Student Bios

Abigail Adams received her BA in Art History and Anthropology with minors in Political Science and Studio Art from Case Western Reserve University. As a part of the Fashion and Textile Studies MA program, she is on the curatorial track and has worked to hone her skills in curatorial practice through internships at several museums and nonprofit galleries. Her research interests lie at the intersection of contemporary art and contemporary high fashion, with an emphasis on the avant-garde, posthumanist theory, and the fashion of the future. Most recently, she has contributed to the forthcoming exhibition Emma Amos: The Gift (2026) and other curatorial projects at the Cleveland Museum of Art, as well as American Dream: Immigrants and the Business of Fashion (2025) at the Western Reserve Historical Society. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, she now lives in, and hopes to support the museums and fashion communities of New York City. 

Amelia Ansink received her BFA in Fabric Styling and AAS in Fashion Design, with a minor in Art History, from the Fashion Institute of Technology. She has several years of experience in the trend forecasting industry, where her work linking cultural shifts to emerging trends has helped shape her study of fashion and textiles. Since beginning her MA in Fashion and Textiles Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice, her research has focused on subcultural fashion, folk textile traditions, and the intersections of feminism and fashion. Her current work centers on collections management and archival practices, which she has pursued through an internship in archiving historical textiles and related materials.

Giavanna Baracani-Thomas, originally from Indiana, holds a BA in Fashion Design from Indiana University and a focus in Chemistry in 2024. They are currently pursuing a MA at the Fashion Institute of Technology ’s Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, and Museum Practice Program with a focus in textile conservation. She primarily enjoys working with collection management, fabric dyeing, and costuming conservation. She has been an intern working with archiving textile collections at the Museum of Chinese in America and the Elizabeth Sage Collection at Indiana University.

Corrin Claycomb received her BS in fashion merchandising with minors in business and social psychology from The Ohio State University. She has previously worked in visual merchandising and buying before moving to New York to pursue her master’s at FIT with a concentration in curation. She also has experience working for the Historic Costume and Textiles collection at Ohio State. She served as the Intern for Curatorial Affairs in Culture and Community History at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History where she worked alongside curators to conduct research, curate collections, and prepare for upcoming exhibitions. Her research interests include early 20th century department store culture, forming community through fashion, and sustainable fashion.

Xiaoye is a Chinese expatriate who currently lives in New York. Her research interest is on fashion globalization and cross-cultural encounters in material culture, with an emphasis on pre-modern and modern Chinese fashion and its representation and influence within the western fashion system. Xiaoye is also an avid collector of export Chinese decorative arts, historical Chinese and Chinese diaspora fashion, including an extensive collection of vintage qipaos. Through sartorial and bodily engagement with, namely collecting and wearing qipao, she is gaining an intimate knowledge and unique embodied experience of this icon of twentieth-century fashion. She is dedicated to recording and sharing such knowledge and experience on social media (@xiaoyeh_du), and her efforts have been featured on Vogue.com. Xiaoye has a MA in Applied Linguistics from Columbia University. Before entering the program at FIT, she worked as a Chinese and English teacher at various college programs.

Chloe Johnson received her BS in Textiles, Apparel, and Merchandising from Louisiana State University where she was inspired to pursue fashion museum curation during her thesis project, where she curated an exhibition on designer Geoffrey Beene in the LSU museum. This experience led her to further her education in FIT’s Fashion and Textiles Studies program. While at FIT, Chloe participated in an internship at the Shelter Island History Museum, where she grew her collections management, research, and curation skills through a variety of projects in the museum’s clothing collection. She performed an assessment of the clothing collection that included condition reporting, provenance research, updating storage, and preliminary exhibition planning. Her academic interests include studying 1930s window displays and their connection to Surrealism, as well as bringing light to previously little-known female designers.

Alexa Mpazicos received her undergraduate degree in Art History from Stonybrook University, with a focus on ancient Mediterranean and Near Middle Eastern cultures. Now, she is pursuing a graduate degree in the Fashion and Textile Studies program, with a focus in textile conservation. She has trained in Greece in paper, textile, and metal conservation under notable figures in the field. Her primary area of interest is in historic craft and making, particularly in crochet and sewing. 

Marie Normand received her BA in Art History from New York University. Having been introduced to paintings conservation at an early age, Marie has been working in collections care since 2015. Her pre-program experiences in art museums, galleries and private conservation practice have led her to pursue a Master of Arts in Fashion and Textile Studies at FIT, with a focus on the preservation of flat textiles and an interest in painted textiles.

Anna Paaske received her BS in Fashion Design and Management from Cornell University, with a concentration in Product Development. Her love for textiles, not only as material, but as carriers of memory and meaning, led her to pursue her master’s degree in the conservation track of the Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice program at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She is currently an apprentice at the Textile Conservation Workshop in South Salem, New York, where she assists in the preservation and treatment of historic textiles.

Born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, she currently serves as a correspondent for Harper’s Bazaar Brazil in New York and as a contributor to the Instagram profile Museologia da Moda. Her academic background includes a degree in Visual Communication from PUC-Rio and professional experience as a buyer and visual merchandiser. Her love for fashion history and desire for a deeper academic understanding led her to pursue the MA in Fashion and Textiles Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practices at FIT. She has a special interest in exploring and studying Brazilian fashion collections and collectors, an area that remains underserved in the country.

Andy Salzer holds a BFA in Fashion Design with an Art History minor from FIT. During their studies, they spent one year at Polimoda in Florence and another completing their senior thesis collection at Politecnico di Milano. Andy’s enrollment in the FIT Fashion and Textile Studies MA program marks their turn away from production towards the preservation of the past. Their areas of research include queer history, subcultural styles, and late 20th century avant garde designers. Andy has assisted with exhibition mounting at various museums in New York and interned with FIT Special Collections conducting independent research. They enjoy writing and creating exhibitions to expand audiences’ perspectives on underrepresented topics and hope to continue on this path in their career.

Thomasina Sanders holds a B.A. in Media and Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths, University of London where she focused on photography. She is currently pursuing an M.A. in Fashion and Textile Studies at FIT, with a focus on curation. Thomasina’s interests center on fashion in film, historical research, as well as sourcing and archiving. Her background in visual culture informs a multidisciplinary visual perspective that bridges moving image, material culture, and design history.

Kat Sarris received her BA at the University of Georgia, where an internship at the Georgia Museum of Art introduced her to the field of Collections Care. After graduation, she spent four years working at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in the Conservation and Costumes and Textiles Departments. Kat is an aspiring conservator with interests in costume and textile mounting, material analysis, and the conservation of fashion, upholstery, and three-dimensional textiles.

Grace Witkowski holds a BS in History from SUNY Oneonta with a secondary major in Fashion and Textiles. While studying these two disciplines she found a passion for fashion history, leading her to pursue a Masters of Art in Fashion and Textile Studies at FIT. In her first year she served as the graduate editorial intern at the Fashion History Timeline, where she was able to refine her skills in both writing and research.

Vivian Yip received her BFA in Fashion Design from Parsons school of Design in 2022. She is currently pursuing her M.A. in the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Fashion and Textiles Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice program, on the curation pathway. Her interests lie in fashion archiving, collection management, and curatorial research. Her personal research interests focus on the sociological relationship between fashion and race in a digital space. She has worked as a costume archives intern at the Metropolitan Opera and as a collections projects assistant at the Museum of Chinese in America.