TLDR: My name is Alix Vasquez. I am the founder of a clothing research & design studio, Herderin, based in San Rafael, California. I am formally trained as a sociologist and have a PhD in the field. I co-founded an MIT-based nonprofit and two R&D studios in the last 12 years. I am currently working on a body of work surrounding identity, social connection and selfhood through my research, Clothing the Self.
I am foremost a mother to my son, Julien. Together, we live in a small home on a hillside in San Rafael, California, surrounded by eucalyptus, acacia, bay, oak, and walnut trees. Our home faces the mountain that the Coast Miwok named támal pájis, meaning “west hill.” Mount Tamalpais is said to reflect the contours of a young Miwok girl who was saved from a rival tribe by the shuddering of the mountain. I was raised by a single working-class mother, and also my grandmother, whom we call Momita. I was born “Christina Alexandria Najaf-Pir,” as my father was from Tehran, Iran, and I took his name at birth. Later, my name was changed legally and socially to what people know me as today: Alexandria Vasquez.
When my grandfather left his body, which occupied the working position of janitor for his economic career, he left me $20,000. I was the only person in our large Puerto Rican family to receive this mysterious funding, but I knew what to do with it: go to college, move far away for a while. I never cared for high school and barely graduated, but from the City College of San Francisco, I transferred to The New School in New York in 2007. During my undergraduate studies, I was an intern for The Brooklyn Rail, reporting directly to the founding editor, Theodore Hamm.
I eventually moved to Virginia and studied under the current SSSP President, Dr. Sarah Jane Brubaker, at Virginia Commonwealth University. Aside from my mentor at The Oxbow School, Stephen Thomas, SJB was very influential in my life. Under her guidance, I wrote Choosing Surgical Birth: Personal Choice and Medical Jurisdiction, which is still widely cited to this day.
After earning my Master’s in Science in Sociology in 2012, I moved to Boston to study Sociology at Brandeis University under Peter Conrad. I co-authored a paper with him on how technology interacts with the emotional experience of illness. In my first year of my doctoral studies, I also began working under MIT professor, Dr. Ofer Sharone. We co-authored Sociology as a Strategy of Support, as well as another paper with Rand Ghayad, an economist with The World Bank. Our work was the inspiration for our MIT-based nonprofit, The Institute for Career Transitions. Former President Barack Obama invited our team to the White House to sign a historic pledge with over 300 corporations on non-discriminatory hiring practices for the long-term unemployed.
My dissertation was an ethnography took place in Chicago, Illinois. The findings revealed that mismatched work can be an emotional experience where people seek to mend their expectations for career- and life outcomes, and find strategies to exercise their agency through their current roles. A key context that guided this research was the concepts of ontological security and identity-work match. Misfit: The Impact of Mismatched Jobs on Creative Workers and the Organizations that Employ Them was defended in 2019, and I became a Doctor of Philosophy.
During the first year of my doctoral studies back in 2012, I began making clothing for myself with a vintage Husqvarna sewing machine. Experimenting with interior design, I removed the mirrors from my home. This abstinence from visual feedback helped me develop a somatic approach to clothing design— the center of my design practice.
While managing my role as a graduate student of sociology, I began working in design. I worked on my partner’s project, an empathically designed palliative care facility for the elderly, which was his Master’s Thesis in Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In a number of projects, he and I brought together sociology, architecture, and empathic design (inspired by Temple Grandin) for well-being. In 2014, I officially set up my home sewing studio. I now had acquired several machines, purchased large tailor shears, and a textbook on patternmaking.
My first design was a wrap pant. I realized that dealing with any kind of inflexibility in clothing was not realistic for a woman’s body, as it consistently and constantly changes (monthly and throughout her lifespan). Simultaneously, I created a light I named Kodama. As I intellectually engaged in sociology, I was sensually creating my material surroundings from feelings and desire: a balance of the mind and body.
I kinda ended up living four years without mirrors, and broadly during that time, I created two startups based on my research, as well as brought to market a couple of products. My professors thought I lacked focus, but academia was never meant to be my career profession.
In 2017, prior to graduating from Brandeis, I exhibited the Kodama light and my clothing at an alumni fundraiser for Oxbow School in Napa, California. Richard and Ann Grace of Grace Family Vineyards, as well as the Vella Cheese family, bought Kodama lamps for their homes, though it was Richard Grace who asked if I could visit their winery before heading back to my mirrorless cabin in New Hampshire. I agreed without hesitation. In that meeting, I was commissioned to make a Kodama light from a redwood tree on their property, and his wife purchased a generous number of styles from my clothing collection. Later that year, I delivered the light to their tasting room, and was then offered funding to start a clothing brand. I named the clothing brand Herderin. I was using natural fibers, and I was moving back home to California in the urban environment of the San Francisco Bay Area. I wanted the Herderin archetype to stay alive through this brand, and for others to have access to clothing that is made outside the lens of fashion.
I teach part time at The University of San Francisco, and am writing the future publication, Clothing The Self: Material Resources, Reflexive Identity Work, and the Social Dimensions of Everyday Dressing. To date, I have bridged my work as a sociologist, artist, and designer to the the pragmatism of our economic structure. I am grateful I am able to survive in this world with integrity, holding earnest the value of what I offer others through my existence. My only real goal is resonate, and create opportunities for resonance for others. I believe this depth is what has the capacity to move us in the seat of our souls.
I am also sincerely committed to community, and that also includes local politics and grassroots organization. I am currently the elected delegate for the Marin Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, and a producer and member of Fibershed. I am also a member of: Bay Area Made, Marin-Sonoma Impact Ventures, SF Climate Week, American Craft Council, West Coast Craft, American Sociological Association, and The National Association for Latino Arts and Cultures.
If you resonate with my story & work, I would love to hear from you.