Emma Cali is a technical apparel designer for the outdoor industry and textile artist with a focus in material r+d and textile waste streams. Her practice bridges her formal education and design thinking in Product Design (Parsons BFA, 2022), a deep passion for traditional textile hand-crafts, and an innate curiosity of how to leave the world better than she found it. 

 

Her passion for understanding sustainable systems and manufacturing has lead her to a hands-on exploration of the apparel industry, starting with Patagonia. Out of college, she started working for them in retail, making her way to in-house repair specialist and learning from their expert team at Worn Wear, and eventually becoming a Textile and Color Designer at their HQ in Ventura, CA. She then followed her passion for textile waste transformation and  found herself at the Eileen Fisher Renew Center in Irvington, NY sorting material and understanding their reclamation infrastructure. She now works for SY Design as an Associate Technical Apparel Designer while pursuing her own studio practice. 
 

She has had the opportunity to investigate the apparel industry from many scales and perspectives, affording her with a unique way of problem solving and designing. It is her goal to balance the reality of  industry with the hope and magic of an artistic practice.