Thursday May 14th 2026
St David's High School, teacher Nadia Pinkney, with her fashion designs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City last week
Written by Midlothian View Reporter, Liam Eunson
A teacher at St David’s High School in Dalkeith has returned to her normal life of teaching following a ‘crazy’ trip to NYC after her decade old Alzheimer’s-inspired fashion designs were selected to feature in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Despite leaving the fashion industry in 2021 to help set up St David’s fashion course after studying fashion and working for Johnston’s of Elgin, Midlothian local Nadia Pinkney received an unexpected message in September on an inactive LinkedIn account.
Explaining at first she thought it was a scam, the message she received was from the Metropolitan Museum of Art saying that they wanted to get in contact about a decade old fashion project Nadia worked on in her last year BA Fashion Women’s Wear at Heriot-Watt University.
Referring to Nadia’s Alzheimer’s-inspired Remember Me Knot collection, the Met communications team, who were messaging on behalf of Met museum curator Andrew Bolton, told Nadia that they were interested in certain pieces of the collection.
“That’s when I realised that a decade later you don’t have everything”, Nadia told the Midlothian View, “So I came into the school on the Saturday morning and then I figured out that I didn’t have everything that they wanted”.
Despite this initial shock back in September last year, Nadia explained that upon visiting the exhibition last week she was surprised when the Met had designated a whole section to her work in the exhibition’s Disabled Body section.
Nadia during her visit to the exhibition
“I don’t want to seem big headed but there was a proper section for my work, the only other person who had more than three looks was Alexander McQueen.
“It was crazy to me and all of his work was sporadically placed but mine wasn’t because it was all connected. They even had little blurbs and they had never even interviewed me”.
Nadia’s ‘crazy’ experience came off the back of a project she began in 2015, inspired by members of her family who dealt with Alzheimer’s.
Creating the fashion line as part of her final university project, Nadia used the time designing to also learn about the disease.
She explained: “My grandmother and great-grandmother both had Alzheimer’s and from the age of 10 to 19 I visited a care home every week and seeing all what was happening to these people, not just my granny but everyone else, I felt there were other diseases getting more attention.
“I think it was the lack of understanding that fueled everything.”
Working alongside researchers, Nadia’s Remember Me Knot collection used scans of her brain and tangled fabrics to resemble neurofibrillary tangles in the brain that occur in Alzheimer’s disease.
Nadia's Alzheimer's-inspired fashion designs feature prints from scans of her brain and tangled fabric to represent tangled neurons. The only colour used is red with the collection being primarily black and white
Nadia and her mum flew to New York on Tuesday last week, giving them two days to prepare for the opening event.
Hosted at Conde M. Nast Galleries and the Met’s Great Hall, Nadia explained that she ‘hadn’t appreciated the scale of it’ until the press event, describing her emotions leading up to the event as calm due to having previously worked in the fashion industry where ‘anything can be cut at any time’.
Naming the designs after her grand-parents, the Met had added blurbs to the designs on display, connecting parts of the designs to members of Nadia’s family despite her not providing any background information.
“It was really personal to me and I think seeing the connection to my family, it was quite emotional as well. My mum and I burst out crying.”
Despite Nadia’s work being displayed in one of fashion’s most prestigious events, she highlighted that, aside from the publicity and news coverage, the main thing she appreciated from the experience was the awareness it brought to Alzheimer’s and her family members who dealt with it.
“I think when we were in the exhibition, you could see people looking at the artwork and when they read the blurb and they understood the inspiration behind it, you hear people chatting and opening conversations surrounding Alzheimer’s, saying ‘oh my grandmother had that”, Nadia explained.
“I think that’s the biggest achievement of it because you’re opening up something that I think people shy away from and it was quite emotional seeing people open up whilst looking at it. I feel like if one person feels seen or heard or valued a little bit more, that’s the main thing.”
Nadia said that it has also been an emotional time for her family, not just her, explaining: “It’s been an emotional time for the whole family. None of this would exist if it wasn’t for my great granny and my granny who went through Alzheimer’s.”
Nadia and her mum outside the Met
With her decade-old designs featured in an exhibition room that she could only dream of when initially designing them, Nadia expressed that not much has changed since returning to St Davids HS from New York despite her designs being glanced at by the world’s biggest celebrity during the Met Gala.
“Nothing has changed but the kids are dead excited about it and wanting to hear what happened. I think for them as they are all watching on TV and TikTok, it seems like an unachievable thing but then if their teacher has been involved it actually is achievable for them.
“The nice part of all this is that it inspires them, makes them think they can do something like this, but the reality of the day to day teaching job, it’s still the same and I love it”.
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