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Nikki Gabriel has a unique textile design career that spans across small artisan studio practice to industrial knitwear design roles in Australia.  Her qualifications in Textile and Knit Design began with undergraduate at RMIT University in Melbourne followed by Masters Degree at AUT in Auckland.  Currently she resides between Australia and New Zealand while she is undertaking a PhD Research Degree at RMIT University in Melbourne on sustainability contexts of knit design. She launched her own knitwear label in 2003, and since then has been commissioned by many high profile Australian designers for the design and production of bespoke knitted product for fashion, interiors, professional dance and theatre costume; collections that have travelled to Paris and New York Fashion Weeks.  Her work has been exhibited alongside Issey Miyake and Walter Van Beirendonck and she continues to produce her knitwear collections, which is supplied to select high-end fashion stores in limited quantities. 

“Construction Knitting” is a collaborative DIY design project, generated as a potentially wide reaching positive and sustainable form of fashion consumption.  The Construction Knitting concept has since been commissioned and published commercially for mainstream distribution, as well as through academic institutions as a learning tool.