Kenna Libes is a PhD candidate (Bard Graduate Center) researching plus-size fashion of the 19th century. 

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She combines academic backgrounds in history, museum studies, and fashion and textiles with sewing knowledge gained through reproducing historical European and American clothing.

 

While she concentrates on research and writing, she has a diverse skill set and works in public interpretation (currently with the New-York Historical Society), exhibition development, and curation. In the past, she has worked in textile conservation and collections management.

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Since 2021 she has worked as a teaching assistant at Barnard College, Columbia University, and since 2025 she has taught courses at the SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology. She looks forward to further teaching opportunities.

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Exhibitions to which she has contributed include:

Real Clothes, Real Lives: 200 Years of What Women Wore, the Smith College Historic Clothing Collection (New-York Historical Society, September 27, 2024 - June 22, 2025)
Women’s Work (N-YHS, July 21, 2023 - August 25, 2024)

Threads of Power: Lace from the Textilmuseum St. Gallen (Bard Graduate Center, 2022-2023) 

The Roaring Twenties and the Swinging Sixties (The Museum at FIT, 2021)

Learning through Play: British and French Tabletop Games from the 18th and 19th Centuries (John Hay Library, 2019)

Encountering the Buddha: Art and Practice Across Asia (Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, 2017-2022).