Textile Hive

We are thrilled to welcome Brenda Lin to Textile Hive on June 30 for On Collecting: Observations from a Textile Collector’s Daughter. This will be our first opportunity to host an author in our new space, making the evening especially meaningful.

We first met Brenda and her family in 2019, when we had the opportunity to visit their remarkable collection in Taiwan. Built over decades by her mother, the collection includes an extraordinary range of Chinese baby carriers, children’s clothing, and related material culture. Experiencing the collection firsthand left a lasting impression and sparked many conversations about collecting, stewardship, and the stories objects carry across generations.

Writer Brenda Lin grew up with a grandfather who collected art and a mother who collects children’s textiles. She never fully understood the impulse to amass objects until her mother invited her to translate the books she had written about her collection from Chinese to English. Through the work of translation and later archiving, Lin began to understand the text in textiles, a realization that eventually became a central metaphor in her forthcoming book, Unraveling Threads: Essays on Inheritance.

In this illustrated talk, Lin will share a visual essay that asks: What is the impulse that drives collectors to build their collections? What passions, questions, and tensions shape a collector’s mind? And how might a collection be passed on?

Stories and reflections on collecting, inheritance, and the ways collections connect us across generations.

June 30, 2026
5:00 PM
Textile Hive

Register through the link in our bio 👆

Join us this Saturday for workshop, Mending at Textile Hive.

We are sharing a few sweet samples of what participants will be making as part of this memory centered workshop.

Mending invites participants into a process of memory sharing, reflection, and art making. Limei will guide participants in creating a mixed media collage from their story, exploring how memory, repair, and material can come together as acts of connection and care.

First session:Saturday, June 6, 202610:00 AM to 11:30 AM

Additional sessions take place June 7, June 13, and June 14 at the same time. Participants are welcome to take one or more sessions.

Sliding scale workshop fee.

Space is limited, details and registration through the link in our bio.

📸 Limei Lai

We are excited to continue sharing the first workshops and upcoming programs taking shape in our new Textile Hive space.

Join artist for Mending, a hands on workshop exploring memory, repair, and the stories carried through cloth.

The first session takes place Saturday, June 6, 2026, 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM, with additional sessions on June 7, June 13, and June 14 at the same time.

Participants are welcome to take one or more sessions.

We are especially excited to host Limei and this event, as we have long admired the energy, care, and dialogue that come through her installations and projects 🫶

Limei will lead a memory sharing conversation and guide participants in creating a mixed media collage from their story. Through this process, participants will consider how memory, mending, and material can come together as acts of reflection, connection, and care.

Created as a place for study, making, exchange, and community gathering, our new space allows us to welcome people into the archive in more hands on ways. This workshop continues that next chapter, inviting participants to engage with textiles not only as objects of history and design, but as materials connected to memory, care, and everyday life.

Sliding scale fee, please egister through the link in bio

Travel Postcards: ANOTHER SPACE

Another highlight from our New York trip was visiting Second Skin at ANOTHER SPACE, founded by Estrellita Brodsky, a longtime friend of Andrea’s. Their friendship gives this visit a special resonance, connecting Andrea’s own lifelong engagement with textiles, material culture, and artistic exchange to the work being presented in the space today.

is a not for profit program established by the Daniel and Estrellita B. Brodsky Family Foundation and dedicated to building recognition and international awareness of artists from Latin America and its diaspora within a global context.

Second Skin beautifully reflected this mission. The exhibition brings together international artists and designers from the 1950s to today, with a focus on Latin America and its diaspora, exploring the intersection of art and fashion. Through video, photography, sculpture, archival material, garments, prints, and works on paper, the show considers clothing as a powerful medium for articulating identity, expressing culture and gender, and responding to political and social histories.

The exhibition also includes prints from , representing the work of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos, as well as early Andy Warhol photos and illustrations from the Jordan Schnitzer Collection. Together, these works add another layer to the show’s exploration of image, surface, persona, fashion, and the body.

The exhibition offered a moving reminder that fashion and clothing are far from neutral spaces, but are constantly evolving as we define ourselves and society. We were grateful to tour the show with its curator, Raul Martinez, and see such powerful work.

Second Skin is on view through May 18, 2026. For those in New York, we encourage you to make an appointment and experience it before it closes.

👋 We’ve had our heads down lately and are excited to begin sharing a few Winter/Spring updates and latergrams from recent travels, events, and projects.

One highlight was our visit to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where we spent time with the Costume Institute, including visiting a recent donation of one of Andrea’s Dakota Transit garments. The piece is a unique batik leather work unlike anything Andrea had created. We were grateful for the opportunity to see it up close with members of the conservation team, some of whom shared a connection through having met Andrea over the years.

During our visit, we also spied some impressive boots, including a few choice Alexander McQueens. Swipe through for some behind the scenes views.

We were also excited to preview the expansion of the Costume Institute galleries and the opening of Costume Art, the inaugural exhibition in the new Condé Nast Galleries. In our behind the scenes look at the exhibition, we were especially impressed by the range of body types and accessibility considerations represented in the mannequins for the show.

We imagine Andrea would have been happy to know one of her creations now has a home within the Costume Institute collection, and we were honored to donate a spare Dakota Transit label to accompany the garment.

Happy Mother’s Day 💐to all of the moms who never stop exploring. Thankful to have received this snapshot of Andrea from . Thinking about the endless adventures and the many people Andrea befriended along the way 🤍🕊️

A BIG THANK YOU to everyone who joined us for our community opening. We were enjoying the event so much we forgot to take photos 🙃 It was such a pleasure to share the space and welcome you into our new living archive. We truly felt Andrea’s spirit celebrating with us throughout the evening.

A special thank you as well to our small but talented team, who devoted so much energy to making the event happen, and to for nourishing us with such delicious food.

It was especially meaningful to see so many familiar faces who have supported our collection and Portland TextileX Month over the years. While we are still building additional storage and display cases for the space, we are excited to enter this next phase of activating it and hosting more programs. More to come soon on that front soon…

A special shoutout as well to and for the snazzy name tags, which were delicately embroidered by our talented intern .sewing

If you were not able to attend one of our opening events, we would love to welcome you to one of our Sunday tours. Please join us by registering through the link in our bio.

❤️🙏

Happy Birthday, Andrea 🕊️

Remembering your love of flowers and gardens, and your adventurous spirit, on this sunny day.

Last week we had the honor of hosting a student visit from the department in our new living archive space. The visit was arranged by the talented . During the tour, Caleb and Tricia realized that Andrea and Tricia’s design lives had significant overlaps in New York City.

Tours like these are foundational to how we hope our new space is utilized. They look both back and forward, helping to contextualize the collection while demonstrating how archives such as ours can inspire current and future generations of textile designers.

Educators, students, designers, and enthusiasts are all invited to explore the collection in person. Learn more and schedule your visit through our website.

It’s been a week since we opened our new Textile Hive space and we’ve already welcomed over 100 visitors. From our opening celebration to the Weaving a Living Archive panel, first tour, guest lecture, and workshop, we’ve been overjoyed by the response and the energy flowing through the space 🙏

We can feel Andrea smiling down on us, her spirit woven into every corner 🕊️

We still have work ahead before we feel fully settled, but for now, thank you to all the team members who worked so hard to bring this space to life, and to the skilled tradespeople who helped shape it.

Come see it for yourself before construction 🦺 continues in mid November by signing up for a Saturday tour through the link in our bio 👆

See you at the Hive soon and follow along as we shake the space 💫