Yahoo Lifestyle Nihl Fall 2025: Neil Grotzinger Shows Off His Textile Artistry
Neil Grotzinger has a passion for textiles and it shows in his work.
A part-time professor at Parsons School of Design, the designer of Nihl has had a longtime love affair with materials and expertise in embroidery and beadwork.
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For his brand’s fall collection, Grotzinger turned to the mundane — old pages from Sears, Roebuck and other catalogs — and reinterpreted them on everything from bias-cut dresses to insets on traditional dress shirts.
But he didn’t just reprint the pages on the fabric. Instead, he used sublimation techniques and an iron to add the vintage spreads to the material and then wrapped the spreads in a spiral to create the design. The result was a diverse pattern that appeared faded and was indented by the iron. “It’s basically the same process you use to digitally print fabric,” he explained. “But it’s less effective because you’re using an iron. But I just like it, it has a strangely homey feeling to it.”
In addition to the catalog pages, the collection ought to reinterpret the idea of office wear by taking simple cotton shirts, blazers and practical trousers and recreating them in oversize silhouettes with layers of undergarments. Ditto for the long overcoats.
But perhaps the most eye-catching of the designs were tops that he created by dissolving the material in water and then separating the stitches, which resulted in the pieces intentionally looking old and “moldy,” he said. “It’s as if a dress became shards and wound up only as a top.”
Many of the pieces within the Nihl collection are one-offs, but that’s intentional. “Fashion is very fun for me. I really love textile artistry and experimenting with different techniques,” he said. “So a lot of my brand is just like me exploring some of those techniques.”
Launch Gallery: Nihl Fall 2025 Ready-to-Wear Collection
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