The Past Recaptured

By Alex Joseph
The good, the bad, and the weird in FIT’s yearbooks
A moment of silence, please, for that deceased institution known as Ye Olde College Yearbook. Social media, among other forces, has pretty much ended that once-perennial annual. FIT’s yearbook, Portfolio, met its end in 2014. Though we occasionally detect a hankering for some unifying record (hence the various FIT alumni Facebook pages, and Instagram accounts like @fashiontech_in_ da_90s), no one seems to miss it much. In every college’s history, there’s an official narrative, and then there’s what really went down. The yearbook straddled these categories:
Sketching in class, 1947
FIT relocated to its first building on 27th Street in 1959. Many yearbook captions alluded to the move.
In 1951, still in the top two floors of the Central High School of Needle Trades, FIT offered courses in a cutting production laboratory. Here, students learned how garments were made (the men wore ties, of course).
Sanctioned like a formal portrait, it could also be as casual as a snapshot. The Hue team scoured the 70-year run of Portfolio and assembled a collection of moments that we found … revealing. We wanted images that marked an instant in time (the Classical Listeners Club, 1966); captured an iconic style (the Soul Club, 1992); or just made us go, “WTF?” (the mysterious Last Supper image, which ran without a caption in 1974). We included what we knew, which was usually not much, and often nothing. Know more? Drop us a line at hue@fitnyc.edu!
In 1962, Antonio Lopez, Illustration ’62, who went on to become the legendary artist known as Antonio, served as art director on Portfolio. His partner Juan Ramos, Interior Design ’62, shares a smoke with a pal here, as Antonio looks on.
Bookstore, 1963
“By the way, there’s a ten-minute limit on the phone.” 1967
Girls Bowling Club
Hair Apparent
Classical Listeners Club, 1966.
Registering for classes, analog style, 1968.
In 1972, this photo appeared in a section titled, “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” Perhaps it was a costume party, held in the student lounge, Binsky’s.
All hail Display Department students, 1975!
The 1974 yearbook was particularly inscrutable. There were no captions for most of the photos, including this recreation of The Last Supper.
The 1980 yearbook referred to Textile Technology (now Textile Development and Marketing) as “a growing department” that had existed since the founding of the college. The feature celebrated the then seven-year-old knitting lab. (The lab, updated, is still in use.) The photo shows a Textile Science class taught by Allen Cohen.
Another Nutritious Meal
“What dormitory students are entitled to” at lunch, 1967.
Miss Olive, “FIT’s exclusive hairdresser and her inexpensive Hairdressing Lab” was on the 9th floor of the Business and Liberal Arts Center, 1980.
FIT’s dry cleaning lab, 1981.
In 1989, a jaw-dropping feature, “Bodily Treasures,” showed the shirtless male undergrads who appeared in a calendar, FIT Guys ’89-90, which sold as a fundraiser for students in the American Advertising Federation. The editors wrote, “Who ever said that women are the only ones exploited!” File under: That Wouldn’t Happen Now.
The Soul Club spread in the 1992 book epitomizes early-‘90s African-American style.