Katrin Schnabl’s creative path is a thoughtful study in fluidity– across disciplines, geographies, and forms. Trained as a dancer in Germany, she arrived in New York City in the mid-1980s and quickly immersed herself in the city’s experimental performance world– (think Pina Bausch and Bill T. Jones in the dance scene and Laurie Anderson and Karen Finley in the performance art space.) Her early experience designing costumes for avant-garde dance companies laid the foundation for a practice that would eventually span fashion design, object-making, and installation.

After working with renowned legacy fashion houses such as Jil Sander and Carolina Herrera, Schnabl launched her own collections– first Miche.Kimsa, then an eponymous label known for its precise tailoring and dramatic sculptural lines. Now based in Chicago, she is the Chair of the Fashion Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where her cross-disciplinary ethos shapes a new generation of designers and creative thinkers.

What sets Schnabl’s work apart is not just the range of media she engages, but one vital conceptual throughline: a deep sensitivity to movement, space, and material. Her garments often begin as “proto-structures”, as she calls them– abstract forms that can be draped, altered, or even recontextualized– while her installations, such as the Limb series, crafted from hand-knit plastic bags, stretch textile practice into a kind of spatial choreography, meant to invite the viewer to move around the art as part of the experience.

Whether designing costumes for the San Francisco Ballet or curating residencies that explore the future of fashion, Schnabl treats the body not just as a site for adornment but as an active participant in a more expansive dialogue about identity, environment, and transformation.

Here, a gallery of Schnabl’s work as a dancer, fashion and costume designer, and her installations.

Gallery: Katrin Schnabl Photo Credits

Recent work:
Photographer: Eugene Tang

Others:
Photo Courtesy of the Artist