About the designer

Angel Chang is an American womenswear designer who has been working with ethnic minority artisans in southwest rural China for the last eight years. She began her career designing for Donna Karan Collection in New York and Chloé (See by Chloé) in Paris. 

Her first eponymous label (2006 – 2008) incorporated smart textiles into hi-tech garments and received several accolades including the Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation Award and the Cartier Women’s Initiative Award.  The collection’s use of innovative materials, including color-changing prints, light-up fabrics, and self-heating linings, was a first for the American designer market.

Disillusioned by technology’s unfulfilled promise for future dressing, she sought to understand the future of clothing better by studying the ancient past. 

Since 2010, Angel has worked closely with ethnic minority fabric masters in the rural mountain villages of Guizhou province, China. Atelier Angel Chang was created in 2012 to bring global appreciation for indigenous craftsmanship and to revive traditional fabric-making practices in need of urgent safeguarding. She became the first recipient of Pernod Ricard China’s Le Cercle Fund, an artist award for social responsibility to support the preservation of traditional craftsmanship in China. 

As a TED Resident and Smithsonian Artist, Angel now speaks to global audiences about fashion, sustainability, and indigenous knowledge. As a NEST Professional Fellow and Member of the Artisan Alliance, she provides design expertise to artisan groups around the world.

She has been featured in American publications The New York Times, VOGUE, ELLE, W, Women’s Wear Daily, PAPER, and foreign publications VOGUE China, L’Officiel, Jalouse, Madame Figaro, Die Welt, South China Morning Post. Her has been collected by The Museum at FIT and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.

She received an MA in Modern Art from Columbia University, and BA cum laude in Art History & Visual Arts from Barnard College in New York City.