\n<\/p>\n
\u201cEclectic,\u201d is how Gwen Van Den Eijnde, the Head of Apparel Design at RISD, broadly categorized the collections of the 12 students of the class of 2026\u2014and, indeed, it was just that. As markedly individual as the student work was, what all of the talents had in common was a passion for materials\u2014be they yoga mats, wasps\u2019 nests, sugar sacks, or even humble muslin. Through craft and with unusual \u201cstuffs,\u201d the students were able to use them to address subjects both personal and profound, often in wondrous ways. Another benefit of \u201chaving students really engaging with the hand, and hand processes, and really changing textiles,\u201d Van Den Eijnde revealed, is that it acts as a kind of \u201cresistance against artificial intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Take the work of Azaria Van Der Stok-Smallwood and Paige Sias\u2014both 2026 Virgil Abloh \u201cPost-Modern\u201d Scholars\u2014which was centered on their experiences as Black women. Reacting to the treachery that can exist in silence, Van Der Stock-Smallwood crafted dramatic, expressive silhouettes that incorporated oyster shells and hand-collected reeds. She used thousands of raffia-like strips of fabric to create garments of regal volumes and undulating movement that proved the assertion that her designs, which are connected to history, \u201chave a life of their own.\u201d Or, as she wrote: \u201cDress becomes my site of liberation and resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paige Sias\u2019s collection grew out of her own family\u2019s history as it relates to \u201cthe labor of [sugar] cane\u201d and in which \u201cwork becomes a pathway toward freedom.\u201d Sias applied time-tested and time-intensive artisanship to humble materials, like adding corsetry details to denim\u2014traditionally a workwear fabric\u2014and cutting a cotton sugar sack into a coat. Additionally, Sias transformed burlap coffee bags into a minidress and created a pieced-together sparkling white openwork dress from the scraps of discarded wedding gowns, which could be read as a physical testament to her commitment to using \u201cdesign as a form of activism.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel a responsibility to use my work to create space for others,\u201d wrote Nerukessa Burgess, a trans Jamaican-American, who was clearly thinking beyond themself when creating their thesis collection. Burgess referenced the island country\u2019s Olympic uniforms and the colors and movement of its flag, creating intrigue via cutouts and dramatic shoulder treatments. The result, in their own words, was \u201ca fusion of drag and beach culture.\u201d<\/p>\n It makes perfect sense that the designer Zoe Goldemberg interned with New York\u2019s untiring iconoclasts ThreeASFOUR, given their philosophical, if not aesthetic, adjacencies. Goldemberg\u2019s work explored uncharted territory with an experimental collection that investigated function through materiality by making use of science and digital technology. A knit one-piece, for example, was veined with hydraulic tubing, through which purple-tinted water could flow to create \u201ca circulatory system that cools and regulates.\u201d The designer also constructed an undulating edifice (which the department head likened to a Buckminster Fuller dome) from strips of yoga mats tied together with uninflated balloons. Many of Goldenmber\u2019s garments suggested exoskeletons.<\/p>\n For the class of 2026, chaos is a given; it\u2019s how they choose to address it that\u2019s interesting. Adjustable corset-lacing was one approach to containment of the body that appeared in almost all of the collections, including that of Liam St.Clair-Rounds. Growing up in a small mountain town, the designer became fascinated by the dark vastness of the night sky. Its mysterious expansiveness seems to have informed his belief that \u201cbecause nothing is truly fathomable, everything is imaginable.\u201d He dreamed up garments for beings from beyond using earthly materials like tape and copper foil. There was something a bit lunar about the surface texture of an openwork knit dress strung with pendant strands of pearls and abalone beads.<\/p>\n Darker in mood was the work of Micaela Giulianelli, who sent models out with chiffon over their faces. Her thesis was a negotiation between femininity and the need for protection in relation to a woman\u2019s body. By heat-pressing trash bags onto chiffon, the designer created an organic, skeletal landscape on the surface of a dress; seams and painted and printed fabric recalled veins and blood. Writing of her designs, Giulianelli said, \u201cthe beauty and the menace are inseparable.\u201d<\/p>\n More playful were the collections of Maya Mary Muravlev and Ji Hu Park. Muravlev played with the vaunted fashion ideal of undone glamour through the concept of rifling through a bag to find a hidden lighter or elusive keys. She manifested that thought by incorporating a clutch into the bodice of her opening look and burn-treating some fabrics. Plastic coffee lids were embedded in cotton, and trompe l\u2019oeil prints\u2014of a wine stain, chipped nails, etc.\u2014emphasized her embrace of the perfectly imperfect in a premise she described as \u201ca rumination on the marks left by everyday life.\u201d Park, who titled her collection Made by a Magpie, and who describes herself on Instagram as an \u201cillustrator turned seamstress,\u201d showed looks that unabashedly celebrated pink and green, princesses (and a prince), and prettiness. Think bubble skirts, a pin-tucked heart-shaped bodice, and a quilted petal-like skirt. Park\u2019s idea is that \u201cEverything should be prettier. Everything should be brighter.\u201d<\/p>\n The renovation of her grandparents\u2019 house in the country of Georgia was the starting point for Mariam Devadze\u2019s accomplished collection. The designer, who toys with garments as objects as well as their relation to the body, referenced the world of interiors. She crafted a knit to look like a rolled-up rug and printed wallpaper pants that looked like they were peeling off the body. A less direct take on the theme was the attention the designer paid to the meticulous construction of her garments. Her opening, tweedy look, featured a jacket \u201cbuilt\u201d upside-down and adorned with nuts and bolts. \u201cI feel like structure is very powerful, and I\u2019m trying to find poetry in that,\u201d she wrote. \u201cTrying to leave room for curiosity in something that looks like a conclusion.\u201d Many people have riffed on Miguel Adrover\u2019s backwards trench coat; Decadze upped the game, though that was not her original intention. She built a garment bag into a coat and then happened upon a plaid shirt, which she hung so it was visible through the clear front; only after the piece was finished was the back-to-front orientation decided.<\/p>\n Van Den Eijnde, Head of Apparel Design, described a number of collections as having a romantic quality, and in the work of Cali Kircher, Ellia Baldwin, and Day Koo, one observed a love affair with both history and craft. It\u2019s worth noting the New York influence active in Providence\u2014both Kircher and Baldwin studied under Zoe Whalen when she taught at RISD.<\/p>\n Ellia Baldwin\u2019s collection, titled Women in Trees, considered the body in relation to the untamable natural world. \u201cChaos serves to equalize and right, as the elements exist in constant flux,\u201d Baldwin wrote. \u201cTo embrace chaos is naturally equalizing. This is the rhythm I attune to.\u201d The designer couched wasp nests she had collected locally under tulle on a jacket that was built from a plaster cast taken from a live model. Another garment was aged via a smoking technique. The twigs that formed a show-stopping nest-neckpiece also inspired a woody jacquard Baldwin created in collaboration with a fellow student in textile design.<\/p>\n Kircher organized her thesis around the ritual of a supper, turning its imagined detritus\u2014egg shells, wax paper\u2014into charming accessories and using organic materials that, like food, come from the earth. Kircher\u2019s attachment to history and its traces is reflected in exposed construction (a superb example of which is a wool blazer with red basting stitches and inner pockets with smocking details), which connects to her desire to protect the wonder of chilhood\u2014or a childlike outlook\u2014while, she writes, addressing \u201cthe tension of aging into a world that asks us to grow out of whimsy.\u201d That quality was present in a small ruff that formed a bustle on the back of another topper, and crowns the neck of the final, hand-sewn, tea-dyed look. Who knew a tablecloth could inspire such poetry?<\/p>\n Day Koo used her work to explore her relationship with her beloved grandmother. Old photos were incorporated into prints, but more significantly, the way they aged and colored inspired the designer to explore new methods of dying and treating fabrics that would capture the look and feel of those relics from the past. Koo, who writes that her silhouettes \u201cembody the gentleness of my emotion,\u201d favors simple shapes that don\u2019t distract from the details, which she feels \u201cadd intention and narrative.\u201d Muslin and printed organza come together like mist in the form of a shift dress, for example. The ivory, T-shaped coat is constructed of endless strips of open-weave linen; it took 90 hours to craft. Koo\u2019s future will include further explorations of the past; she is returning home to Korea to learn the ancient art of gam-yeomsack,<\/em> persimmon dying.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n