Melvin and Monique Rodriguez Family Foundation
Hair can be personal, political, cultural, and deeply connected to identity. The Melvin and Monique Rodriguez Family Foundation Scholarship, a three-year scholarship, invited BFA and BA fashion design students to consider hair, including its texture, density, color, and pattern, as a foundation for creative expression.
The inaugural class brings together Alejandra Pabon, Cassandra Williams, Nara Shin, Zeri Lopez, Jujuan (JJ) Lewis, Miranda Alvarado, Nyriel Saures, Samalie Kabenge, Jamie Han, and Lee Lynshue, whose work demonstrates the many ways cultural heritage, personal experience, and storytelling can shape a designer’s point of view.
At Marist University, Alejandra turns traditional craft into a vehicle for cultural memory. Through embroidery, weaving, quilting, braiding, and textile manipulation, she honors the stories of her ancestors while creating joyful representations of Black and Brown identity and challenging the ways cultural traditions are appropriated or misunderstood.
For Cassandra, also a Marist University student, research becomes the starting point for understanding identity and history. Her adaptive and multifunctional garments are designed to do more than serve a visual purpose, instead creating opportunities for connection, self-expression, and belonging.
A very different kind of material takes center stage in Nara’s work at Parsons School of Design. Influenced by her Korean diasporic heritage and her father’s work as a hairstylist in Seoul and New York, Nara transforms discarded salon hair into experimental textiles, reconsidering what society labels as waste while preserving the intimacy and stories embedded within the material.
Zeri approaches fashion as an act of visibility. Through reclaimed materials, ethical sourcing, and painstaking handwork, the Parsons student creates garments that respond to dehumanization and marginalization, using fashion to honor cultural narratives and create space for people whose stories deserve to be seen and respected.
The journey from Chattanooga to the world of fashion informs JJ’s perspective. The SCAD student draws on his Southern upbringing and a family history of seamstresses while exploring culture, identity, and luxury through design, styling, and creative direction.
For Miranda, her Mexican American heritage is both a source of inspiration and a responsibility. At SCAD, she uses cultural research to develop a design language that celebrates her community, challenges stereotypes, and creates space for conversations around Latino representation, equality, and social justice.
Black hair becomes both subject and language in Nyriel’s collection From the Roots. The SCAD designer examines hair as a powerful expression of identity for Black women, celebrating its artistry and the time, care, and cultural meaning behind it while using fashion to amplify voices and encourage a deeper understanding of Black culture.
Samalie looks to the experience of living between cultures as a source of creative possibility. Her SCAD collection, U Forgot to Pick Me Up, combines Bauhaus-inspired geometry with bold color, exaggerated silhouettes, and playful forms, using hair to consider identity, individuality, and the freedom to define oneself beyond a single category.
At FIT, Jamie translates Korean philosophy into a physical language of connection. Her collection features transformable garments joined through zippers, allowing pieces to be worn independently or combined with others, turning the act of dressing into an exploration of individuality, interdependence, versatility, and belonging.
For Lee, the story begins at home, with his mother’s headwraps and the plants she cared for. The FIT student’s collection, Roots, connects hair to plant life through texture, natural forms, and ideas of heritage, exploring the roots of hair, culture, nature, and the places from which we come.
