Projects

Symposium on Fashion + Politics: Fashion Praxis 2014

Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, Inc. (ART): A Virtual Conversation with Fashion Archivists 2022

An Archive of Memories: Preserving Stories Through the Objects We Wear for A Virtual Conversation with Fashion Archivists

Cardiff University: Secondhand Cultures in Unsettled Times Symposium 2021

The "Archaeology of Fashion" Research Project: Unveiling New Secondhand Practices and Cultures from the Perspective of First-Generation Americans for the Secondhand Cultures in Unsettled Times Symposium 2021

Secondhand Cultures in Unsettled Times Symposium Day 1: Problematizing Secondhand Cultures 2021

“Go for Fantasy or Reflect Reality?”: A Playful Visual Liaison between the Clothed Body, Embodiment, and Film Characters in American Vogue for UN:RESOLVED 2021

Association of Dress Historians (ADH) International Conference 2023: “Ad-Dressing Margins”: Historically Underrepresented Fashion and Style

"The Clothing We Wear, The Clothes We Keep: How First-Generation Americans Use Styling as Storytelling" for Association of Dress Historians (ADH) International Conference 2023

Black Girls in Archives (BGIA) presents its Tailored series to inspire and showcase individuals in the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) sector and the BGIA community.

"Lived, Documented, Remembered: A Life in Archives" for Tailored, a series presented by Black Girls in Archives (BGIA) 2024

Black Girls in Archives (BGIA) presents Shifting the Narrative: Black Women as Cultural Architects in Fashion, a roundtable discussion and an opportunity to explore how fashion tells stories, preserves history, and drives activism. It celebrates the creativity and impact of Black women transforming these spaces while also addressing the barriers they face.

Moderated by Nicole K. Rivas, a special guest lecture featuring Levi’s Brand Historian, Tracey Panek, who takes attendees on a journey through denim's iconic past, present, and future. From gold rush origins to global fashion staple, this is a rare chance to explore the rich history of one of America’s most iconic denim labels while discovering rare artifacts and stories that trace Levi’s evolution from workwear to cultural symbol.

Fostering Fashion: A Virtual Tour of the ASU FIDM Museum. A live virtual event moderated by Nicole K. Rivas and led by Christina Johnson, Senior ASU FIDM Museum Curator, provides more insight into the museum's resources, collections, and the making of its most recent exhibit, "Fashion Statements."

A live virtual event moderated by Nicole K. Rivas and led by Catherine Acosta, Product Archivist and Historian for the iconic Southern California footwear and action sports brand Vans, a VF Company. Discussions center on material culture, the blending of consumer products and art, and the breaking down of how Vans is bringing its history and heritage to modern-day marketing campaigns.

Moderated by Nicole K. Rivas, this guest lecture features textile artist, weaver, and writer Mae Colburn. In this live virtual event, Colburn shares insights into her Wool Skirts exhibition at Sudestada, offering background on the project’s development, themes, and artistic process. The discussion invites an engaging and thoughtful conversation on textiles, narrative, and contemporary art practice.

This virtual webinar, presented by the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, Inc. and hosted by Nicole K. Rivas, offers an overview of the NBCUniversal Archives & Collections department, including what they preserve and how these materials are utilized across internal teams and external institutions. With a vast portfolio spanning over a century of content across film, television, theme parks, and streaming, the session is led by Natalie Auxier, Manager of Archive Collections & Outreach at NBCUniversal. Auxier oversees archival holdings and material culture for film productions, theme parks, and corporate history, and brings over 15 years of experience working at major studio archives, including 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Company, and NBCUniversal.

Moderated by Nicole K. Rivas, this guest lecture features Principal Archivist at Thom Browne, and Founder & Curator of Archive Alive, Tianni Graham. In this live virtual event, Graham shares insights from her research exploring how socioeconomic conditions shape hip-hop fashion, with particular attention to the role of women and the ways style operates as both expression and cultural record. This discussion brings archival work into conversation with contemporary storytelling and visibility.

Re-Cycles of Dress: Costume Society of America’s 52nd Annual National Meeting and Symposium 2026

Nicole specializes in preserving personal stories and intergenerational anecdotes through worn garments. Her inquisitiveness centers on exploring the entanglements of archive collections, gender expressions, and women’s herstory across a sartorial framework referencing idiosyncratic ensembles as material (auto)biographies while engaging in active seminars to share her findings.

Her previous passion projects concentrated on rewriting the narrative surrounding the value of “old clothes”; challenging notions on how clothes are more than “just clothes”; the social life of fashion objects; and the radicalization in the fine art of fashion archiving as a feminist practice.

She provokes how we must think of history as not only dates, facts, and figures, but also of emotions and feelings. As guardians of information specially trained in safekeeping original material and a body of records, Nicole suggests that fashion archivists and historians should consider the lives of the wearers, as it informs how these tactile artifacts were worn, styled, and exhibited to bring memory into collections research.

Symposiums/ Panels

Costume Society of America (CSA) presents Re-Cycles of Dress, the theme for its 52nd Annual National Meeting and Symposium. The event highlights long-standing practices of reuse, remaking, and recycling—traditions rooted in human ingenuity, shaped by global cultural exchange, and newly urgent in the face of fast fashion and textile waste. (2026)
Black Girls in Archives (BGIA) presents Shifting the Narrative: Black Women as Cultural Architects in Fashion, a roundtable discussion and an opportunity to explore how fashion tells stories, preserves history, and drives activism. It celebrates the creativity and impact of Black women transforming these spaces while also addressing the barriers they face. (2025)
Black Girls in Archives (BGIA) presents its Tailored series to inspire and showcase individuals in the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) sector and the BGIA community. Each guest talks about their journey within their respective area of study to give insight and more information about their current work. (2024)
Association of Dress Historians (ADH) presents its autumn conference, “Ad-Dressing Margins”: Historically Underrepresented Fashion and Style, which focuses on centering historically marginalized communities, fashion, style, and dress in historic and modern contexts. The event included specialist theme workshops. (2023)
The Archivists Round Table (A.R.T.) presents A Virtual Conversation with Fashion Archivists, a discussion of current archival research and practices. (2022)
The En[…]Clothed Collective presents UN:RESOLVED, this inaugural event is a virtual immersive experience showcasing interdisciplinary, visual research bridging theory & practice centered on embodiment. (2021)
Secondhand Cultures in Unsettled Times, an interdisciplinary virtual symposium for the School of Journalism, Media & Culture at Cardiff University. (2021)
Fashion Praxis: A Symposium on Fashion and Politics, using Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition (1958) as a conceptual framework, conversations between participating faculty members across the disciplines within the New School present their research, connect their work, and think through the potential of what “fashion praxis” and “praxis” more generally might mean across disciplines, fields, practices, and realities. (2014)

Presentations

Inherited Threads, Recycled Identities: Styling Memory and Cultural Legacy in First-Generation Americans
Lived, Documented, Remembered: A Life in Archives
The Clothing We Wear, The Clothes We Keep: How First-Generation Americans Use Styling as Storytelling
An Archive of Memories: Preserving Stories Through the Objects We Wear
“Go for Fantasy or Reflect Reality?”: A Playful Visual Liaison between the Clothed Body, Embodiment, and Film Characters in American Vogue
The “Archaeology of Fashion” Research Project: Unveiling New Secondhand Practices and Cultures from the Perspective of First-Generation Americans

“Go for Fantasy or Reflect Reality?”: A Playful Visual Liaison between the Clothed Body, Embodiment, and Film Characters in American Vogue for UN:RESOLVED Symposium 2021 organized by The En[…]Clothed Collective.

"Lived, Documented, Remembered: A Life in Archives" for Tailored, a series presented by Black Girls in Archives (BGIA) in 2024.

Research

Podcast