Senior Lecturer In Fashion Design and Technology; Digital Fashion and Innovative Pattern Cutting. 

International Students Experience Lead and International Students Admissions Lead, Manchester Fashion Institute

Kate is an experienced educator and 3D digital fashion professional with both industry and academic backgrounds.

As International Students Experience Lead at Manchester Fashion Institute, Kate ensures that international students have the best possible experience throughout their studies, from the point of admission and adapting to life in the UK, through integration in the classroom, to graduation and the transition into life beyond it. She also leads the admissions process for the BA International Fashion Business (Top-Up) and BA International Fashion Design (Top-Up) programmes, ensuring that candidates meet the required programme criteria.

As a Senior Lecturer in Fashion Design and Technology and Digital Fashion, Kate is Module Leader for Major Project (Womenswear/Menswear/Sportswear), the final module of the BA Fashion Design and Technology programme. In this role, she designs fair, challenging, and innovative curriculum and module requirements that push students while allowing them to showcase their strongest skills. This position represents a progression from her previous role as Leader of the Digital Pathway for the same module. Digital direction remains a significant part of Kate’s work at Manchester Fashion Institute, and she continues to be an active member of the Digital Showcase staff team, as well as contributing to the management and implementation of 3D visualisation within the curriculum.

As a professional, she has worked with well-established global manufacturing facilities such as Brandix, MAS, and Inqube, which manufacture high-tech garments and offer innovative manufacturing solutions to brands including Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Victoria’s Secret, and Adidas, among others.

She also established a 3D visualisation agency through which she assisted diverse brands in establishing their meta presence, virtual sampling, and NFT marketing, working with brands such as VR Neighbourhood, Sealskinz, and Cybernite, among others.

As an educator, she has worked with multiple fashion institutions around the globe, which has allowed her to develop a unique international approach to teaching and curriculum development. She has long been interested in the emergence of digital and 3D fashion as an essential component of a fashion graduate’s portfolio, and has focused her academic efforts on integrating innovative, AI-powered tools into the curriculum.

As a researcher, she is interested in the application of digital technologies to enhance the garment manufacturing process, as well as in the emergence of “virtual-only” fashion concepts.

Academic and Professional Qualifications

• MA (Hons) Fashion Design and Fashion Education
• BA (Hons) Fashion Design and Technology

Previous Employment

After completing her MA with Distinction in Fashion Design and Fashion Education, Kate developed an interest in intercultural research and approaches to fashion education. This took her on a journey across continents, developing her own signature design identity while exploring fashion education more broadly.

Kate secured her first fashion teaching role at the Arch Academy of Design, Jaipur, India — half a world away from her own country. At Arch Academy of Design, she delivered modules designed under the BTEC system for the British curriculum. In Jaipur, Kate had the opportunity to explore distinctive Rajasthani textile development techniques (bagru printing, natural dyeing, indigo dyeing, block printing, and pattu weaving), and to work with indigenous communities to develop a unique identity in both her own and her students’ design approaches. A particular highlight of Kate’s contribution to the university was her academic presentation at the 4th International Non-Western Fashion Conference in Antwerp, Belgium, alongside her successful academic mentorship, which saw four of her students successfully submit and be accepted to present their own research at the same conference.

Kate subsequently moved further south, spending two and a half years working as a Lecturer at the Academy of Design, Colombo, delivering curriculum validated by Northumbria University, Newcastle. Here, she had the opportunity to work on real industry projects and to broaden both her own and her students’ horizons through close collaboration with the largest manufacturers in South Asia, who produce clothing for, among others, PVH (Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein), Victoria’s Secret, Nike, and Adidas. This experience helped Kate sharpen her technological and manufacturing expertise, and she began specialising in digital design with a focus on fashion technology. Consequently, she also developed her 3D visualisation course in close collaboration with industry standards.

Kate went on to teach privately, as well as with fashion schools in Ukraine, Slovakia, the USA, and the United Kingdom. She joined Manchester Fashion Institute as a Guest Lecturer in January 2021, moving into a full-time position in August 2022.

Languages

• English
• Ukrainian
• Russian