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Anke Loh
Sage Foundation Chair, Department of Fashion Design
Anke Loh is an Associate Professor and Sage Foundation Chair of the Department of Fashion
Design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she has taught since 2005. Her current
research entails finding ways to integrate stretchable circuitry into textiles, ready-to-wear fashion,
and accessories for aesthetic as well as functional purposes. Loh explores the possibilities of how
technology can influence ready-to-wear fashion as a visionary tool for expression of identity,
story, culture, and urban and natural surroundings. She seeks out explicit, implied, and singular
approaches for fashion to communicate and connect in unconventional and unprecedented ways.
Loh has collaborated with a range of interdisciplinary teams. Her work on incorporating fiber
optics into interactive fabric included collaboration with Luminex (Italy and Miami) and the
Computer Science department at Northwestern University. She broke new ground by integrating
Philips Lumalive panels into dresses and skirts, featuring video imagery on soft, embedded LED
screens. She is presently collaborating with the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin to research and
explore the possibilities of stretchable circuitry, and has been pursuing similar research with the
John Rogers Group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
From 2000–05, with her company ROSSO NV, Loh showed her collections biannually during
Paris Fashion Week and on runways and showrooms at New York Fashion Week, Centre Pompidou,
Osaka Collection Show, and Mode Expo, Antwerp. During this period, she worked as an independent
design consultant and apprenticed for various Belgian fashion designer brands, including Martin
Margiela, Paris.
Loh earned a master’s degree in Fashion Design from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp
in 1999.