About
I'm a fashion designer, lecturer, and PhD candidate investigating hybrid approaches that fuse embodied craft knowledge with digital know-how. Within my research work, I'm investigating ways to extend the fashion designer's skillsets with design methods for a digital practice, and into new expressive territories, where fashion becomes more than just another product.
            I have worked with fashion in both applied and experimental settings, assisting designers at high street brands and have tested uncharted fashion methods through freelance work at a startup. 
            My works have been showcased at exhibitions, in shows, as well as on various European and North American stages from Glastonbury to the Apollo Theater via the band Little Dragon.
       
Email, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google Scholar↗

Education
Doctor of Philosophy
Artistic practice-based research in fashion design
Department of Design
Swedish School of Textiles 
University of Borås
2022 - present

MFA Fashion Design
Swedish School of Textiles
University of Borås
2013 - 2015

BFA Fashion Design
Swedish School of Textiles
University of Borås
2010 - 2013

Modedesign
Preparatory education 
Art College, Folkuniversitetet, Gothenburg
2009 - 2010

Fashion Portfolio
Preparatory education
London College of Fashion
University of the Arts London
2007 - 2008

International Baccalaureate
Hvitfeldtska Gymnasiet. Gothenburg
2004 - 2007
Employment
Lecturer
Department of Design
Swedish School of Textiles
University of Borås
2018 - present

Acting Head of Department 
Department of Design
Swedish School of Textiles
University of Borås
2021

Deputy Head of Department
Department of Design
Swedish School of Textiles
University of Borås
2018 - 2021

Freelance Designer
Atacac, Gothenburg
2016 

Costume Designer
for Little Dragon’s European and North American tours
2016 - 2017

Founder & Owner
SAINA KOOHNAVARD
2016 - 2020

Assistant Designer
MTWTFSS Weekday, Stockholm
2013

Fashion design intern
MTWTFSS Weekday, Gothenburg
2012

Fashion design intern
Barbara Í Gongini, Copenhagen
2011
Exhibitions
(forthcoming) Hybrid Material Tinkering: Embodied Knowledge in Digital Fashion Design Processes
Animation from doctoral research
Soft + Ware: Rethinking Fashion and Textiles
Borås Textile Days
Textile Fashion Center
Borås, Sweden
November 2026

(forthcoming) Beyond Substance: Motion Studies of Digital Dress
Animation from doctoral research
Soft + Ware: Rethinking Fashion and Textiles
Borås Textile Days
Textile Fashion Center
Borås, Sweden
November 2026

Hybrid Material Tinkering: Embodied Knowledge in Digital Fashion Design Processes
Animation from doctoral research
Soft + Ware: Rethinking Fashion and Textiles
Borås Textile Museum
Borås, Sweden
April - August 2026

Beyond Substance: Motion Studies of Digital Dress
Animation from doctoral research
Soft + Ware: Rethinking Fashion and Textiles
Borås Textile Museum
Borås, Sweden
April - August 2026

Made You Look
MFA Graduation Collection
Transfashional
 Museo della Città
Rimini, Italy
October 2019 - January 2020

(I)Deal With It
MFA Capsule Collection
Utopian Bodies Fashion Looks Forward
Liljevalchs 
Stockholm, Sweden
September 2015 - February 2016

Publications & Conference Contributions
(forthcoming) Gustafsson, E., Koohnavard, S. and Katila, N. (2026) 'Resilient Fashion Futures Uncharted: Challenging the Status Quo through Research-Based Design Education', in Sharma, N. and Gaudette, H. (eds) Global Perspectives on Education for Sustainable Fashion. Palgrave Macmillan

Koohnavard, S. (2025) Authoring Fashion Materials: Procedural Generation as Design Method for Fashion Design, in Chang, C.-Y., Chen, C.-H., & Hsu, Y. (eds.), IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taipei, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.674

Gustafsson, E., Koohnavard, S., & Särmäkari, N. (2025). Fashion Futures Forward: Promises and Perils of Creative Technologies for Sustainable Fashion Design. In 27th Annual IFFTI Conference Forming Futures, London College of Fashion, UAL, 24-28 March 2025.

Koohnavard, S. and Tepe, J. (2023) 'Mutual Knowledge Creation between Fashion and Character Design', workshop in track: Fashion and Gaming Cultures (chaired by T. Apperley and E. Koskinen). Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) International Conference: 'Limits and Margins of Games', University of Seville, Seville, Spain, 19-23 June

Jan Tepe & Saina Koohnavard (2023) Fashion and game design as hybrid practices: approaches in education to creating fashion-related experiences in digital worlds, International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education, 16:1, 37-45, DOI: 10.1080/17543266.2022.2103591
Panelist/ Interviews/ Speaker/ Guest Lecturer
Speaker
CLO3D Summit Münich 2026
Bergson Kunstkraftwerk
Münich, Germany
10 September, 2026

Panel
Marievik Talks #2
Science Park Borås, 
AMF Fastigheter
Moderator: Nisha Besara
Marievik, Stockholm
9 June, 2026

Interview
Tex! By Marketplace Borås
Moderator: Patrik Wermelin
YouTube
25 May 2026

Guest lecturer
Pallas University of Applied Sciences
Course: Fashion Project Collection Planning
Course leader: Kairi Lentsius 
Zoom
6 - 10 April 2026

Inspiration lecture
Tex! By Marketplace Borås
Forskarfrukost
Textile Fashion Center
Borås, Sweden
19 February 2026

Panel
Innovation - This Outfit Does Not Exist
Textile Movement
Moderator: Nana Sacko
Röhsska Museum
Gothenburg, Sweden
16 October 2025

Guest lecturer
Pallas University of Applied Sciences
Course: Fashion Project Collection Planning
Course leader: Kairi Lentsius
Tartu, Estonia
5 - 8 May 2025

Guest lecturer
Amsterdam Fashion Institute
Course: Hypercraft 
Course leader: Fernanda Fernandes da Silva
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
11 - 30 November, 2024

Panel
Borås Textile Days
Moderator: Jennie Rosén, Swedish Fashion Council
Borås, Sweden
Textile Fashion Center
8 November 2023

Live interview
Borås Textile Days
Moderator: Git Guldare
Borås Textile Days
Textile Fashion Center, 
Borås, Sweden
8 November 2023

Inspiration lecture
Knowit Consultancy
Lecture: The Devil Wears... Skins? - The Role of Fashion in Digital Environments
Zoom
23 February 2023

Interview
Scandinavian Mind, podcast
20 May 2022

Speaker
KreNI Conference
Niš, Serbia
December 2015    
Shows
Made You Look
MFA Graduation Collection
INFA P 46
46 Rue Sainte-Anne, Paris
4 March 2016

Made You Look
MFA Graduation Collection
Exit 15
Freemasons’ Hall
Vauxhall Fashion Scout, London Fashion Week
September 2015

Made You Look
MFA Graduation Collection
Exit 15
Berns
Stockholm Fashion Week
August 2015

Made You Look
MFA Graduation Collection
Exit 15
Navet, Borås
June 2015

(I)Deal With It
MFA Capsule Collection
Designers’ Nest (Alpha)
Copenhagen Fashion Week
Lokomotivværkstedet, Copenhagen
August 2014

Chickipedia
BFA Graduation Collection
Mercedes-Benz Fashion Pavilion
Shanghai Fashion Week
Xintiandi , Shanghai
October 2013

Chickipedia
BFA Graduation Collection
Freemasons’ Hall
Vauxhall Fashion Scout
London Fashion Week
London, UK
September 2013

Chickipedia
BFA Graduation Collection
Exit 13
Mercedes-Benz Fashion Pavilion 
Merdeces-Benz Fashion Week
Kungsträdgården, Stockholm
August 2013

Chickipedia
BFA Graduation Collection
Exit 13
Textilmuseet, Borås
June 2013

Situation Analysis
BFA Capsule Collection
Exit 12
Textilmuseet, Borås
June 2012

Lalai kon morghake man
BFA Capsule Knit Collection
Rum 26, Gothenburg
June 2011                

Saina Koohnavard
Fashion designer, 
university lecturer, 
PhD candidateDepartment of Design, 
Swedish School of Textiles,
University of Borås The pines, they often whisper,
They whisper what no tongue can tell

2026

Beyond Substance: Motion Studies of Digital Dress
 &
Hybrid Material Tinkering: Embodied Knowledge in Digital Fashion Design Processes

Within exhibition
Borås Textile Museum and Borås Textile Days (Forthcoming)
2026
 Beyond Substance is an animation of a rigged garment that is suspended in space. The garment suggests that a body has been or is there. It carries the shape of one. The body-garment figure dances in space, stretching itself out in various directions and past physical logic. 
 In this animation, questions concerning what bodies, materiality, and space are and could mean are investigated. What is fashion beyond physical substance? 


Hybrid Material Tinkering: Embodied Knowledge in Digital Fashion Design Processes is the title of an animated example work from ongoing PhD research. It is also a practice rooted in embodied material understanding, expressed entirely through digital making. At its centre is a question about what material knowledge means when the material itself is procedurally generated - a method widely used in digital games to create vast landscapes and environment art - and tested as an experimental design method in fashion.

2025

Dancing Garments
Within ongoing PhD work
2025
 Dancing Garments are examples of works that investigate procedural generation as a design and ideation method for fashion design. Being an established method within 3D graphics, the method is here applied to a fashion design process.
In this case, the digital methods used do not serve as merely tools to support physical making - a common route for fashion design - but rather, the digital is seen as creative medium to explore expressive possibilities of material and dress.


The fashion images consist of textures created via Adobe Substance Designer. These are then applied to digital cloth and rendered in CLO3D. Before each image follows its node-system which in turn generates the texture.

2022-
2025

Authoring Fashion Materials
Within ongoing PhD work
2022-2025

Link to paper here
Fashion design has long been rooted in physical making, yet the digital may offer possibilities that go beyond visualising physical products. This research study uses procedural generation from digital native disciplines such as game design and VFX, and explores what happens when it is applied to fashion. In physical practice, a designer works with materials whose properties are already given. In procedural generation, materials do not pre-exist. They are composed through node-based systems, where pre-existing nodes hold information, and the authoring lies in how those nodes are combined and how their parameters are tinkered with. 
This contributes to craft knowledge in fashion design, and raises questions about what future craft could entail for the field. Could this be a form of digital couture, producing expressions that both remind us of the familiar and venture beyond it? 



2016-
2017


Freelance Costume Design Work
2016-2017
Selection of images from various European and North American stages following the band Little Dragon.

Yukimi Nagano, Little Dragon
The Danforth Music Hall, Toronto, 2017
Little Dragon, The Apollo Theater, New York, 2017
Yukimi Nagano, Little Dragon
The Danforth Music Hall, Toronto, 2017 .
Yukimi Nagano, Little Dragon. 
9:30 Club, Washington DC, 2017
The Granada Theater, Dallas TX, 2017
Yukimi Nagano, Little Dragon, BASE Milano, 2017
Little Dragon (with Gorillaz), 
Outside Lands Music Festival, San Fransisco, 2017 
Yukimi Nagano, Little Dragon, Outsidelands, 
San Fransisco, 2017 
Little Dragon, Interview Mag, 2017

2015

Made You Look
2015
MFA Graduation Collection
Swedish School of Textiles
Photographer: Theresa Marx
Model: Michelle Hall
Hair and make Up : Emike Santos


Applying principles of Gestalt Psychology to dress. Heat sublimation printing, devoré, and a whole bunch of tailored suit jackets later...

2014

(I)Deal With It
2014
MFA Capsule Collection
Swedish School of Textiles
Photographer: Sara Löfwander

Lorem Ipsum...
Sketching in 2D, knitting in 2D. Created on flatbed industrial Stoll machine with cotton and monofilament yarn. 

Special thanks to Kristian Rödby for his patience and guidance.

2013

Chickipedia
 2013
 BFA Graduation Collection
Swedish School of Textiles
Photographer: Henrik Bengtsson


Distoriting Victorian dress patterns into alternative garment shapes. Sublimation heat printing and jacquard weaving.
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