Evangeline Ellingsworth is a multifaceted creative who explores fashion design through many forms of material production, turning garments and accessories into artifacts and heirlooms.
Alongside her studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Ellingsworth studied at Central Saint Martins and Polimoda. Her work was featured in FIT’s Future of Fashion show, and she debuted her designs in AFTERWORK, an independent runway presentation she co-produced. Since graduating this past May, she has continued to develop her label as a space for textile research, material experimentation and a generative approach to slow fashion.
In Her Words
What Inspires Your Designs?
My strongest source of inspiration is raw textiles. I’m drawn to their materiality, origin, and story. I let these qualities inform the creative direction.
Born in Alaska and raised within the agricultural scene of Kansas City, I’ve always felt a strong connection to nature. My background has incited curiosity about the origins of everyday essentials: how familiar materials are sourced, processed, and structure our world.
What’s Your Process as a Designer?
My process often begins with sourcing materials, particularly antique and worn textiles whose details can be difficult to reproduce. I move between loose draping, silhouette experimentation, and sketching; drawing on construction and pattern-making techniques that I have documented from both vintage and contemporary garments. I love reinterpreting these details to create garments that feel deliberate, with care evident in their construction.
Tell Me About the Materials and the Creation Process for Your Pieces.
Leather has become a particularly compelling material throughout my designs. For the past couple of seasons, I’ve been researching hide tanning and have even processed a few hides myself!
The natural imperfections and rawness of each hide present unique characteristics, and I’ve learned to embrace their influence in the finished product. Staying committed to sustainability and slow fashion, I’ve really grown to love the time-intensive process and appreciate sourcing hides from animals that have lived well.
More recently, I’ve also been screen printing and exploring different substrates. Drawing largely from nature, I enjoy reinterpreting familiar imagery, like birds or tree bark, creating repeating motifs throughout the pieces.
Describe the Type of Person You Design For.
I design for someone much like myself: adventurous, quietly confident, and shaped by experiences. Their personal style feels thoughtfully accumulated, with each layer or accessory carrying its own story and reason for being. Unconcerned with conventional expectations around age or gender, leaning toward femininity, they approach dressing as expression.
How Would You Describe Your Brand in Three Words?
Heirloom, Reconstructive, Wash-Line-Romantic.
Describe the Signature Style of Your Brand and Customers.
My designs balance historic delicacy with an irreverent rawness, often pairing distressed textiles with clean finishes and tailored construction. An almost monochromatic palette allows the texture, fit, and proportion of each garment to take precedence, while making individual pieces interchangeable, able to integrate into an existing wardrobe.
What’s Next for You and Your Brand?
Taking this season to intimately produce a diffusion line focused on accessories and outerwear. During the day, I work as a patternmaker and seamstress at a fur coat shop in the city, which has greatly influenced my current endeavors! Super excited to show everything I’ve been working on on Instagram soon.
Follow Evangeline Ellingsworth on Instagram at @_evviel_.
