Mahdiyyah, the Fabric Alchemist, is an Afro-Indigenous Zero Waste Designer, Circular Fashion Educator, and Textile Waste Strategist.

Her skill of patchworking discarded scraps mirrors the master quilting and pioneer upcycle skills of her African ancestors, and the regard for regenerative designing with natural materials echoes that of her Indigenous ancestors’ past.

Her process of Fabric Alchemy throughout design + education is her approach to calling on ancient techniques like repurposing(upcycling) and mechanical recycling of discarded materials from nature, to alchemize them into more useful garments and fabric material.

This process is what she centers her educational workshops on, which ultimately considers the life cycle of clothing, the health of its wearer, and the reverberations of textile systems felt in communities of the global majority.

Mahdiyyah has been a recipient of the Fibers Fund Fibershed Grant, Slow Factory Garment 2 Garment Grant, and a winner of the Wear We Are Going Eco-Design Program. She has facilitated her workshop series with Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, Fibershed, San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, East New York Farms, Harlem Children’s Zone High School, and more. Her work has been featured in Vogue, Forbes, WWD, and on shows like Tamron Hall, Showtime’s The Chi, and FuseTV’s Upcycle Nation. Some of Mahdiyyah’s speaking engagements include The Fabric Act: Live at The Canvas, Earthday: Global Fashion Exchange in partnership with Fashion Revolution USA and Greeningfullife, and Conscious Fashion Collective: Demystifying Financial Sustainability in Slow Fashion.

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