For the second consecutive year, students from FIT and H-FARM College near Venice, Italy, joined together in a unique collaborative study abroad opportunity exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence and fashion. The students spent an intensive two weeks—half in Venice and half in New York City—visiting arts and culture sites, learning about the two cities, and preparing for final team presentations. The curriculum, created by FIT’s DTech Lab and H-FARM, was designed to give the next generation of creatives a chance to enrich their education by experiencing the fashion industry across continents while incorporating AI in real time.
This year, six FIT students (five of whom are Social Justice Scholars across various majors, and one of whom is from the Jay and Patty Baker School of Business and Technology) joined six Italian students from H-FARM. The theme of the New York component this year was “Reimagining the Fashion Value Chain: Human-Centered AI, Artisanship, and Genius Loci.” Genius loci is Latin for “the spirit of a place,” which in this case, referred to the city’s Garment District. The students emerged from the program with an understanding of how AI is transforming the fashion industry, bridging the gap between tradition and innovation.
At the conclusion of the program, FIT President Joyce F. Brown met with the students in the DTech Lab. “Our partners at H-FARM have been fantastic, and the whole idea was to create a way for creative young people to come together to have an intercultural, international opportunity to understand how technology is a driving force, to understand how to develop your own authentic creativity and a statement about what it is you want to produce,” Dr. Brown said. “I really believe this program has been transformative for so many of our students who have had the opportunity to participate in it. It really gives me great joy to be able to see the impact of meeting new people and understanding new systems, and how that will affect how you view your own creativity and designs going forward.”
“This was a remarkable opportunity to bring really talented, smart, ambitious, young, fresh minds together to create and explore the new dimensions of technology, but within the context of traditional artisanal practice,” said Michael Ferraro, executive director of the DTech Lab.
The two lead professors of the program, Adjunct Assistant Professor Kathlin Argiro and Assistant Professor Amy Sperber, both from the Fashion Department, agreed that one of the notable elements about this year’s program was the rapid advance in AI technology since last year, and the collaboration of the students from each team.
“AI has advanced more in the last 12 months than in the last 12 years,” Sperber said. “The tools the students had access to are better, faster, and smarter.”
“There was a balance between six creative students from FIT and six business-oriented students from Venice, so it was an equal match, and that’s sort of where the magic happened,” Argiro added. “When you combine the creative with the business, you get all these great different perspectives that result in all these amazing ideas.”
The students agreed that the program was revelatory in its integration of technology and AI into the curriculum and a robust introduction to the artistic and cultural sides of each of the cities.
“The program was a good insight on technology,” said FIT Illustration student Ereden Cossia. “Even though I’m an art major, I really like researching, so that whole group phase and learning more about AI and learning how to tackle a real-world problem was interesting. It’s a really good exercise for anyone in any industry. That teamwork that developed was nice to experience.”
“The program as a whole opened my eyes to new ways of thinking and new ways of life and being in an environment that I’m not familiar with, with people I’m not familiar with,” said Lee Lynshue, an FIT Fashion Design student. “It was fun to see the Italian kids in our shoes and to show them our world.”
From the Italian side, Benedetta Crosera, who studies digital management at H-FARM, and for whom this was her first experience in New York, said, “We were able to see their life, not as tourists but as students, from a working life, and to see the differences between our education background. I loved the FIT programming because it was really balanced and everyone shared their opinions and thoughts.”
“The H-FARM collaboration is an amazing experience for the students as we forge forward in the AI era,” said Shannon Maher, dean of FIT’s Jay and Patty Baker School of Business and Technology. “It will provide them with an advantage of truly understanding the capabilities of AI as the tool with a human touch.”