to produce.

Jimena approaches fashion as performance—fun, theatrical, alive. She hopes to study in Florence and continue championing handmade craft. For her, fashion is storytelling—an invitation into her world.

Body Emergence

For Bay Area designer Lorrie McPheeters, fashion and precision have always been connected. She began her career as an electrical engineer designing microprocessors, balancing logic and creativity long before stepping fully into fashion. Yet clothing remained constant. “Fashion design has been my passion since I was big enough to reach the foot pedal of a sewing machine,” she says. At Academy of Art University, that dual mindset found its voice—refined through hands-on training and pushed into something distinctly her own.

Her graduate collection reflects that clarity: tailored garments built on simple, deliberate lines, where classic fabrics meet modern manipulation. Structure becomes a tool for transformation. Through asymmetry and precision, her garments create optical illusions that lengthen the body and animate movement.

Central to the collection is her concept of “body emergence.” Rather than forcing the body to conform, her designs adapt to it. “The clothes are designed to allow for regular changes in a human body,” she explains. Engineered mechanisms within each garment allow for flexibility across size ranges, embracing the body’s natural shifts.

Material choice reinforces this philosophy. Constructed entirely from wool and supported by Manteco in Prato, Italy, the work reflects a commitment to sustainability, craftsmanship, and innovation—designed to move, evolve, and endure.

Where Fabric Leads

For designer Laura Qi, MFA Fashion Design, fashion begins not with a sketchbook, but with material—yarn between her fingers, woven textures, and the transformation of fiber into form. Rather than designing on paper, Laura lets textiles lead, shaping garments through touch. Her work explores texture, movement, and the unpredictability of handmade craft, resulting in pieces that feel raw, organic, and deeply intentional.

Laura began studying fashion design in 2016 using a traditional process—illustration first, garment second. But the finished pieces often diverged. Fabric weight, texture, and structure reshaped her ideas, leading her to question whether sketching should come first at all. For this collection, she abandoned illustration entirely, responding directly to the materials and allowing the process to guide the result.

Inspired by snow-capped mountains, she focused on variations in color and surface. Weaving and knitting became central. Using a large weaving frame, Laura produced hundreds of small woven pieces, later assembled into garments. Traditional patterns felt too precise, too mathematical—so she turned to novelty yarns with irregular textures to break structure and introduce movement.

Asked to summarize her work, Laura answers: “Nature, wild, and distress.” A collection that resists rigid form, where garments emerge gradually, thread by thread, shaped not by fixed ideas, but by the materials themselves.

Third Culture Experience

For Claire, fashion becomes both structure and story. An MFA Fashion Design graduate, she brings an unexpected pairing to her work: a background in psychology and experience in UX/UI design. The result is a distinctly human-centered approach, where analytical precision meets creative intuition, and garments are shaped as much by feeling as by form.

As an Asian American born in the United States and raised through constant travel, Claire’s perspective is rooted in the fluidity of the third culture experience. Her references move flow across borders—drawing in influences that resist singular definition.

Her graduate collection begins at the intersection of culture, sports, and music, tracing how identity and community take shape. What started as observation became something more personal: a “comeback season” grounded in resilience, self-trust, and renewal. Fabrics sourced in Asia anchor the work, while silhouettes reflect a Western sensibility—an intentional merging of both.

Performance references emerge through tailored structure and elevated detailing, balancing energy with control. Each piece is designed with the wearer in mind, focusing not just on how it looks, but how it feels. Claire creates garments that build confidence, presence, and connection—clothing that feels personal, powerful, and fully alive.

Aatam – the Sacred Reverie

Originally from India, raised in Dubai, and now based in San Francisco, Fiza designs through storytelling—each garment inviting emotion, interpretation, and curiosity. Working through drape and textile, her silhouettes emerge from process, embracing imperfection, symbolism, and the tactile act of making.

Trained in classical dance as a child, pleats were always part of her world—moving, breathing, amplifying expression. That language carries into this collection, inspired by a childhood memory of Theyyam in South India, where performers transform into something otherworldly. The intensity and spiritual embodiment inform garments that respond to the body in motion.

Developed entirely through draping, each piece evolves intuitively. Crafted from Kanchipuram and Banarasi silks using zero-waste techniques, the garments feel grown rather than made—surfaces shifting, colors echoing, fabric coming alive.

Rooted in ritual yet unmistakably contemporary, the work doesn’t just dress the body—it transforms it.

The Birth of Véa

Some designers make statements. Others create a presence you feel before you can name it.

Originally from Hong Kong and shaped by years in Milan and San Francisco, Eva works between worlds—East and West, precision and emotion, structure and ease. With a background in business and fashion design, her work balances analytical clarity with intuitive sensitivity.

Her collection, The Birth of Véa, traces a personal transformation—from Eva to Véa—as a quiet, resolute emergence. Inspired by The Birth of Venus, it unfolds slowly, where strength reveals itself through restraint and presence through movement.

Structure softens into fluidity. Tailored forms are shaped through fully fashioned techniques, allowing proportion and movement to emerge organically rather than be imposed.

Geometry meets nature. Structure softens into fluidity. Hand-drawn botanical motifs become scarf elements that move with the body, while sheer layers create a dialogue between opacity and air—an expression of her belief that softness is strength.

Nothing is performative. Everything is lived in.

This is transformation that lingers, evolves, and endures.

Substrata

Raised in Albuquerque by an artist mother who taught her to trust instinct over instruction, Ella grew up prioritizing curiosity over correctness—and now, in San Francisco, she’s not chasing perfection, but what happens without it.

Her collection, Substrata, rejects traditional structure in favor of a process driven by instinct, material, and time. Inspired by geological formations—stalactites, mineral deposits, erosion—Romano designs the way nature builds itself: slowly, unpredictably, and with quiet precision.

Sculptural boning distorts the body. Hand-dyed textiles settle like sediment. Crystallized surfaces harden mid-motion. Draped forms grow rather than fit—garments that feel less constructed than unearthed.

Collaborator Justin Federico transforms fabric into eroded terrain through experimental dyeing, print, and texture. Collaborator Katelyn Knapp crystallizes surfaces, merging structure with fluidity and redefining embellishment as process.

Substrata is raw, tactile, and alive—Romano isn’t chasing beauty, she’s creating something you can’t ignore.

Substrata

Raised in Albuquerque by an artist mother who taught her to trust instinct over instruction, Ella grew up prioritizing curiosity over correctness—and now, in San Francisco, she’s not chasing perfection, but what happens without it.

Her collection, Substrata, rejects traditional structure in favor of a process driven by instinct, material, and time. Inspired by geological formations—stalactites, mineral deposits, erosion—Romano designs the way nature builds itself: slowly, unpredictably, and with quiet precision.

Sculptural boning distorts the body. Hand-dyed textiles settle like sediment. Crystallized surfaces harden mid-motion. Draped forms grow rather than fit—garments that feel less constructed than unearthed.

Collaborator Justin Federico transforms fabric into eroded terrain through experimental dyeing, print, and texture. Collaborator Katelyn Knapp crystallizes surfaces, merging structure with fluidity and redefining embellishment as process.

Substrata is raw, tactile, and alive—Romano isn’t chasing beauty, she’s creating something you can’t ignore.

Substrata

Raised in Albuquerque by an artist mother who taught her to trust instinct over instruction, Ella grew up prioritizing curiosity over correctness—and now, in San Francisco, she’s not chasing perfection, but what happens without it.

Her collection, Substrata, rejects traditional structure in favor of a process driven by instinct, material, and time. Inspired by geological formations—stalactites, mineral deposits, erosion—Romano designs the way nature builds itself: slowly, unpredictably, and with quiet precision.

Sculptural boning distorts the body. Hand-dyed textiles settle like sediment. Crystallized surfaces harden mid-motion. Draped forms grow rather than fit—garments that feel less constructed than unearthed.

Collaborator Justin Federico transforms fabric into eroded terrain through experimental dyeing, print, and texture. Collaborator Katelyn Knapp crystallizes surfaces, merging structure with fluidity and redefining embellishment as process.

Substrata is raw, tactile, and alive—Romano isn’t chasing beauty, she’s creating something you can’t ignore.

Emotional Rawness

Patric Yikun Wang doesn’t just design garments—he reveals what’s been hidden.

Using rigid horsehair, he transforms a traditionally invisible support material into sweeping, architectural silhouettes in black, grey, and blue. What is usually concealed—structure, restraint—becomes the focus.

“By romanticizing what is unseen, I parallel queer experience itself—often hidden or internalized.”

Drawing from millinery, Wang builds forms that both conceal and expose. Crinoline and horsehair act as a veil, framing the body while allowing moments of sheerness to surface—emotion held, but not erased.

Influenced by X-rays and internal imaging, the work feels almost anatomical, exposing inner frameworks and truths through layered transparency and stark contrast.

The tension between covering and revealing drives the collection.

At its core, this is about transformation—turning restraint into expression, and invisibility into undeniable presence.