Nicole Rudolph

Nicole Rudolph's tagline says it all: a time-travelling journey through the history of STUFF. She is that rare creator who can actually make the things she talks about — a trained tailor and cobbler with an MFA in Material Culture and a BFA in Costume Design — so when she explains how an object was made, bought, and used, she has usually done all three herself.

Before YouTube she worked at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and served as Artistic Director and Designer of American Duchess Shoes, reconstructing historic footwear and garments for museums including the Museum of the American Revolution. That museum-grade rigour runs through her videos, which dig into the social meaning stitched into ordinary things.

Her breakout Victorian video takes on the era's famously elaborate etiquette — the calling cards, the mourning timetables, the rules for everything — with affection rather than mockery. She treats Victorian manners as a technology for navigating society, which makes the extra-ness make sense.