As part of the  Wool Skirts exhibition programming, SUDESTADA invites you to an evening panel exploring wool as a living material, tracing its journey from fiber to fabric to fashion.

🗓️ Thursday, January 15th | From 6 to 8pm
📍 67 West St. Studio 513

Bringing together conservators, designers, textile innovators, and manufacturers, the conversation will examine what makes wool one of the most enduring and sustainable materials in fashion today, while opening a dialogue around local and regional wool production, craft knowledge, and contemporary practices.

Moderated by Susan Easton, Product & Marketing Director at the New York Fashion Innovation Center (NYFIC) with a cross-disciplinary panel formed by:

• CeCe Tkaczyk - Founder CeCe's Wool
• Jacob Long — Founder, American Woolen Company
• Kisook Suh — Textile Conservator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and featured artist in the exhibition
• Laura Sansone — Founder of New York Textile Lab, author of the NYS Regional Yarn Sourcebook, and Part-Time Assistant Professor of Textiles at Parsons
• Mae Colburn — Textile artist and weaver; guardian of the collection of 632 wool skirts and co-curator of the exhibition
  
• Mimi Prober — Artist and designer; member of the NY State Department of Agriculture and Markets’ Natural Fiber Textile Development Workgroup

The panel will move through the lifecycle of wool—from its behavior and longevity as a fiber, to textile production and manufacturing, to its role in fashion design—followed by a moderated discussion and audience Q&A. Rooted in Audrey Huset’s remarkable collection of wool skirts, the event reflects on past and present efforts to preserve, revive, and reimagine wool within today’s fashion ecosystem.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR & PANELISTS 

SUSAN EASTON

Susan Easton is a creative leader in sustainable product development and marketing communications, with over two decades of experience building responsible supply chains and brand narratives. She is the Product & Marketing Director at the New York Fashion Innovation Center (NYFIC), where she works with academic, industry, and regional partners to strengthen New York’s natural-fiber and next-generation materials ecosystem through circular, resilient supply chains.

Previously, Susan founded FROM THE ROAD, a luxury textile brand focused on preserving global artisan heritage and advancing inclusive production models, working in partnership with the United Nations’ Ethical Fashion Initiative. An active speaker and educator, she shares her expertise in sustainability, design, and ethical production, guided by a belief that businesses can do well while doing good.

CECE TKACZYK

CeCe Tkaczyk is the entrepreneur behind CeCe's Wool, a yarn and fiber shop and pillow factory in upstate NY. Fiber arts classes at CeCe's Wool include spinning, knitting, crochet, felting, and weaving along with selling tools, fiber and yarn. Tkaczyk also runs a sheep farm with her husband Eric and son Peter where they raise 60 Jacob sheep, a spotted heritage sheep. Tkaczyk is also a member of the Hudson Valley Textile Project and NorthEast Fiber Exchange (NEFX) and is a former NYS Senator. In 2015 she started CeCe's Wool after her stint in politics to create dog beds and pillows filled with wool fiber that is typically thrown away. Tkaczyk is an advocate in providing more sustainable materials such as providing a stuffing wool for crafters to use instead of polyester fill.

JACOB LONG 

Jacob Harrison Long leads American Woolen Company, Inc. He has a finance background with considerable experience in cross-border M&A, debt capital markets, and consumer goods/retail turnaround investing. Jacob spent 20 years in Europe working in investment banking for BNP Paribas and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. While working in Milan from 2006 to 2012, Jacob developed extensive contacts as well as a deep appreciation for the Italian textile and apparel industry with its focus on product quality and luxury versus the large-scale, commodity-oriented manufacturing that typifies the U.S. textile industry. He acquired the assets of the American Woolen Company and Warren Mills in order to replicate the European approach to textile manufacturing in the United States.

KISOOK SUH

Kisook Suh is a textile conservator currently working for The Metropolitan Museum of Art since 2006. During pandemic, she expanded the practice of repairing well-loved clothes of her family and shared her thoughts on repair and restoration through The Met’s podcast series, Frame of Mind: Mending Hope. The experience of public exposure taught her the idea of activism in a more relatable way. Soon after the pandemic, she joined the local community group, Rivertowns Repair Café where she volunteers as a repair coach or fixer. She tries to teach people simple mending techniques with needles and threads while fixing various things brought to the Repair Cafe, from a quilted blanket to a teddy bear.

KAT SARRIS

Kat Sarris is a second-year graduate student at the Fashion Institute of Technology studying Textile Conservation. Her principal interests include costume and textile mounting, material analysis, and the conservation of fashion, upholstery, and three-dimensional textiles. This past spring, she interned with the Textile Conservation Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where she worked to analyze the characteristics of wool yarns used for tapestry conservation. 

LAURA SANSONE 

Laura Sansone is a textile designer, activist, and consultant. She is the creator of NY Textile Lab, a design and consulting company that supports environmentally responsible textile methods, and regional systems of production. Laura is currently a Part-Time Assistant Professor of Textiles at Parsons School of Design. She has developed initiatives that bring NY designers and farmers together with the goal of creating a decentralized, regenerative textile supply network. Textile Lab’s NYS Regional Yarn Sourcebook is a collection of locally sourced and produced yarns that are intended to link apparel, product and interior designers to the regional network of farms and fiber processing mills. She is the founder of the Carbon Farm Network, a purchasing cooperative that connects designers to Climate Beneficial™ fibers that are grown on NYS farms practicing Carbon Farming on their lands. In addition, she has designed woven textiles for the following companies: Maharam, New York, NY, American Silk Mills, New York, NY and Burlington House Fabrics, New York, NY.

MAE COLBURN

Mae Colburn is a New York–based weaver and writer with a background in art history. Her work expands traditions of rag rug weaving from the Upper Midwest into a broader practice focused on textiles in art and fashion, emphasizing collection, documentation, and dispersal. She has collaborated with institutions including the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation and the Catalogue Raisonné Scholars Association, and her writing has appeared in Fashion Projects and exhibition catalogs for BRIC Arts Media and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Mae has presented internationally and exhibited at institutions such as Cornell University, efa Project Space, and the Textile lMuseum in Tilburg. She apprenticed with tapestry artist Helena Hernmarck and continues to work with her, while developing her own practice under the name Common Loom and co-founding Rag Rug Study Group.

MIMI PROBER

Mimi Prober is the founder of her eponymous label, established in 2014 and grounded in sustainability, preservation, and ethical production. Her work focuses on textile preservation, botanical color, and the development of custom textiles in collaboration with farms and mills. Through artisanal natural dyeing and locally sourced materials, Prober creates seasonally driven, one-of-a-kind pieces that honor textile narratives and community-based production. Her collections have been featured on Vogue Runway and New York Fashion Week, and her work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum at FIT and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.