Alexa Karrenbauer ’25: From the Studio to Nike
This textile design graduate used the Wilson College of Textiles' labs and studios to find her artistic voice and build career-ready material design skills.
Alexa Karrenbauer’s path to textile design began with a passion for crocheting and working with her hands. Taking a tour of the Wilson College of Textiles introduced her to a whole new way to express her creativity.
“I was in love with all the cool machinery,” she remembers.
The combination of the machine-made and handmade work adds to the eclectic feel of her senior collection, “Life is Full, I am Full of Life.” A hand-crocheted wall hanging, quilted piece and tufted rug fall in complete harmony with other pieces produced with the college’s industry-grade equipment.
The throughline in this varied collection is Karrenbauer herself.
“The collection is an accumulation of my personality and my identity, growing up with Vietnamese and American influences in my house. The past few years have been very transformative for me in terms of understanding what I hold dear, ” she explains. “It’s also inspired by my travels to China, Hong Kong, Italy and Vietnam.”
Through the FTD Emerging Designers capstone course, seniors majoring in fashion and textile design spend a semester creating a cohesive collection. Students in the textile design concentration make everything from fiber art installations to home textiles to apparel.
“With this collection, it was really cool to see how I could use all of the skills I’ve learned over the past few years at NC State to make these products,” she says.
Even with her largely artistic and personal approach to her work in the textile design program, Karrenbauer has acquired skills she’ll apply to her material design internship at Nike headquarters this summer.
“I think it was cool to see how much the recruiters at Nike really liked the work in my portfolio. They said it was very refreshing how much I like to experiment with my work, and how I have a wide range of things in my portfolio,” she says. “This is a pretty big opportunity.”
Click a thumbnail to explore Alexa’s portfolio:
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With knit samples she created for her jacquard knitting course (FTD 476).. -
Close-up knitting sample created for FTD 476. -
Close-up knitting sample created for FTD 476. -
Close-up knitting sample created for FTD 476. -
The flowers on this kaftan are a digitally printed pattern, which Karrenbauer created from her own drawings. -
A close-up of the chrysanthemum pattern. All textile design students design kaftans for FTD 374: surface design studio. -
Karrenbauer created this collection for the African American Textile Society’s Fashion Exposé in 2023. She used second-hand fabrics, vintage beads and natural yarns to create Dream Girl. -
“It was really cool to use my crochet skills within a collection, because I taught myself how to crochet,” Karrenbauer says of her Dream Girl collection. -
“I was really proud of seeing, how far I could push my crocheting skills,” she says. The collection also gave her the opportunity to advance her sewing skills. -
A piece for Karrenbauer’s business lexichicrochet.
What was your favorite class?
Probably my hand weaving class junior year because we got to experiment a lot with the loom, and I feel like that was the most creative class I took.
I think what I also loved was looking through a bunch of different weaving samples and figuring out how I could develop cool textures and apply lots of colors, because that’s something I love to do with my textile design work.
Learning the hand weaving process from scratch and then seeing my hard work really shine through in my final project for that class was so exciting.
What experience has impacted you the most during your time at NC State?
Studying abroad in Florence was one of my most memorable moments of the past four years because I love to travel and immerse myself in a new culture. And so it was great to learn about Italian culture and meet new people from other colleges and new textile design students abroad.
I also took some sketchbooking and painting classes while I was there. Spending dedicated time on those skills and having those classes really gave me extra confidence when I was drawing motifs and designs for my senior collection.
Who has influenced you most during your time here?
I would say all of my classmates in my FTD cohort. I feel like there’s always that fear that it can get competitive, but that’s really not been true with us. We love to help each other and bounce off ideas off of each other and encourage each other.
Especially this semester with our senior collections, whether you need help or an opinion or feel overwhelmed, we’re always here for each other.
What advice would you give your first-year self?
Experiment more and spend time on your art practice every day, even if it’s just a simple drawing. Doing that makes the creative process for some of the big projects feel so much less intimidating.
I would also tell her to be more confident in her work. It can be hard to get used to critiques at first, and it can feel pretty daunting, but I wish she understood how important they are in the design process.
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