2026 Winners

My interest in clothes making began early with dance. The combination of music, kinetic movement of the body, and the costumes were a seed in my imagination. I especially loved the costumes because of how they helped my range of motion. I would turn them inside out to see where stretch panels were placed, and how trims were attached. That technical interest has always stayed with me. I entered the fashion industry without any artistic ambition, but because I was curious about how things were made. After starting in fashion at places such as Opening Ceremony and Converse, I found that designing is in small part the idea, but in large part the execution. How to make the clothes despite the limitations turned out to be the most enjoyable aspect. The work I'm most proud of was almost always created against the odds because of how innovative I needed to be. After over a decade of design execution in commercial womenswear and materials, I was ready to take the challenge in exploring new avenues for fashion by pursuing a master's degree in Fashion Design. I was the recipient of the 2021 Graduate Scholarship Program, offered Fast Retailing, where full tuition for my MFA was covered. And in October of 2021, in the first semester of my first year, my daughter arrived. Juggling the rigorous coursework with the new demands of motherhood was challenging, but it also gave me a new perspective on how and why to design. My thesis collection was fashion for zero gravity environments, ie space travel, as I imagined where culture would be in my daughter's lifetime. While working for other designers such as Sandy Liang, and C.Vernoy, I moonlit outfitting stage performers, red carpet attendants, dancers, and ice skaters under the name Pisces Rising. I now feel ready, through Pisces Rising, to face the challenge of creating genre crossing apparel, bridging athletics with high fashion techniques, or "athlevening", as I call it.