The 2025 Fashion Design Associate in Applied Science program’s fall/winter exhibition, Evolution, is now on display through January 11 in FIT’s Art and Design Gallery. The exhibition explores the lifecycle of flowers as a metaphor for the ephemeral beauty of fashion, celebrating transformation, resilience, and the passage of time. From the seed of a concept to the buds of growth, from the blossoms of creativity to the final bloom of completion, each phase of creativity reflects change, transformation, and renewal.
The exhibition is comprised of 32 garments, selected from more than 200 garments created by fourth-semester students. The looks include a dress made entirely of tree bark by Noga Bourlakoff, a hoodie constructed of red satin roses by Sierra Pearsall, and a dress with a real grass bodice by Richard Cole.
Critic Award winners are Amari Estrella, Pearsall, Gabrielle Ribot, and Wayne Tawaisab.
“We gave the students tremendous freedom of creativity, as long as it was about the rebirth of nature,” said Fashion Department Assistant Chair and Associate Professor Christopher Uvenio, who—along with Adjunct Assistant Professor Mary Capozzi—is a co-curator of the exhibition. “I would never expect the students to come up with some of these ideas. I would think everybody would be using fabric, but when I saw something like the bark dress it just blew my mind.”
In keeping with the collaborative spirit of the exhibition, students from the Illustration program created two-dimensional works of art that reflect ideas of transformation over time. Photography and Related Media students documented the process by capturing their peers as they channeled their creativity into garments of wonder.
The exhibition is organized by the Fashion Design AAS Exhibition Committee, Dan Shefelman, chair of Illustration and Interactive Media, and Alison Wade Wermager, chair of Photography.
