Tech Tailor
Merging creativity and coding, Christina Ernst showcases her wearable tech innovations on her popular Instagram feed and YouTube channel, She Builds Robots. (Image by Lisa Predko)
Most fashion designers obsess over fabric, fit, and color. Christina Ernst, ’19 ENG, has additional concerns: Which motor produces the motion she’s seeking, and how can she hide the battery pack?
So goes fashioneering, the term she’s coined for projects that fuse robotics with wearable whimsy. On She Builds Robots, her popular Instagram feed and YouTube channel, Ernst showcases creations like a self-twirling dress, a Bluetooth-connected gramophone corset, and a working Venus flytrap hat. Her video of a robotic Remy (from the movie Ratatouille) sitting on her head, pulling her hair while she chops veggies in her Chicago apartment, has racked up more than 2 million views.
A crafty kid, Ernst began playing with design as a teen, lopping off sleeves and sewing her own homecoming dresses. She pondered a fashion career, but also loved math. A senior-year computer science class at Carl Sandburg High School in Oak Park, Ill., illuminated her path. “It was quite a creative class in a way that I wasn’t expecting—trying to think algorithmically and coming at a problem multiple ways,” she says. “I fell in love with it.”
When she arrived at Illinois, classmates who’d been coding for years intimidated her. But time in the lab, creating tangible objects like robots, boosted Ernst’s confidence. During a hackathon her sophomore year, she had the bright idea to make a color-changing LED Bluetooth dress. “The response was so positive—seeing girls and young women interacting with this project, in ways where they’re expressing their excitement to learn the underlying mechanics,” she says.
Christina Ernst uses electrical engineering and computer science concepts to create novel clothing designs, including this light-up, stained-glass-window-inspired dress. (Image by Lisa Predko)
“[Computer science] was creative in a way I wasn’t expecting. I fell in love with it.” —Christina Ernst, ’19 ENG
She walked away with a small grant from the 1517 Fund, an educational initiative, and a plan to recruit girls to STEM by blending art and science. During an independent study her senior year, guided by the U. of I.’s Lara Hebert, ’91 ED, EDM ’97, PHD ’12 ED, Ernst fine-tuned a curriculum of creative circuit and coding projects that she eventually distributed—along with supply kits—to Chicago Public Schools.
Now, Ernst fashioneers alongside her day job at Google. Her posts reveal the process—the cardboard prototypes, CAD-designed and 3D-printed parts, and coding corrections—and frequently invite audience input. When she’s done with designs like a Medusa dress with AI-powered snake heads or a self-knitting wig, she disassembles them, using the parts again for her next project.
The work, and her engaging explanations of it, has led to a stint as maker-in-residence at Chicago Public Libraries, appearances on the CBS series Mission Unstoppable, and high-profile collaborations, including with Marvel. For them, she created a kinetic cloak based on the series Ironheart (the superhero, fittingly, is a Chicago-based girl engineer). Someday, she hopes to design a look for the Met Gala.
What Ernst values most, though, are messages from like-minded young women. “The most common demographic is end-of-high-school-ish girls saying, ‘I was really on the fence about engineering, or it wasn’t on my radar at all. But you showed me that this can be creative and that I can merge my interests,’” she says. For Ernst, closing that circuit represents the ultimate fashioneering breakthrough.
Illinois Alumni, Fall 2026
