Rachel Anderson, M.F.A.

Office: HS 211 D

Personal Website

Rachel Anderson is an educator, fashion designer, maker, and visual artist with over 10 years of experience working in the fashion industry in Dallas, Houston, and New York City and a 20-year academic background at Texas Tech University. Her education background includes Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, and the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, California. During her master’s studies at AAU, she trained under former Vivienne Westwood draper, Rob Curry and studied tambour beading and hand embroidery with Robert Haven of the Royal School of Needlework, London.

Her creative work intertwines around the worlds of fashion ready-to-wear and mixed media avant-garde accessories and fashion. Her artistic processes involve the hand processes of draping and patternmaking, hand and digital textile design, and building of garments and accessories using non-traditional or re-purposed materials for gallery exhibition or traditional fabrics for collection development for contemporary ready-to-wear. She has collaborated on textile design and mixed media fashion and art garments with interior designers, sculptors, printmakers, painters, and mixed media artists respectively. Her solo and collaborative works have been exhibited regionally, nationally, and internationally through art gallery exhibitions, fashion shows, and academic conferences.

Current research and creative works involve creativity, the “art of making” and their relationship to positive mental health outcomes. Her “doodle inspired” fashion illustrations have been exhibited nationally in art galleries in Pennsylvania and New York.

Professor Anderson is a member of the International Textile and Apparel Association, has served as Chair of the ITAA Design Awards Committee and Design Exhibition juror. She also serves on the Lubbock Independent School District Advisory Council and was recently appointed by the College of Health and Human Sciences as a member of the Texas Tech University Engaged College Program representing the Department of Design.

Her long history with outreach and engagement initiatives include:  studies and presentations on creativity and mental health for college and high school students intertwined with collaborative creative scholarship outcomes and after school programs,  fashion education for foster children with Lubbock Art Alliance, education and community initiatives with 4H fashion competitions, collaborative nationally and internationally juried professional and undergraduate art exhibitions on mental health topics, three-year artist residency with Charles Adams Studio Project (CASP) curating, performing, collaborating, educating, and exhibiting over 36 gallery shows involving professional artists and designers including undergraduate and graduate Apparel Design and Manufacturing and School of Art students, and community events, exhibitions, and fashion shows for promotion and education for the Texas cotton industry with the Bayer Museum of Agriculture, John Deere, Homestead Cotton Company, Silverado Apparel, and the FiberMax Center for Discovery.