Kyra Markosian

These garments celebrate an integral, often overlooked part of fashion design: the techpack. A techpack is a collection of information that contains all the specifications necessary to fabricate a garment, including material data, construction methods, and detailed measurements. Techpacks are notoriously frustrating and time-consuming to create, but at Maison Markosian we wanted to celebrate this integral tool with its own garment. Each Techpack Button-Up is hand-annotated in the USA with a collection of notes you might find on an in-progress techpack. The Techpack sweatshirts are screen-printed in the USA using graphics that were originally hand-drawn to scale and digitized.

My mom has worked as a scenic artist since she was a teenager, painting sets for theater, film, and television. One her main responsibilities as a scenic artist is to take new objects and artificially age them to tell a story. Over the years, her work clothes have become works of art in and of themselves, covered in layers and layers of paint. She taught me some of her tricks of the trade, and using her techniques for replicating authentic age patterns, I hand-painted each of these chore jackets. This style became of the best-selling pieces from the Maison Markosian Fall/Winter ‘24 collection.

American astronauts aboard the International Space Station primarily rely on COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) clothing. During their stay on the ISS, they typically wear t-shirts and khakis, modified for their specific use with belts and added velcro patches. Those clothes were not designed with microgravity environments in mind and can be greatly improved upon.

I designed a unisex apparel set that considers the body’s attitude in microgravity, comfort during long-term wear, ease of dress, and aesthetics.

A collection of work from the Johnson Space Center Softgoods Lab.

In collaboration with my fellow Cole Haan Innovation designers Emily Boksenbaum and Jeff Mokos, I designed the brief for this footwear series as well as the first Grand Ambition collection that went to market. Our goal was to design a comfort system that could be integrated into a variety of footwear silhouettes, as well as aesthetically and functionally keep up with the modern professional woman. To date, Grand Ambition has been one of the most successful women’s lines from Cole Haan.

One of my final projects at Cole Haan was to design the women’s offering of the upcoming flagship series, 4.ZEROGRAND. These sketches show a range of ideation focusing on the implementation of mechanical cushioning, trend-forward aesthetics, and 3D knitting with leather integration. My intention was to honor the form language and function of previous ZEROGRAND collections while pushing the collection to be more accessible to a younger, more diverse consumer base. I ultimately left Cole Haan before the project was finalized, so these designs did not make it to market.

Challenged to reinvent the classic wingtip in a modern way, I created the leftmost prototype by using a TPU weld to join two different leathers. The concept gained traction and inspired the Cole Haan Men’s Grand team to create the 3.0 Fuse Oxford, which I made several prototypes for. Also shown is a more experimental materialization using transparent meshes and reflective paint in addition to the TPU weld.

This slip-on sneaker expands on the learnings gained from my first CNC-milled sneaker. This shoe continues to explore the potential advantages of combining digital fabrication with natural materials to achieve a range of material properties from a single, sustainable material.

In designing this second iteration, I was more considerate of the natural movement and compound curves of the foot than I had been in my first CNC-milled leather sneaker. By milling and laser-etching selectively with respect for the anatomy of the foot, I was able to create a shoe that is more flexible and supportive.

This slip-on sneaker combines digital fabrication with natural materials to achieve a range of material properties from a single, sustainable material. Beginning with three millimeter thick soling leather, I used a CNC mill to selectively removed material from areas of the pattern which require flexibility and left the leather at full thickness is areas which benefit from rigidity and structure.

A new material play on the timeless Reebok Classic Leather silhouette. Inspired by its name, I used a classic leatherworking technique- leather tooling- to hand-carve and emboss the iconic lines of the Classic Leather on vegetable tanned leather.

My inspiration for this shoe came from Nike's first Flyknit sneaker. Modern knit technology allows Nike to fabricate engineered uppers for their shoes with no waste material. Rather than knitting another engineered shoe, I experimented with using embroidery as a primary fabrication technique. By using the Tajima Pulse Digital Embroidery software, I had total control over both the direction and density of stitches in my final textiles. This allowed me to create a unified textile upper with unique zones of flexibility and structure. Also, because this upper is comprised of multiple stitch layers, I was able to create variation in surface texture, as well as blend and block colors.

This project was inspired by the historically symbolic language of tattoos, the imagery and placement of which often tell the story of the wearer’s life. This bag was made in response to the desire to add semi-literal imagery to one’s skin in order to mark lifetime milestones in addition to the body’s natural aging. The tattooed imagery on this bag is symbolic of formative experiences in my personal history. The vegetable tanned leather used is responsive to sun and will patina naturally with wear, reflecting my own aging.

This laser-cut and -etched sneaker was developed as a preliminary effort to use digital fabrication to selectively alter the structural properties of leather. By etching in areas of the shoe that benefit from increased flexibility, my intent was to create a shoe that uses only one material to meet the physical capabilities of performance footwear. This concept and pattern later translated into a sneaker that replaces laser-etching with CNC milling.

Featured in WGSN’s Innovative Sneaker Manufacturing report.