Katherine von Kraut
Fashion – Design / Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA)
School of Fashion
My name is Katherine von Kraut, and I am a fashion designer based in San Francisco. I was born and raised in
Denver, Colorado, in a household shaped by creativity. Both of my parents are artists in their own ways—my
father a graphic designer with a deep love for woodworking, drawing, and architecture, and my mother the
one who introduced me to fashion and the emotional language of clothing. Together, they taught me to
appreciate art not only as something to admire, but as something to build a life around.
I committed to the Academy of Art University to play volleyball, an opportunity that ultimately brought me to
San Francisco and into a fashion design education I had been dreaming about. Athletics taught me discipline,
resilience, and dedication—values that have deeply influenced my approach to design.
Over the past five years in San Francisco, I have grown immensely as both a person and a designer. I am drawn
to the intensive, hands-on process of building a collection—embracing trial and error, material exploration,
and transformation as essential parts of creation. My work reflects my identity and experiences, shaped by the
people, places, and relationships around me. I am endlessly grateful to my parents, my partner, my friends, my
peers, and my professors for continuously pushing me to think deeper, work harder, and trust my creative
instincts.
Rooted
My thesis collection is rooted in transformation and metamorphosis. It began with a childhood memory of creating dresses from wood, leaves, and flowers using a hot glue gun in my backyard to craft garments for the creatures I believed lived in my garden. This early instinct to merge clothing with nature evolved into a more mature exploration of identity, change, and reclamation. The collection tells the story of an individual entering the deep woods and being slowly consumed and reshaped by the forest. As they move through this environment, their former self is deconstructed, and their garments become fused with real wood elements. By the time they emerge, they are transformed, carrying visible traces of the forest within them. Wood is the central material and conceptual anchor of this collection, symbolizing growth, decay, and renewal. The process emphasizes physical transformation through unconventional textile manipulation, sculptural construction, and the integration of natural materials. This project is especially meaningful due to a deeply personal collaboration with my father, whose lifelong practice with wood directly informed the textiles, accessories, and structural elements throughout the collection. This work explores the emotional complexity of change—how it can feel both unsettling and beautiful. By physically embodying transformation through material and form, the collection invites an emotional response and blurs the boundary between the natural world and the human body. This collection is not only made of fabric, but of real wood gathered, reshaped, and reimagined as wearable art.
Faculty Gary Miller, Yuko Fujishima, Neil Gilks, Iliana Ricketts
Work
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