I am honored and so thankful to have received the Richard Aronowitz Award, which funds $1,000 to my senior thesis proposal!
After studying abroad in summer 2025 at Central Saint Martins, taking knitwear and advanced fashion courses in London, the country where the knitting machine was invented and the industrial revolution began, I will develop a 5-look collection over the course of my senior year at MassArt.
Proposal:
My chronic wrist pain has recontextualized my current practice, linking dedication, sacrifice, and pleasure to craft. The slow process of working with pain is a constant reminder to be kind to my hands. In researching girlhood socialization into fiber arts and historical co-determinism of womanhood and textiles, my process has become more focused on my femininity and generational connection to women’s domestic crafts. This research led me to knitting machines, a cultural symbol for the losses of skilled labor and social agency brought on by the industrial revolution. They occupy an awkward historical position, requiring intense technical ability but viewed simultaneously as automated, skill-flattening, and replicatory. While a significant part of senior year is dedicated to developing specific execution, my thesis will explore the value of handcrafts, women’s work, and ‘industrial’ crafts. Through laborious handwork, manual machine-knitting, and material experimentation with knit wire, I’ll centralize technique for an audience that’s likely unfamiliar with the real value of any given garment. The process of making my collection will question the state of the global garment industry, the value divide between craft and art, and my place in fiber inheritance.