Meet Edwin Ramirez and Sara Noori, Designers At KMAC Couture 2025

Louisville-based visual artists Edwin Ramirez and Sara Noori channel their lived experience — with some help from the cosmos—to work the runway at KMAC Couture 2025. Both Ramirez and Noori identify as queer artists of color. Their entry into KMAC Couture is titled “Vespertine,” a celestial body that can be seen in the sky at or just after twilight, as well as for the flowers that bloom at that time.

The central garment in “Vespertine” is a material representation of the lunar cycle, an exploration of the rhythm of growth, transformation, and renewal that Ramirez and Noori consider sacred. In their work, the organic, the feminine, and the gothic converge in curvilinear forms and seemingly fluid surface areas.

KMAC Couture — Lucky #13

KMAC Couture is a wearable art and conceptual fashion design show presented by KMAC Contemporary Art Museum. Produced in advance of the Kentucky Derby each spring, the event is both a Derby season celebration of local arts and a direct fundraiser for educational programs and exhibitions at the museum.

In 2025, KMAC Couture will celebrate its thirteenth year, so the theme for this year’s show is Lucky #13. The show will “pay homage to the charms and superstitions that offer hope and allow us to explore that sometimes all too rare of human faculties—the ability to dream and to think big,” Curatorial Director Joey Yates said in his curatorial statement. “While the number thirteen is commonly known to foreshadow ominous circumstances, it is also more generally and widely considered to have a mysterious power that can inspire change and foster a positive outlook.”

Emerging and established artists, designers, costumers, and milliners will display their interpretations of this theme on Saturday, April 19. LEO was lucky enough to speak with Ramirez and Noori about their inspiration for KMAC Couture — Lucky #13.

Edwin Ramirez (left) “Vespertine” in progress (right) Courtesy of the artists

Meet Edwin Ramirez

Edwin Ramirez is a Chicano multimedia artist based in Louisville. His audio, visual, and wearable landscapes are a manifestation of his experiences as a synesthete, a person who experiences more than one sense simultaneously. His work is informed by the visual auroras he sees while engaging with field recordings, music, video games, and the natural world. His intention is to celebrate shapes, colors, and textures inspired by nature to help the wearer and the viewer feel closer to the wildness of our planet.

Ramirez’s work has been displayed at the Kentucky State Capitol Rotunda, Kore Gallery, Speed Art Museum, KMAC Museum, Art Sanctuary, and Aurora Gallery. His wearable art is part of a permanent exhibition through Louisville Visual Art’s Curate Purchase Inspire program. In 2024, he was selected as a Bernheim Forest regional Artist in Residence.

Sara Noori (left) “Vespertine” in progress (right) Courtesy of the artists

Meet Sara Noori

Sara Noori is an artist and educator whose work focuses on identity and collaborative artmaking. They were integral in organizing and executing the Family Day Program at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and are currently partnered with the Community Belonging program at Speed Art Museum in their hometown of Louisville. In 2023, they were invited to co-create a site-specific mural for the “Amy Sherald’s Portrait of Breonna Taylor: In the Garden” installation at Speed Art Museum.

As an arts educator, they work with the Backside Learning Center at Churchill Downs, where they help nurture the creative spirit through material exploration and self-expression, as well as through the encouragement of student confidence.

Ramirez working on “Vespertine” Courtesy of the artists

Twilight, moonrise, and renewal

Drawing inspiration from the number 13, Ramirez and Noori are designing a garment that mirrors the phases of the moon. Each iteration reflects the ebb and flow of luminosity and darkness that governs both the night sky and the cycles within the body.

“Our design is a meditation on the vespertine, the flower that blooms at night, a metaphor for the feminine energy that thrives in darkness, blooming only when the sun has set,” Ramirez and Noori shared in their artist statement. “The garment evokes the quiet strength of the dark feminine, a force both mysterious and divine, that resides within the shadows and illuminates the path of transformation. It is an homage to the moon’s quiet power as it guides and nurtures, pulling us through the rhythms of creation, destruction, and re-creation.”

“Vespertine” also draws inspiration from Tarot. The thirteenth card in the Major Arcana is Death. But rather than a symbol of literal death, the thirteenth card symbolizes profound change. For Ramirez and Noori, the symbolism evokes the cycle of life, decay, and the liminal spaces between those states, where something must end for something new to begin.

The artist statement for “Vespertine” compares the Death card to the menstrual cycle: “the shedding of the old, in preparation for the birth of the new. It is in this space of transition, of vulnerability, and surrender that true transformation can occur.”

Ramirez and Noori invite the wearer — and the viewers in attendance at KMAC Couture — to embrace their own cycles of change, “to honor the power found in darkness, and to find beauty in the vulnerability of endings and beginnings.” The design and fabrication of “Vespertine” will evoke “the eternal dance of the lunar feminine, an offering of strength, resilience, and a deep connection to the rhythms of the earth and body.”

“Vespertine” in progress Courtesy of the artists

Fashion, queerness, and nature

LEO: How have your lived experiences as queer people of color informed your design?

Ramirez: Growing up as a queer Chicano in Kentucky has had its own set of challenges, and that still is true today as an artist in my mid-30s. Those lived experiences — both good and bad — absolutely inform my work. I spent a lot of my youth and teen years exploring the woods around Oldham County to find an escape from those challenges, and I learned very quickly how ancient and beautiful this land is.

As an adult, I still look to the forests, fossil beds, and the water that surrounds our area to process, reflect, and find respite from an often oppressive-feeling world. I find a lot of inspiration there to build tiny worlds on a human body through sculptural wearable art. In the case of “Vespertine,” Sara and I are bringing the landscape of our only moon and its thirteen phases to the runway. Sara and I talked much about how we have found comfort in the moon over the years and how in awe we are of its power. Working our own lived experiences and emotions into this project feels very special in many ways.

Noori: Fashion has always been an outlet for my creativity and a significant part of my identity. Growing up in a biracial, multiethnic, and multicultural household, I experienced firsthand the direct relationship between tradition, culture, clothing, gender, and identity. I am grateful for the privilege of being surrounded by a rich cultural heritage. I learned so much about fashion by observing those around me, seeing how they expressed themselves through clothing, and understanding the deeper meanings many hold in their garments and presentations.

I grew up thrifting, often admiring the quality and craftsmanship of vintage clothing and fabrics. My first experiences at places like the Nitty Gritty and Cherry Bomb here in Louisville really allowed me to explore different timelines and experiment with gender and other identity markers at a young age. Thrift shopping and discovering the stories embedded in each garment gave me a deeper appreciation for sustainable fashion and the power of individuality in a world that often pressures conformity. This is something I carry with me in every design: clothing that tells a unique story as well as the cultural heritages that bind us.

LEO: Does this feel more urgent in the current social and political climate?

Noori: Yes, without self-expression, we lack a sense of identity, which is inherently tied to clothing and more broadly, to artistic expression. As a queer person of color, witnessing the erosion of rights that are fundamental to so many — especially in terms of reproductive healthcare — has made this work feel more urgent than ever.

The body, in its diversity, is powerful, and through fashion, I seek to celebrate that strength and resilience. “Vespertine” is, in part, an homage to women and those who experience a menstrual cycle. Thought by some to be a marker of something negative, sinful, or unlucky — as the number 13 is often associated. Yet as women’s rights and reproductive healthcare constantly hang in the balance, often being debated, it was important to highlight the innate strength, power, and wisdom of the body.

This connection to nature exists outside of politics. Elements like menstrual cycles and lunar tides are not up for debate; they are natural parts of the world and the cycles of life, death, and rebirth. We exist outside the context of the present social political moment; we have always been and always will be.

Ramirez: Yes, absolutely. It is more important than ever to bring awareness of how the human condition is and has always been intertwined with nature. It is incredibly important to bring education and awareness of our environments and the flora and fauna that surround us, things that are all at risk.

More and more, we are seeing the devastation of climate change on every corner of our planet. It is infuriating how unfocused our leaders are on implementing solutions to the biggest crisis humanity has faced. Instead, they focus on what others are doing with their bodies, who they choose to love, and creating more wealth for themselves while neighborhoods wash away.

See “Vespertine” and other one-of-a-kind designs on the runway at KMAC Contemporary Art Museum (715 W. Main St.) on Saturday, April 19. Tickets for KMAC Couture 2025 are available here.

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This article appears in Apr 11-24, 2025.

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