An Artist’s Eye, An Engineer’s Discipline

Camps grew up in a Trinidadian household where professional discipline and creativity coexisted. Her mother ran an optometry practice; her father worked in pharmaceuticals. Fashion arrived through Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Elle Decor, international collection coverage and a family history that included two great-grandfathers who were tailors.

At St. Joseph’s Convent, Camps studied physics, mathematics and studio art—the organizing principle of her career. Formula and figure drawing were not opposites; both required close observation, structural understanding and decisions about how a line should behave.

In 2004, she moved to New York to attend Columbia University’s engineering school. She graduated in 2008 with a degree in mechanical engineering, keeping her artistic life active through studio courses including drawing, painting and printmaking. Her first professional step was the expected one: work as an engineer with a focus on sustainability. Yet the route to that job repeatedly carried her past the Fashion Institute of Technology on Seventh Avenue.

FIT became a provocation. Camps took evening classes in patternmaking and construction while working as an engineer. Soon the side pursuit became the main question. She left engineering, enrolled full-time and specialized in knitwear.

The choice was more logical than it might appear. A woven-fabric designer generally begins with an existing textile. A knitwear designer can build the material and the garment at the same time. Gauge, stitch density, tension, fiber, elasticity and weight all shape the final object. The process is closer to engineering a responsive structure than decorating a surface. Camps had found a field in which her technical training was not baggage from an earlier life; it was an advantage.

Experience at Polo Ralph Lauren and Rag & Bone, plus consulting for Proenza Schouler, taught Camps the machinery behind a label. But immigration restrictions blocked the conventional next step, and without sponsorship she returned to Trinidad.

The Island Was Not A Detour

Back home, Camps established a studio and produced as Aisling Knits. Trinidadian designer Meiling encouraged her and offered an early presentation opportunity; clients followed through word of mouth.

Just as important, the climate forced Camps to challenge inherited assumptions about knitwear. The category is often imagined through a European winter lens: dense wool, heavy sweaters and protection from cold. In Trinidad, that definition was unusable. Camps experimented with lighter fibers, open construction and breathable surfaces that could live in heat. The island sharpened what would become her signature—knitwear with air inside it.

When she won the United States diversity visa lottery, Camps returned to New York and formally launched her namesake label in 2015. Brooklyn became the base for a studio practice that still carries the intimacy of those early Trinidad orders. The business grew carefully, balancing handmade work with specialized production in Italy and sourcing fine yarns from Italian mills. According to Camps, even as manufacturing has expanded, a meaningful portion of the collection remains made by hand.

That balance matters because the irregularity of the human hand is central to her aesthetic. Camps speaks often about the “perfectly imperfect.” A dropped stitch, an unfinished edge or an asymmetrical opening is not a defect to be corrected. It is a design decision that allows a garment to breathe, shift and reveal. On the body, those openings turn skin into part of the composition.

The result complicates luxury. Camps does not pursue sterile perfection. Her luxury is alive: technically controlled yet visually vulnerable, refined without being overfinished. It asks the wearer to participate.

A 2026 Breakthrough Rooted In Folklore

Camps entered 2026 with significant recognition, including the 2023 Fashion Trust U.S. Ready-to-Wear Award and the CFDA’s 2024 Empowered Vision Award. Still, Fall/Winter 2026 represented a decisive expansion.

Staged during New York Fashion Week after an unusually compressed preparation period, the collection introduced woven pieces alongside her established knits. The move was commercially strategic—retailers wanted a fuller wardrobe—but Camps treated it as an artistic opportunity. Chiffon, leather and viscose entered into conversation with gossamer knits, thick hand-spun yarn and open netting. Weight met transparency. Structure met collapse.

The collection’s emotional world came from Trinidadian folklore, particularly Papa Bois, the guardian of the forest, and Mama Dlo, the powerful water spirit often described with the body of a serpent. Camps avoided literal costume. Instead, she translated the stories into atmosphere: forest green, bone, nude, black and earth tones; tactile surfaces that suggested bark, water, skin and shed layers; silhouettes that could appear protective in one moment and exposed in the next.

That is where her engineering background becomes most poetic. Camps does not use technology to remove mystery. She uses mastery of construction to make mystery wearable.

The runway also demonstrated how broad her language has become. Fine, nearly transparent tops floated close to the torso. Netted skirts could be ruched and adjusted. Ribbed cardigans changed shape through styling. More substantial pullovers gave traditional cable and textured knitting a rawer, more elemental presence. Rather than presenting knitwear as a supporting category, Camps made it the architecture of an entire world.

Her retail reach now includes influential luxury destinations such as Bergdorf Goodman and Moda Operandi. Yet the clothes retain the evidence of process that first distinguished her work. That is no small achievement in a market that often asks independent designers to sand away the very qualities that made them interesting.

From Upper Manhattan To The American Fashion Conversation

Camps’ New York story began at Columbia, on the edge of Harlem. It is worth remembering that her first experience of the city was not filtered through downtown fashion mythology. It was shaped in Upper Manhattan, where academic rigor, immigrant ambition, Caribbean presence and Black cultural history coexist block by block.

Her work belongs naturally within a wider generation of Black and Caribbean designers expanding the definition of American luxury. That contribution is not based on a borrowed visual shorthand. Camps brings the particularity of her own story: a Trinidadian understanding of climate and folklore, an engineer’s command of systems, a fine artist’s eye and a maker’s respect for material.

The 2026 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund selection places her inside one of American fashion’s most closely watched development programs. The winner is scheduled to be announced in October, with business mentorship provided throughout the process. Whatever the result, the finalist designation confirms what her work has already made evident: Camps is no longer simply an insider discovery. She is helping to define where American design can go next.

Her rise also offers a useful correction to the mythology of overnight success. The February runway was built on nearly two decades of education, migration, technical experimentation, small-batch production and patient relationship-building. Every stage added something essential. Engineering taught her how forces behave. FIT gave her the language of fashion. Trinidad taught her to reconsider the category. Brooklyn gave the label a place to grow. Italy offered scale without abandoning craft.

The Strength Inside Softness

Fashion often separates intellect from sensuality. Camps makes that division absurd. Her clothes are analytical without coldness, erotic without obviousness and technically sophisticated without losing the hand’s irregular pulse.

That tension is their power. Delicacy is engineered. An opening may seem spontaneous, but its placement determines balance. Effortless drape carries the knowledge of a woman who understands material at the level of fiber and force.

From Trinidad’s heat to Columbia’s laboratories, FIT’s knitting rooms, a Brooklyn studio and New York Fashion Week, Camps follows one thread. She never abandoned engineering for fashion; she expanded what engineering can build.

And in her hands, it can build something rare: clothes with structure enough to hold their form and freedom enough to let the body speak.