ABOUT
Azaria Van Der Stok-Smallwood
My name is Azaria Van Der Stok-Smallwood, and I am a Black, Jewish, and queer designer, academic, and activist originally from Pennsylvania and currently based in Brooklyn, New York. I graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2026 with a BFA in Apparel Design and am a 2026 Fashion Scholarship Fund recipient and Virgil Abloh “Post-Modern” Scholar.
My work exists at the intersection of design, identity, and liberation. Grounded in both critical theory and tactile craft, I center the body—particularly the Black body—as a political, historical, and spiritual site. Drawing from my African American heritage, I explore transgenerational trauma, cultural resilience, and ancestral knowledge through craft. Through slow, deliberate fabrication, I resist capitalist speed and reclaim time and labor as sites of autonomy.
My practice operates through modularity and repetition, using exhaustive hand processes to mirror both systems of confinement and strategies of endurance and communal healing. My garments function as political bodies—living archives that expose and subvert Western sartorial codes, respectability politics, and the commodification of Black labor.
Through fashion, scholarship, and tactile creation, I unite theory and praxis. My work makes visible what has been historically obscured, positioning the dressed body as an act of defiance, remembrance, and possibility. Craft becomes method, medium, and messenger—translating mind, body, and spirit into garments that carry the weight of history while imagining liberated futures.