Paul Dillinger

Designer

Paul Dillinger is a fashion designer working at the intersection of sustainability, education, and technology. Paul is the Vice President – Head of Global Design Innovation at Levi Strauss & Company in San Francisco, and a First Mover Fellow at the Aspen Institute. He was appointed faculty at Washington University in St. Louis prior to joining Levi’s and has taught sustainable design at California College of the Arts and the Rhode Island School of Design. Before joining Levi’s, Paul lived and worked for 16 years as a fashion designer and brand development specialist in New York; including design tenures at Calvin Klein, DKNY, and American Eagle. Paul is a founding member of The STUD Collective, a worker-owned cooperative dedicated to the protection of queer creative spaces. The Collective was established in 2016 to prevent the closure of The STUD Bar – a San Francisco nightlife institution and queer legacy business. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Paul received his BFA in Fashion Design from Washington University in St. Louis. As a Fulbright Scholar to Italy, he attended the Domus Academy in Milan where he received his MFA. Paul’s work has been shown internationally, including lectures and exhibitions at the Cooper-Hewitt and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Design Museum in London, at DOGA Oslo, and as part of the Smithsonian Institute’s permanent collection. In June 2021, Paul’s design for a new form of low-cost, high-performance filtering facepiece respirator was chosen by the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority as a winner of the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Mask Innovation Challenge.

…the stuff I listed in my “Areas of Expertise” (see above). “What I do” and “What I care about” are pretty much the same thing.

Ethical production and ethical consumption shouldn’t be elective. They shouldn’t be commodified or marketed for competitive advantage. If you’re a manufacturer and you know that your production line is wasteful and pollutive – you are a scoundrel. When you take action to eliminate your waste and reduce your pollution, that doesn’t make you a hero. It makes you NOT a scoundrel. Now – put THAT on a hang tag and try to charge 10% more...

Applied Sustainability, Fashion Design, Fashion History & Critical Theory, Fiber & Textile Science, Wearable Technology

I don't want to brag, but...