I am a sociologist, author, and founder of Herderin, a regenerative fashion brand for tall women. My research examines identity, material culture, and organizations under precarious capitalism.

I'm a sociologist, designer, and founder of Herderin, a regenerative fashion brand for tall women based in San Rafael, California. My research examines identity, embodiment, and material culture under precarious capitalism—work that bridges academic scholarship with lived practice through clothing design.

I'm also a mother to my son, Julien. Together, we live on a hillside overlooking Mount Tamalpais, the mountain the Coast Miwok named támal pájis, "west hill." The mountain is said to hold the shape of a young Miwok girl saved by its shuddering—a story about landscape, protection, and transformation that resonates with my own path.

alix vasquez in vermont

Background

I was raised by my single working-class mother and my grandmother, Momita, in the Bay Area. Born Christina Alexandria Najaf-Pir to an Iranian father, I later became Alexandria Vasquez—a name change that reflects my Puerto Rican heritage and chosen identity. When my grandfather, who worked as a janitor his entire career, left his body, he left me $20,000. I was the only person in our large family to receive this gift. I knew immediately what to do with it: go to college.

I barely graduated high school, but from City College of San Francisco, I transferred to The New School in New York in 2007. During my undergraduate years, I interned at The Brooklyn Rail under founding editor Theodore Hamm.

I earned my Master's in Sociology from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2012, studying under Dr. Sarah Jane Brubaker (current SSSP President). My thesis, Choosing Surgical Birth: Personal Choice and Medical Jurisdiction, remains widely cited in medical sociology.

I completed my PhD in Sociology at Brandeis University in 2019 under Peter Conrad, with whom I co-authored research on technology and illness experience. During my doctoral studies, I also worked with MIT professor Dr. Ofer Sharone, co-founding The Institute for Career Transitions, an MIT-based nonprofit addressing long-term unemployment. Our work brought us to the White House in 2014, where President Obama and over 300 corporations pledged non-discriminatory hiring practices for the long-term unemployed.

My dissertation, Misfit: The Impact of Mismatched Jobs on Creative Workers and the Organizations that Employ Them, was an organizational ethnography examining how people navigate mismatched work and maintain ontological security when career expectations diverge from reality.

Research & Design Practice

During my first year of doctoral studies in 2012, I began making my own clothing with a vintage Husqvarna sewing machine. I also removed the mirrors from my home—an experiment that lasted four years and fundamentally shaped my design practice. This abstinence from visual feedback taught me to understand clothing somatically, through felt sense rather than appearance. This embodied approach remains central to how I design.

While completing my PhD, I collaborated on empathically designed spaces for palliative care, bringing together sociology, architecture, and empathic design for well-being. I created products including wrap pants designed for bodies that change and the Kodama light, balancing intellectual rigor with sensual creation—mind and body in dialogue.

In 2017, I exhibited my work at an Oxbow School fundraiser in Napa. Richard and Ann Grace of Grace Family Vineyards commissioned a Kodama light and purchased my clothing collection. That meeting led to seed funding for what became Herderin, a clothing brand using natural, regenerative fibers and designed outside the lens of fashion.

Current Work

I currently teach at The University of San Francisco and am completing my book manuscript, Clothing The Self: Material Resources, Reflexive Identity Work, and the Social Dimensions of Everyday Dressing. My research has appeared in leading sociology journals, and I've presented my work on performative capital—a new theoretical framework examining how identity performance requires material resources under precarious capitalism—to academic and public audiences.

Through Herderin, I apply my research on embodiment and material culture directly, creating clothing specifically for tall women (I'm 6'0" myself) using Climate Beneficial certified materials and plant-dyed fabrics. The brand represents seven years of integrating sociological insight with design practice, serving an underserved market at the intersection of tall sizing and sustainability.

I'm committed to community organizing and local politics. I serve as elected delegate for the Marin Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and am a producer and member of Fibershed. I'm also a member of Bay Area Made, Marin-Sonoma Impact Ventures, American Sociological Association, and The National Association for Latino Arts and Cultures.

My work bridges sociology, design, and community building with the pragmatism necessary to survive with integrity in our economic structure. I believe in creating opportunities for resonance—work that moves people in the seat of their souls.