Student Bios
Isabella (Bella) Moritz (Exhibition Designer) (she/her, @mozzebella) received her BA in Art History, with minors in French and Anthropology from Roanoke College in 2022. She has interned at the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum. Bella is an interdisciplinary artist with particular love for fiber arts, and in her graduate thesis will be examining how the reconstruction of historical garments can serve both as a conservation technique and provide tactile understanding of their construction and use.
Philip De Paola (Display Coordinator) (he/him) received his BA in Art Conservation from the University of Delaware. He worked as a conservation technician at the National Museum of American History in the costume and textile conservation lab. He co-authored “Threads of Evidence: Polarized Light Microscopy for Funerary Textile Identification from an Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Philadelphia Burial Ground” which was published in the International Journal of Archaeology. Outside of academic endeavors, he also works as a bespoke tailor making both contemporary and historical garments.
Kate Mellina (Project Manager) has had a lifelong love affair with fashion history and textiles, whether designing a line of hand-tufted wool rugs and luring national contemporary quilt and cloth-doll exhibits to her Asbury Park, NJ fine craft gallery, or visiting with handweavers in Mexico, Guatemala and Peru. A dedicated community activist, she specializes in creating exhibits and benefits that celebrate under-recognized populations. Her planned focus is on fashion and textile exhibitions that emphasize neighborhood engagement. The creator of the Unexpected Philadelphia blog and website, she is a longtime assemblage artist and member of the Philadelphia Dumpster Divers found-object art collective.
Frida Mckeon (Registar)’s interest in design and sewing began as a little girl when she used fabric remnants from her mother’s projects to make clothes for her dolls. Growing up in NYC, she dreamed of a career in fashion where she would design, be surrounded by fabric, and travel. She attended FIT and after graduating from the Fashion Design and the Buying and Merchandising programs, she worked as a denim designer in New York’s garment center. Frida looks to integrate her experience in design with her love of fashion studies. As a graduate student, she has interned at MFIT for the exhibitions Fresh, Fly, and Fabulous: Fifty Years of Hip Hop Style and ¡Moda Hoy! Latin American and Latinx Fashion Design Today. In her free time, Frida enjoys gardening, creating mood boards, and sewing.
Amber Hellman (Design Coordinator) Originally from New Mexico Amber was inspired at a young age by antiques and the stories they could tell. This led her to the study of fashion history. For her undergraduate degree, she studied fashion history and sociology. She created a custom bachelor's degree with the title “Sociology of Dress” at the University of New Mexico. During this program she conducted a sociological study, researching the intersection of dress, gender, race and socioeconomic status. After graduating college, she moved to New York to pursue a career in fashion. She’s worked in various areas of the fashion industry and is currently a footwear concept designer at Calvin Klein.
Yiqian Yao (Conservation Advisor) had her undergraduate education majoring in chemical engineering and minoring in material science. She participated in a textile recycling research project in her senior year and co authored the paper Muslin Deweaving through Combined Mechanical, Thermal and Chemical Methods. Yiqian is now pursuing textile conservation, which combines her professions and her interest in traditional dress and textiles. She is an enthusiast of Hanfu, the Chinese traditional dress, and is a co-founder of GRL Hanfu Society, an online organization that aims to promote Hanfu culture.
Claire Zimmeth (Writer) (she/her) is a conservator and multimedia artist. Her passion for historic clothing was fostered by a childhood spent watching period dramas and going to flea markets. She received her BFA from the University of Michigan. Previously, she worked as a Conservation Specialist at the Henry Ford Museum and has interned at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum and the Merchant’s House Museum. Outside of academic pursuits, Claire enjoys drawing extremely elaborate costumes for Dungeons and Dragons characters.
Nancy Kover (Education/Public Programming) has always been passionate about textiles and fashion. Growing up in Brooklyn, she spent weekends making trips to the Lower East Side in Manhattan with her mom to buy yarn, beads, and fabric and going to museums throughout New York City to get inspired by historical art, crafts, and garments. She began her thirty-year career in fashion, creating embroidery, lace, and beadwork for apparel companies worldwide as an undergraduate at FIT. Her degrees include Fashion Design and Fabric Styling, and a double minor in Art History and Fashion History, Theory and Culture. Along with getting her master’s degree she is teaching fashion and costume design to middle school students and working on a television series about 1960s fashion and costume designers Vicky Tiel and Mia Fonssagrives.
Claire Calvert (Writer) (she/her) is an artist and educator, born and raised in Los Angeles before moving to New York City to complete her BFA degree at Cooper Union. In the time between then and her current pursuit of a master’s degree, she gained a variety of creative and professional experience designing textile home products, archiving antique textiles, and working as an art educator. Particularly interested in how process influences form, Claire’s independent work, both as an artist and scholar, looks into collage and collecting as methods of self-fashioning and identity expression.
Ariana N. Pérez Avilés (Publications Coordinator) (she/her, @arianaperavi) was born and raised in Puerto Rico's west region. Her father, a costume designer and art professor, instilled in her a love for vintage fashion and art history from a young age. This led her to earn a BA in Fine Arts from the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez Campus. She relocated to New York City after graduation to pursue her interests in fashion history and is currently working as a luxury goods intern at Madison Avenue Couture, where she assists with the authentication process of vintage and contemporary designer handbags, jewelry, and shoes. Following her master's degree, Ariana hopes to become a fashion archivist.
Elyse Sedore-Mallin (Media Manager) coming from Seattle, Elyse has always had an interest in the world of fashion and art from a young age. She received her BA from Washington State University in Apparel Merchandising and a Minor in French. She volunteered at Goodwill in their vintage archives, helping them to organize a poorly taken care of collection. When she found the Fashion and Textiles program at FIT, she became determined to move to New York City and expand her knowledge of fashion history and museum studies. She recently finished an internship working on archiving The Fashion Calendar and hopes to continue working in archives once she graduates.
Miyo Sandlin (Visual Graphic Designer) is an Instructional Services and Student Engagement Librarian at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She previously worked at St. Francis College, The Art Institute of Washington, and the Library of Congress. She received her BA in History from Vassar College and her MLS from the University of Maryland. She has interned at Wilderstein Historic Site, The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery Library, and Helen Uffner Vintage. Her research interests include student outreach, augmented reality, and mindfulness in libraries. As an emerging fashion historian, her interests include the relationship between craft and fashion, historic clothing reproduction and dress in children’s literature. Her favorite restaurant is Red Lobster.
Jordain Williams (Text Graphic Designer) received a BFA in Fashion Design with a concentration in Knitwear and a minor in Fashion History, Theory and Culture at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She was enticed back into academia with one main goal: to touch as many old things as possible. So far it’s going well. She works part-time as a fellow at the Hispanic Society of America Museum and Library cataloging laces, old and new. In her personal life, Jordain has an intense interest in comics, cartoons, collectible toys, stuffed animals, anime, and most importantly One Piece by Eiichiro Oda.
Olivia K. Hall (Editor) (she/her) previously studied at New York University, where she earned a BA in Global Liberal Studies and Art history, and during which she spent two years in Paris, France studying French. Her undergraduate research on the history of couture garment labor in France led her to pursue an MA in Fashion and Textile Studies. She has interned at Tatter Textile Library, Helen Uffner Vintage, and currently works at an art gallery. In the future, she hopes to continue researching the intersections of fashion studies, the history of collecting & archives, and gender studies.
Lesley Heller (Lead Researcher) has spent a full career in the retail merchandising side of the fashion industry. Starting as an executive trainee in the Macy’s training program she rose to buyer and also spent several years working at Loehmann’s. She covered all aspects of women’s apparel, accessories, shoes and jewelry. It was here that she traveled throughout Europe and the United States buying fashions from high end designers. She got a first hand view of fashion trends and industry changes by working directly with the top companies. Most recently she ran a private label company selling direct to consumer cashmere in stores and online. She is pursuing her masters degree to round out her industry knowledge with an in depth study of fashion. She has a BA in International Relations from Tufts University as well as studied in Paris at New York University.
Taleah Cameron (Research Manager) has received two Bachelor’s degrees from Queens College, one in Textiles & Apparel and another in Linguistics. Her time studying the former reignited her interest in sewing, which has led her to focus her research on the history of sewing patterns. She currently works in the New York Public Library as a Page in their Paper Conservation lab, where she studies the care of books and other materials which aids her study of sewing patterns. Through her experiences as a Page and garment maker, she further appreciates the crucial work that goes into preserving paper and textile items of historical importance.
Rita Singer (Content Advisor) holds a BA in anthropology from Temple University and an MA in archaeology from University of Toronto, field experience in Iran and Israel, and enjoyed a yearlong internship in the Prehistory Lab at Hebrew University. After political turmoil in the Middle East, she turned to a career in banking and law. Receiving a law degree from St. John’s University at night while working at Citibank she enjoyed a successful career in wealth management and estate planning. Today she is thrilled to be studying, researching, and pursuing a career in the field of textiles at FIT, a field that she has been passionate about since her archaeology studies. She has a special interest in global textiles and has a current internship with Sandra Sardjono and Tracing Patterns Foundation, researching and cataloging Indonesian textiles from Sumba, Indonesia.
Alexis Pecknay (Conservator and Co-Exhibit Designer) attended Bryn Mawr College and received a BA in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology and minors in both Geology and History of Art. They have worked at several Maryland historical institutions. However, their first experience with textile history was through a specialized program at Bryn Mawr, conducting research on Byzantine textiles and helping to design and create an on-campus exhibition. Their current primary interest is medieval textiles and costume.