“Eclectic” is how Gwen Van Den Eijnde, the head of apparel design at RISD, broadly categorized the collections of the 12 students in the class of 2026—and, indeed, it was just that. As markedly individual as the student work was, what all of the talents had in common was a passion for materials—be they yoga mats, wasps’ nests, sugar sacks, or even humble muslin. The students were able to use craft and unusual “stuffs” to address subjects both personal and profound, often in wondrous ways. Another benefit of “having students really engaging with the hand, and hand processes, and really changing textiles,” Van Den Eijnde revealed, is that it acts as a kind of “resistance against artificial intelligence.”

Take the work of Azaria Van Der Stok-Smallwood and Paige Sias—both 2026 Virgil Abloh “Post-Modern” Scholars—which was centered on their experiences as Black women. Reacting to the treachery that can exist in silence, Van Der Stock-Smallwood crafted dramatic, expressive silhouettes that incorporated oyster shells and hand-collected reeds. She used thousands of raffia-like strips of fabric to create garments of regal volumes and undulating movement that proved the assertion that her designs, which are connected to history, “have a life of their own.” Or, as she wrote: “Dress becomes my site of liberation and resistance.”

Paige Sias’s collection grew out of her own family’s history as it relates to “the labor of [sugar] cane” and in which “work becomes a pathway toward freedom.” Sias applied time-tested and time-intensive artisanship to humble materials, like adding corsetry details to denim—traditionally a workwear fabric—and cutting a cotton sugar sack into a coat. Additionally, Sias transformed burlap coffee bags into a minidress and created a pieced-together sparkling white openwork dress from the scraps of discarded wedding gowns, which could be read as a physical testament to her commitment to using “design as a form of activism.”

“I feel a responsibility to use my work to create space for others,” wrote Nerukessa Burgess, a trans Jamaican American, who was clearly thinking beyond themself when creating their thesis collection. Burgess referenced the island country’s Olympic uniforms and the colors and movement of its flag, creating intrigue via cutouts and dramatic shoulder treatments. The result, in their own words, was “a fusion of drag and beach culture.”

It makes perfect sense that the designer Zoe Goldemberg interned with New York’s untiring iconoclasts ThreeASFOUR, given their philosophical, if not aesthetic, adjacencies. Goldemberg’s work explored uncharted territory with an experimental collection that investigated function through materiality by making use of science and digital technology. A knit one-piece, for example, was veined with hydraulic tubing, through which purple-tinted water could flow to create “a circulatory system that cools and regulates.” The designer also constructed an undulating edifice (which the department head likened to a Buckminster Fuller dome) from strips of yoga mats tied together with uninflated balloons. Many of Goldemberg’s garments suggested exoskeletons.

For the class of 2026, chaos is a given; it’s how they choose to address it that’s interesting. Adjustable corset lacing was one approach to containment of the body that appeared in almost all of the collections, including that of Liam St.Clair-Rounds. Growing up in a small mountain town, the designer became fascinated by the dark vastness of the night sky. Its mysterious expansiveness seems to have informed his belief that “because nothing is truly fathomable, everything is imaginable.” He dreamed up garments for beings from beyond using earthly materials like tape and copper foil. There was something a bit lunar about the surface texture of an openwork knit dress strung with pendant strands of pearls and abalone beads.

Darker in mood was the work of Micaela Giulianelli, who sent models out with chiffon over their faces. Her thesis was a negotiation between femininity and the need for protection in relation to a woman’s body. By heat-pressing trash bags onto chiffon, the designer created an organic, skeletal landscape on the surface of a dress; seams and painted and printed fabric recalled veins and blood. Writing of her designs, Giulianelli said that “the beauty and the menace are inseparable.”

More playful were the collections of Maya Mary Muravlev and Ji Hu Park. Muravlev played with the vaunted fashion ideal of undone glamour through the concept of rifling through a bag to find a hidden lighter or elusive keys. She manifested that thought by incorporating a clutch into the bodice of her opening look and burn-treating some fabrics. Plastic coffee lids were embedded in cotton, and trompe l’oeil prints—of a wine stain, chipped nails, et cetera—emphasized her embrace of the perfectly imperfect in a premise she described as “a rumination on the marks left by everyday life.” Park, who titled her collection Made by a Magpie, and who describes herself on Instagram as an “illustrator turned seamstress,” showed looks that unabashedly celebrated pink and green, princesses (and a prince), and prettiness. Think bubble skirts, a pin-tucked heart-shaped bodice, and a quilted petal-like skirt. Park’s idea is that “everything should be prettier. Everything should be brighter.”

The renovation of her grandparents’ house in the country of Georgia was the starting point for Mariam Devadze’s accomplished collection. The designer, who toys with garments as objects as well as their relation to the body, referenced the world of interiors. She crafted a knit to look like a rolled-up rug and printed wallpaper pants that looked like they were peeling off the body. A less direct take on the theme was the attention the designer paid to the meticulous construction of her garments. Her opening, tweedy look, featured a jacket “built” upside down and adorned with nuts and bolts. “I feel like structure is very powerful, and I’m trying to find poetry in that,” she wrote. “Trying to leave room for curiosity in something that looks like a conclusion.” Many people have riffed on Miguel Adrover’s backward trench coat; Devadze upped the game, though that was not her original intention. She built a garment bag into a coat and then happened upon a plaid shirt, which she hung so it was visible through the clear front; only after the piece was finished was the back-to-front orientation decided.

Van Den Eijnde, head of apparel design, described a number of collections as having a romantic quality, and in the work of Cali Kircher, Ellia Baldwin, and Day Koo, one observed a love affair with both history and craft. It’s worth noting the New York influence active in Providence—both Kircher and Baldwin studied under Zoe Whalen when she taught at RISD.

Baldwin’s collection, titled Women in Trees, considered the body in relation to the untamable natural world. “Chaos serves to equalize and right, as the elements exist in constant flux,” Baldwin wrote. “To embrace chaos is naturally equalizing. This is the rhythm I attune to.” The designer couched wasp nests she had collected locally under tulle on a jacket that was built from a plaster cast taken from a live model. Another garment was aged via a smoking technique. The twigs that formed a showstopping nest neckpiece also inspired a woody jacquard Baldwin created in collaboration with a fellow student in textile design.

Kircher organized her thesis around the ritual of a supper, turning its imagined detritus—eggshells, wax paper—into charming accessories and using organic materials that, like food, come from the earth. Kircher’s attachment to history and its traces is reflected in exposed construction (a superb example of which is a wool blazer with red basting stitches and inner pockets with smocking details), which connects to her desire to protect the wonder of chilhood—or a childlike outlook—while, she writes, addressing “the tension of aging into a world that asks us to grow out of whimsy.” That quality was present in a small ruff that formed a bustle on the back of another topper, and crowns the neck of the final hand-sewn, tea-dyed look. Who knew a tablecloth could inspire such poetry?

Koo used her work to explore her relationship with her beloved grandmother. Old photos were incorporated into prints, but more significantly, the way they aged and colored inspired the designer to explore new methods of dyeing and treating fabrics that would capture the look and feel of those relics from the past. Koo, who writes that her silhouettes “embody the gentleness of my emotion,” favors simple shapes that don’t distract from the details, which she feels “add intention and narrative.” Muslin and printed organza come together like mist in the form of a shift dress, for example. The ivory T-shaped coat is constructed of endless strips of open-weave linen; it took 90 hours to craft. Koo’s future will include further explorations of the past; she is returning home to Korea to learn the ancient art of gam-yeomsack, persimmon dying.