The Division of Communications and External Relations is pleased to share FIT in the News, which reports selected highlights of news stories about the college and/or that quote the college’s experts. These stories will be accessible for at least seven days by clicking on the links below.
Future of Fashion 2022
FIT’s Future of Fashion Runway Show, sponsored by Macy’s for the first time, will take place May 11 at 7 p.m. The show will feature 88 looks created by 2022 Fashion Design BFA program graduates and will span five concentrations: knitwear, sportswear, intimate apparel, special occasion and children’s wear. This is the first time the show has been held in person since 2019.
WWD
FashionWeekDaily.com
Sourcing Journal
Norma Kamali
Valerie Steele, director and chief curator, The Museum at FIT (MFIT), on the timeless style of the designs of Norma Kamali: “Fashion is all about change, but it doesn’t mean that things can’t circle right back again or serve similar functions for different generations. [Kamali’s] approach to materials is one of the things that sets her apart.”
Post-Pandemic Style Experimentation
Shawn Grain Carter, associate professor, Fashion Business Management, on post pandemic experimentation with style: “People want something fun, they want to escape, they want fantasy, they want frivolity. It’s not fashion as form or fashion as functionality so much as fashion as fun, fashion as good times, fashion as creating your own moment.”
FT.com (United Kingdom)
Hidden Figures of American Fashion
Valerie Steele, director and chief curator, MFIT, and Elizabeth Way, associate curator, MFIT, spoke about those overlooked in the fashion industry, including women and people of color. Steele: “85 percent of the students at fashion schools are women but the majority of famous designers are men. Overall, the history of fashion is primarily sort of a genealogy of men.”
Way: “As a dressmaker, you obviously have so much creativity and so much agency, but you’re also on your knees, which fits a role that’s a little bit more subservient. I think that black women were able to use this role in a way that they could find success and agency but it wasn’t necessarily threatening to their white clients.”
FT.com (United Kingdom)
Fashion Archives
Patricia Mears, deputy director, MFIT, on fashion houses’ archival practices: “A couture house traditionally tends to keep the more spectacular pieces. More moderately priced brands and hot streetwear labels like Supreme, which now collect their own materials, may cleave to more digitally prominent pieces as well as what they consider their hallmark.”
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