![Image from poster for 1963 film Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor](https://news.fitnyc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/1963-poster-1280x640-800x400.jpg)
The site includes an illustrated fashion history dictionary with a growing list of term definitions, as well as essays on film, portraiture, and garments dating from antiquity (such as a beaded dress from ancient Egypt) to the present day (a frock from Alexander McQueen’s 2010 Plato’s Atlantis collection).
And it’s growing. The Kress Foundation and SUNY have provided additional funds to add decade overviews from the 15th to 20th centuries, which will be completed by the end of 2020. A new book, Digital Research Methods in Fashion and Textile Studies by Amanda Sikarskie (Bloomsbury 2020), discussed the Fashion History Timeline in the same context as Google Arts and Culture and the Berg Fashion Library, two major online resources.
![Justine De Young headshot](https://news.fitnyc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/profile-square-400x400.jpg)
“FIT was uniquely positioned to harness [this] research and to present it to the world,” she says. “We were the perfect people to step into this void and help fill it.”
We summarized five topics that capture the scope of this excellent resource.
MADAME X
One of the best ways to study fashion is through portraiture, as evidenced by Madame X, John Singer Sargent’s famed painting of American socialite Virginie Gautreau, which caused a scandal when it was exhibited in Paris in 1884.
“It’s super iconic,” De Young says when asked why she chose to write about the painting for the timeline. “But I also think there are misconceptions about [the subject], and so I wanted to try to address some of those.”
![John Singer Sargent's portrait of Virginie Gaudreau](https://news.fitnyc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Madame-X-1-211x400.jpg)
“The fact that one of the straps was falling down was much more shocking than the amount of skin on display,” she says. (Sargent later repainted the strap.) Also scandalous: “how artificially powdered she is and her sort-of haughtiness.”
De Young hopes the timeline will rectify more of these misconceptions.
“I always like it when we look into the past and discover that our assumptions were wrong or that the way [contemporary audiences] saw the picture was different from the way we see it now.”
CLEOPATRA
It might seem surprising that the Fashion History Timeline includes movies, since Hollywood routinely takes liberties with historical dress. But De Young says that looking at film costumes is instructive.
![Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra in the 1963 film of that name](https://news.fitnyc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Cleopatra-266x400.jpg)
“Film is a fascinating insight into how the past is perceived and how costume designers grapple with being authentic versus responding to the tastes of the day,” De Young says.
DENIM LEISURE SUIT
![Labeled diagram of Bill Kaiserman's Denim Leisure Suit](https://news.fitnyc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Bill-Kaiserman-diagram-336x400.jpg)
This entry includes not only the evolution of the “leisure suit” and a short biography of Kaiserman, but also a diagram of the ensemble, pointing out each of the suit’s individual components.
“I make all of my students [do diagrams]—both in the garment analyses and artwork analyses,” De Young says. “It’s always been one of my frustrations when I read articles that use some weird terminology and you’re not quite sure what part of the outfit that is.”
ALEXANDER McQUEEN
![Dress from Alexander McQueen's Plato's Atlantis collection](https://news.fitnyc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Alexander-McQueen-266x400.jpg)
While many of the older objects in the timeline were included to show what people actually wore in a certain time and milieu, this McQueen frock is defiantly avant-garde, with its sculptural shape and super-short hemline that transform its wearer into some kind of reptilian space creature.
Yet it’s still historically significant. Plato’s Atlantis was one of the most influential collections of the previous decade. It was the last runway show McQueen—a masterful tailor and dressmaker who also elevated fashion into the realm of art—produced before his death in 2010. It also employed then-novel, far-out technologies such as 3D printing and livestreaming.
RED
In addition to specific objects, the timeline includes wide-ranging essays, from decade overviews to treatises on how the early 20th century advertised “plus-sized” clothes (then called “stout fashions”) to deep dives into the evolution of the New York department store.
![Valentino Garavani (Italian, b. 1932). Scene from the documentary "Valentino: The Last Emperor", 2008. Source: Screen Daily](https://news.fitnyc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Red.jpg)