Katrin Schnabl is a designer, artist, educator, and curator whose research and practice is situated in contemporary fashion, performance, and installation. Schnabl’s work, brought to the body, is positioned in a participatory arena engaging both viewer and wearer. Specific cultural residues are processed into structures that result in garments. These garments, when worn, engage alternate navigation, function as facilitators, and, collectively, form a new vernacular.
Trained as a dancer, Schnabl moved from Germany to New York in the mid-eighties. She shifted into fashion, receiving a second degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology. Schnabl has designed extensively for dance and performance artists, and for the fashion industry, prior to launching her collections in the late 90s.
Schnabl is an accomplished fashion designer and design educator with a proven ability to develop and implement design curriculum and teaching strategies that foster individual creative growth in a larger cultural and interdisciplinary context. As an educator, she has led key initiatives to increase student's exposure and raise the profile of fashion as cultural education. As a practitioner, she is recognized as an expert in pattern cutting, using cloth as a medium, and fashion as a tool, to overlay current issues with new awareness.