Music is a universal language that shapes how we think, feel, and connect. This year’s annual spring Fashion Design AAS exhibition, Harmonic Threads, on display April 8–15 in the Art and Design Gallery, explores music beyond genre, focusing instead on the emotions that sound evokes and how those feelings translate into fashion. Through silhouette, texture, color, and movement, the exhibition invites viewers to consider how emotional experiences—fleeting, layered, or contradictory—can be materialized on the body. The Fashion Design AAS Exhibition Committee curates the exhibition in conjunction with the Art and Design Gallery.
The exhibition comprises 51 garments, including 11 Critic Award–winners’ garments, which are selected by the industry critic in each class—Bryan Barrientos, James Beggan, Rachel Crawford, Blakely Dickey, Chris Gelinas, Min Jeong Kim, Michael Lomotan, Eric Lurvey, Madelin McPhee, Jisu Na, Rita Palazzo, Shanelle Pincus, Lauren Stapleton, and Celina Szado—as well as two Critic Award winners selected from Fashion–Art. The Art Specialization critic is Kerrigan Steiger.
Film and Media students Benjamin Tarace and Candence Cooper, under the guidance of their professor Ethan Minsker, produced a short film about the connection between music and emotion, which will be on display. A second video, titled What Is Your Favorite Song, will also be on view.
“The exhibition theme sprang from a shared experience,” said exhibition co-curator Mary Capozzi, adjunct assistant professor of Fashion Design Education, AAS. “A song that transports you through time and space, a moment that produces a symphony of emotions—nostalgia, longing, love, and loss. Through Harmonic Threads, we are inviting students to take their own musical journey, transforming the intangible into the tangible.”
“The garments in the exhibition are untitled; however, each one captures the theme in its own unique way,” said Fawz Kabra, curator for the Art and Design Gallery. “The committee was consistently amazed by how the students translated the concept into imaginative and innovative creations, transforming an abstract idea into a three-dimensional garment.”
FIT’s Fashion Design AAS program prepares students for positions as designers, assistant designers, technical designers, or stylists. Through the application of design knowledge and experiential learning, students develop their unique sense of aesthetics and apply their acquired knowledge to the evolving fashion industry, related design fields, and other creative careers.
The Fashion Design AAS Exhibition: Harmonic Threads will be on display in the Art and Design Gallery April 8–15. The gallery’s hours are 9 am to 5 pm daily. Find more gallery details at fitnyc.edu/gallery.