Emily Ripley

Emily Ripley

Emily Ripley has worked in the Calvin Klein Archive and the Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology, and as a Research Assistant in the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since 2013, she has served as Curator and Collections Manager for the Queens College Fashion and Textiles Collection. Employing the archive, Emily has integrated material culture practices into the Fashion and Textiles curriculum, along with staging over seven exhibitions with her students. As an educator, she has introduced inclusive and innovative multi-disciplinary methods into the Queens College Fashion Program. These encompass the hands-on study of historic objects to situate the materiality of dress within culture and history, sketching as a profound seeing and contemplative process alongside design projects, together with the exploration of contemporary dress issues and sustainable practices in the current fashion world. Emily brings to her teaching over seven years experience working in the fashion industry for DKNY/Hanes/Donna Karan.

Her art practice and exhibition history span several decades. Emily collaborated with the experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage on two films, and on a years-long series of works with crochet artist Delma Jackson. She was also a project manager for the artist Sol Lewitt, installing large-scale artworks across the country.

Emily Ripley holds a BFA from the University of Colorado and a MA in Fashion and Textiles Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice from the Fashion Institute of Technology. During her graduate studies, she traveled to India to research Parsi Saris, which are a synthesis of Indian, Persian, and Chinese dress. Her awards include an Andrew W. Mellon Transformative Learning in in the Humanities Faculty Fellowship, a Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Space Grant, a Colorado Council on the Arts and Humanities Grant, and an Eve Drewelowe Award.