About Angel Chang

Angel Chang is an American womenswear designer specializing in indigenous craftsmanship and traditional knowledge as a solution to climate change. She began her career designing for the 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 innovative textiles, she sought to understand the future of clothing better by studying the ancient past.

So in 2012, Angel moved to a remote mountain village in Guizhou province, rural China, to learn the traditional fabric-making techniques still practiced there by the indigenous Miao, Dong, and Buyi tribes. Following in the footsteps of her ancestors going back 14 generations, she rediscovered her ancestral roots and the plant dyes used in traditional Chinese medicine.

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