“Art is in my blood,” Jazsalyn McNeil said. “I don’t think it’s something that you choose; it’s the way I live my life. Art always finds its way into everything that I make. I express myself through my interactions with the world around me and into art and design.”
The College of Textiles alumna is no stranger to pushing boundaries. She juggled an internship with Ralph Lauren, a modeling career in Charleston and designing her own clothing. As a sophomore, she won first place for her design in NC State’s annual fashion week, Art2Wear. Shortly after, her professor urged her to enter the Belk Southern Designer Showcase. In less than a week, McNeil had to compose five looks for Belk’s spring collection.
“Over the weekend, I came up with four other designs and contacted one of my friends to do a photo shoot,” McNeil said. “I wanted the photos to embody the message I was trying to send; he was good at understanding the vision I was going with for my design.”
After submitting her photographs, Belk called McNeil to its headquarters in Charlotte to present her work. Simultaneously terrified and thrilled, McNeil scrambled to cement her designs.
“On my way to Charlotte, I was still putting things together up until the last minute,” McNeil said. “I was sewing nonstop the night before. They were intrigued with my designs and a week or two later they told me I was a finalist. I was invited back with 15 other finalists for the reveal — they ended up featuring all 15 of our designs in their store in the spring. That was my breakthrough.”
“Frontier,” her first full collection, featured geothermal-inspired jacquard knits and bold prints. According to McNeil, the collection intends to emanate a confident, empowered woman on the brink of new discoveries.
Though McNeil continued to model, design gradually became her priority.
“Modeling requires a lot of traveling,” McNeil said. “At the same time, it benefitted my degree. I made a lot of contacts and got a lot of exposure in the industry before getting work in professional design. It was a priceless experience for me.”
McNeil made her debut as an emerging designer at Charleston Fashion Week, showcasing her psychedelic collection, “K^2.” The collection has a galactic aura, featuring lamé (metallic) threads and vibrant colors. One of the dresses is a lustrous black, with the appearance of paint interspersed on the dress.
As a student, she learned to manipulate her original artwork via software and print it onto fabric. Frequenting the College of Textiles’ knitting lab, she’d intertwine colors with one of the circular knit machines. McNeil’s “Sol Luna” line has a tie-dye appearance, albeit printed fabric. The pattern replicates a pearlescent painting she did in watercolor.
“As I progressed with other projects, I experimented with unconventional materials,” McNeil said. “I’m trying to select things to provoke a certain emotion. I’m trying to stimulate the senses. I’m drawn to materials that are transparent.”
Each collection is distinctive, conveying her aesthetic sensibilities.
“I always wanted to do something creative,” McNeil said. “If I weren’t in textiles, I’d be in some type of art. There’s a difference between an artist and a designer and I’m in-between the two. I like to create things, not necessarily for commercialization. I just like to push the boundaries for design and art. It’s how I ended up working with Jesse Jur’s research group, NEXT [Nano-Extended Textiles].”
Recently, McNeil returned to campus to help design the PULSE dress with Jur, part of her “Bioluminescence” collection. The dress lights up in accordance to the wearer’s heartbeat. The lights embedded in the fabric respond to textile electrocardiogram biosensors. McNeil and Jur presented it at an exhibit for Charleston Fashion Week’s 10-year anniversary, and last month Jur featured the dress during his TEDx talk on integrating electronics into garments.
“In textiles, there’s a new field we’re entering in which design and art integrated with science and technology,” McNeil said. “I’m a scientist and artist. I approach it as an experiment and present it in other people to get inspired. I want to create a platform to expose new ways of thinking for interdisciplinary fields.”
According to NC State Libraries Fellow Lauren Di Monte, a short video explaining the dress and Jur’s research will appear online as a library story later in the year.
“We’ll be exhibiting the dress as well at Hunt Library in the Technology Showcase with the interactive component that will be built in Dr. Jur’s lab,” Di Monte said. “People can touch something and see their own heart rates go through the dress. We’re also exploring the idea of adding a video that explains the dress to the immersion theater in the Hunt.”
McNeil has been working to raise awareness on the instillation and the upward trajectory of textile technologies.
“It’s a little intimidating, but we need to encourage people to dive in and go for it,” McNeil said. “It was a learning curve for me. Over time, I learned how to connect the light to a microcontroller unit and what batteries could power the board. I learned about coding so the heart could respond to the sensors. We all have to come together and think in different ways, breaking the stigma of what it is to be a designer and what it is to be an engineer. It’s about coming together.”
Relishing a break from her normally hectic routine, McNeil anticipates pursuing innovative projects. The Raleigh native is looking elsewhere for inspiration, considering moving to an area more conducive to her interest in art, science and technology.
“Once you travel, especially by yourself, you just have an itch to keep exploring the world,” McNeil said.
A version of this article appeared in print on August 25, 2016 on page 7 with the headline: “Alumna ties in textiles and technology.”
NC State alumna Jazsalyn McNeil poses in "Pulse," a dress with integrated lighting.
