Champion rower Kristine Auble chases fashion dream, shows collection in Philadelphia
EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP — “One of the things I always say is that even in our darkest moments, there’s always going to be brighter days. I feel like you can express yourself and express that inner joy through whatever means. I’m just doing it through clothing.”
Kristine Auble, 30, has been through some dark times. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in her mid-twenties, but used that experience to propel herself into a new direction, revealing a truly vibrant way of expressing her inner joy.
In September, Auble debuted her Brighter Days fashion collection at Philadelphia Fashion Week.
It was a circuitous route to get there. Her fashion inclinations may have germinated as a child when she helped her mom sew Halloween costumes, but her creativity detoured into writing. That led to a journalism degree, writing for a newspaper for a year, then about four years as a flight attendant, bitten by the desire to explore. Along the way, through high school, college and beyond, she also became a championship rower with her twin sister Amanda in South Jersey lifeguard competitions.
It was at a lifeguard competition that her life would take a big turn. But let’s back up.
A seamstress aunt
Auble, who grew up in Egg Harbor Township, always had a creative streak. She began to sew as a little kid with her mom; her aunt was a seamstress who taught her mother a bit about the craft.
“When we were kids, instead of going to the Halloween store and buying costumes, she would just take us to the fabric store and we’d pick out a pattern. And from that she made the coolest costumes you could imagine,” she said.
“It just really made me think that anything I want can be a reality, anything that I’m picturing as a little kid. It just felt like magic because it was turning nothing into something. It felt really special to see her do that.”
She didn’t follow up on the sewing thing as she got older. Her creative juices pushed her toward writing.
“I really loved writing poems and different things. I just thought, how is a good way to make money writing? So journalism was really great for me. And I’ve always wanted a job that I did something new every day. So that was where journalism felt great.”
She followed that passion to the University of Maryland at College Park, where she earned a journalism degree and spent a year on the sports desk at The Press of Atlantic City. Then the travel bug bit. She decided to train at United Airlines to become a flight attendant, following in her mother’s footsteps.
“It was great. I was based in Boston. … Boston is mostly domestic-based, so I got to really see like the parts of the U.S. I never would go to like Montana and Utah and Wyoming, to see this beautiful nature. That was really cool for me,” she said.
She also got to travel internationally, encouraged by the airline. She worked for United through 2021, but the COVID-19 pandemic mostly ended that work for her.
Just before the pandemic, when she wasn’t writing and still wanted to be creative, she got a sewing machine and decided to try out some basic patterns when she had time between assignments as a flight attendant.
“I would sew clothes for myself and my friends would be like, ‘That’s cute. I want one.’ So they would ask me to make some for them,” Auble said.
The cancer diagnosis
Kristine and her twin sister Amanda became lifeguards on the Margate City Beach Patrol when they were teenagers. In the decade rowing together in lifeguard races, they found so much success that they were inducted into the South Jersey Ocean Rowing Hall of Fame this year.
In summer 2022, after racing at the Longport Women’s Lifeguard Invitational, where she and Amanda came in third in the double row, she began to feel off.
A few weeks later, at the Ocean City Women’s Lifeguard Invitational, there wasn’t a doubles row so she was helping other girls prepare for their swimming, paddling and running events. When she went home that night, she didn’t feel well.
She went to the emergency room at Shore Medical Center in Somers Point, thinking it was her appendix.
And then, she said, it felt like an episode of the TV drama “Grey’s Anatomy.”
“We see something on your scan that looks pretty serious, so we’re going to keep you overnight,” she recalled hearing. “They saw that it was probably a big mass on my ovary. They said to go to a gynecologist specialist. Thankfully, I was able to get to Cooper (University Health Systems) really quickly after that.
“A big miracle was that they had the surgeon and she had an opening. She had looked at my scan and knew immediately … we needed to operate. It was a really large tumor attached to my ovary.”
The doctor operated soon after, removing the tumor and her right ovary.
It all happened so fast.
In the course of a few weeks in July, she went from competing in a lifeguard rowing race to getting diagnosed and having major surgery. It was a crazy period for her.
“Talk about turned upside-down, because I was just rowing less than a month ago and then I was bedridden after surgery,” she said. “I’d never had a major surgery aside from wisdom teeth, so it was a lot.”
After 11 years on the Margate City Beach Patrol, which she joined in 2011 at age 16, that chapter of life closed. That’s when she had an epiphany.
A refusal to mope around, a disco dress and new lease on life
“It was one of those moments where I can either be really upset with this situation — and obviously I was in a lot of ways — but I didn’t want to mope around,” Auble said.
Recuperating at her parents’ home, she found her mother’s sewing machine. Her fashion career was beginning to bloom.
She looked for the shiniest fabric and put it together in a 1970s style. (She and her friends loved going to Boogie Nights in Atlantic City.)
“I’m going to make a disco dress and I’ll wear it,” she decided. “It’s something to motivate myself.
“Cancer taught me that every day matters so much,” Auble said.
She didn’t want to spend her days wondering “what if?”
When she was young, one thought about going into journalism was that she might one day write for fashion magazine Vogue. She also loved styling her own clothes.
“I think there was like a piece of me that was ignored a long time,” she said. “I thought to myself, ‘what are the things that I’ve always wanted to do that I just didn’t, like, give myself the time for?’”
The jet-setting as a flight attendant was great, she added, but what did she really want to do with her life?
“Making clothes was so creative,” she said. She loved the look on people’s faces when they were impressed by the clothes she made by hand.
She made a decision.
“I felt like I didn’t have any more time for this sadness of the cancer and those feelings. I obviously felt the deep depression of it all, but I wanted to move forward.
“I might not know what’s ahead of me, but I think that if I go with love and gratitude and just have some fun, I think it would lead me down a really cool path. I could say that it definitely has.”
A pattern even she might not have noticed emerged — Auble, who has an easy smile and is quick to laugh, loves chasing life. Rowing. Journalism. Travel. And now fashion.
The Made Institute and chasing fashion
Auble found the Made Institute in Philadelphia through an internet search. She had an undergraduate degree and the institute offered a two-year certificate program without fashion prerequisites.
“They really are about building community and they’re all about technical skills,” she explained.
Along with a little bit of sewing ability, the school was going to show her how to be part of the fashion industry and to build a brand.
Auble had gotten some interest in her design ability while making her dress. She started Instagram and Etsy pages. She wanted to run a fashion business and the Made Institute looked like a great resource to help her.
“I got to meet with the owner of the school when I first interviewed and I told her my whole story. She looked at me with her mouth open and she was like, ‘Well, you got it, so you’re in. I think you could be big in five years,’” Auble said. “Her believing in me before I believed in myself was so crucial. I think that community is just really valuable.”
She enrolled with the institute’s flexible schedule, working as a substitute teacher and nanny in Philadelphia. Auble learned from people who owned stores and had real world experience who could guide her and give her feedback.
“It was just so amazing,” she said.
Auble learned a range of aspects about the fashion industry. One of the most interesting that has come into play with the outfits she prepared for the Philadelphia Fashion Show is designing her own material.
She had become adept at Adobe Illustrator and was taking a class called Design Studio. She had also been searching the internet for patterns, cool prints to put onto her mood boards. The instructor suggested she put her own patterns right onto fabric, something Auble didn’t know how to do.
“She was like, give it a shot,” she said. The patterns on her Fashion Week collection are hers.
“I drew everything. I drew the flowers that are on the side of the jumpsuit and I drew the sun. There’s what looks like the sky on certain pieces. That’s a picture of the sky I took,” she said. “I figured out how to take like the other art form that I have and send it to this manufacturer in Pennsylvania. As long as I put it on the pattern piece the right way with their standards, I can print whatever I want.”
“The school kind of emphasizes that as a designer, it gives you an edge because no one else will have this fabric. When I was thinking of a final collection that really spoke to me, I didn’t want to go to different stores and find what everyone else is finding.”
The institute also taught her about building a professional website, branding, professional patterning and draping. It all culminated in a collection.
Knockout by Kris and Brighter Days
Auble’s brand is Knockout by Kris.
“I always say it’s a brand that empowers authenticity, celebrates creativity and radiates joy,” she said.
Auble wanted something punchy, something “that speaks to the over-the-topness of it all. I like when people say ‘that’s a total knockout.’ That’s where the name comes from.
“It is what I got from the cancer experience and how I live my life now. My core value is just to treat every day like it’s a special occasion. Everything that I do with my brand is just rooted in that gratitude of a new day and not being afraid to take the risk of looking crazy,” she said, laughing.
“It’s a brand that’s not afraid to push the boundaries. That’s why I wanted this most recent collection to be really colorful, because I think fashion can sometimes be really muted. I think that’s great in its own way, but I feel like there’s a lot more room for bright color and that’s just how I see the world now too.”
The Philly Fashion Week collection is called, appropriately, Brighter Days.
“One of the things I always say is that even in our darkest moments, there’s always going to be brighter days. I feel like you can express yourself and express that inner joy through whatever means. I’m just doing it through clothing.
“I think that’s a really magical thing.”
Auble is body-positive and makes sure her clothing is size-inclusive.
She uses a micropoly-Spandex blend, a stretch material that is comfortable and allows “people to grow with their clothes and not feel ashamed.”
She also likes fabric that is sparkly and has sequins.
Philly Fashion Week: A long day, tears and a dream experience
Auble presented her Brighter Days collection at Philadelphia Fashion Week in September.
She said it was amazing, a lot of hard work and it brought forth tears.
“My school definitely prepared me for it, but you have to fit a lot of models and there’s a ton of moving parts that, as someone who’s running the business on our own, it’s a lot. But I couldn’t have been more grateful with how smooth the day was and how great it felt to work with such amazing professionals. The models were amazing, so kind, and willing to like lend their time to make sure I got the fit right.”
The Fashion Week presentation made for a long day, setting up early in the morning. When the doors opened and family and friends were arriving, she snuck out from back stage to see them.
“I was just crying because it’s almost like the end of a great chapter in my life. I put in a lot of work and sometimes the doubt sinks in where I’m like, ‘what if I’m not on the right path? What if I’m doing the wrong thing?’”
But she isn’t on the wrong path. When everything came together perfectly, and the models looked so lovely, she took it as a sign “that I’m in the right place and I’m doing the right thing.”
Then she got to walk the runway after the models.
“That was such a dream. It’s like something I saw as a kid and never thought it would be me.”
What’s next
Auble said the Made Institute has prepared her for the future. She has a website, https://knockoutbykris.com/. She is taking pre-orders for her collection, the one on the runway, and it will ship in the spring.
She also goes to events where she sells her clothes and she has clients for whom she does custom work.
Auble also has a side project, a niche that started when mothers would send her their wedding dresses to be refitted for their daughters’ weddings.
“I’m always open for custom work. I love doing that for people and then being creative and trying to work on new projects.
“While this Brighter Days is out and for sale, I’ll probably start working on a new collection. My goal is to keep being my own boss, being creative. I’m really grateful to the Made Institute. They’re giving back to me. I got hired to be their social media manager. And then I’m also doing like sewing classes after school for kids.
“No matter what’s going on,” Auble said, “I’m just happy to be here.”
In addition to her website, Auble can be found on Instagram @knockoutbykris.
By DAVID NAHAN/Cape May Star and Wave
