Vanderbilt alumna Karina Gupta, BE’20, was frustrated with the way her jeans fit. They felt fine when she put them on, but by the end of the day they had become restrictive and uncomfortable. She discovered other women were having the same issue and realized that even premium brand jeans didn’t seem to account for how frequently women’s bodies change due to stress, hormones, travel, or lifestyle shifts.
“Many women experience 1 to 5 pounds of natural weight fluctuation daily,” Gupta said. “Traditional denim doesn’t account for this – you put jeans on in the morning and by midday it’s cutting in at the waist or losing shape.”
So, the engineering science and history major decided to do something about it. Earlier this month, she launched a startup company on Kickstarter called KarinaJ Denim that manufactures a slip-on design and adaptive waist construction that responds to minor shifts in body volume throughout the day. The Kickstarter campaign reached 130% of its funding goal within three days, signaling early demand for adaptive-fit denim.
Early on, Gupta faced some challenges, like finding the right fabric and core design, and a manufacturer that could execute her vision. She credits Vanderbilt’s School of Engineering and the Wond’ry, the university’s Center for Innovation and Design housed in VUSE, with providing her first introduction to building physical products with empathy.
“I studied engineering and history, but it was my human-centered design coursework and hands-on time at the Wond’ry that really shaped how I think about product,” said Gupta, now working on an MBA at Yale University. “Learning how to translate customer frustrations into clear problem statements strengthened my instinct to uncover real user pain points, including the everyday frustrations women face with their clothing. Ultimately, those lessons in design thinking and customer understanding inspired this brand.”
Gupta said one class that was particularly beneficial was Professor Kevin Galloway’s “ME 2273: How to Make (Almost) Anything.”
“It was foundational for me,” she said. “It demystified the process of building physical products and made creation feel accessible rather than intimidating. We weren’t just talking about ideas; we were prototyping, testing, breaking things, and iterating.”
Galloway, Director of Making at the Wond’ry and research associate professor of mechanical engineering, said he’s thrilled to hear his class was helpful in Gupta’s journey.
“Seeing Karina apply that hands-on, iterative approach to launch her own company is exactly what we hope students carry forward,” Galloway said.
After leaving Vanderbilt, Gupta refined her product and business instincts as a product manager at Microsoft and later at McKinsey & Company, where she learned how to evaluate market opportunities and scale new ventures.
Currently, KarinaJ Denim has a bootcut and a straight-leg style jean, each available in both light and dark washes. But Gupta said she hopes to eventually expand beyond denim into pants and other everyday pieces, like trousers that don’t pinch when you sit, waistbands that adapt instead of restrict, and silhouettes that feel as good at the end of the day as they do in the morning.
“Over time, I want this brand to help shift the idea that looking put-together has to come at the expense of feeling comfortable,” she said. “The goal is a wardrobe where confidence and comfort aren’t tradeoffs – they’re built into the design.”
Gupta’s journey reflects an expansive view of engineering that pairs technical rigor with attention to human experience.