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  From the Anime Club to the Yarn Cafe (knitting and crochet), student clubs are an important part of life at FIT. One popular club is Runway27, which imagines, plans, and produces an immersive fashion show. Founded by Fashion Business Management Professor Lori Massaro in 2013 with 25 students, the club now has 150 student members hailing from many different majors. Runway27 members come up with the theme, source the garments and accessories, do hair and makeup, secure sponsors, design the set, capture video and photo content, and market the event to the FIT community—all while navigating a busy curriculum and their own social lives. This year’s high energy show, Synergy, held Nov. 16 in the Haft Theater, was told through the four elements of life: air, earth, fire, and water. The four elements were demonstrated in the garments, colors, and textures in this year’s show and were presented by an exciting cast of ethnically diverse and body-inclusive models, who are also FIT students. The makeup featured beautiful eye adornments to signal which element they represented. Even the pre-show mocktails matched the evening’s theme. Click here to see the original article.

On October 30, “An Evening with Seth Godin” brought the entrepreneur and best-selling author before an FIT audience. Students, faculty, and alumni gathered in the Katie Murphy Amphitheatre for an intimate conversation. Godin’s career spans five decades and includes the foundation of two companies: Yoyodyne, an unconventional marketing firm, launched in 1995 and sold to Yahoo! three years later; and Squidoo, a user-generated website, founded in 2006 and sold in 2014. Many of his 21 books have become best-sellers. His writing covers topics such as the global landscape post-Industrial Revolution, how ideas spread, and Godin’s particular concept of marketing. “Marketing is anything we do that changes the culture for the better,” he has said. Click here to see the original article.

Founded in 2013, Chalk FIT is still going strong 10 years later. And in recognition, “Celebration” is the theme for the chalk pastel murals that wrap FIT’s Goodman and Pomerantz buildings from West 26th Street along Seventh Avenue to West 28th Street. Students in their senior year of the Illustration program are each given a panel of the stone building in which to realize their drawing. Some students collaborated on larger panels; others are the result of individuals. They use a chalk medium donated from a local Blick store that doesn’t damage the buildings’ facades. For this year’s theme, students were prompted to “consider the meaning of the word celebration, and what you want to celebrate in your life, your community, family and/or the world at large.” Students began painting their works on Oct. 16 and were complete by Oct. 20. Many artists share their Instagram handles or other information above their work so you can follow them. You learn more and/or share about your experience @ChalkFIT.

  Each year, the CFDA awards a handful of highly competitive scholarships to undergraduate and graduate students at institutions across the country, based on sketches and accompanying details for a fashion collection. Since 1996, the organization has given out 365 scholarships worth a total of $3.7 million. This year, three of the 13 winners were FIT Fashion Design students in the class of ’24. Benjamin Halunen won a CFDA x Crystal Bridges Heartland Scholar award, which came with a $25,000 scholarship. Nkenglack Nchopa was named an Amex Scholar and awarded $25,000. And Cassius Read, named the Versace Scholar, received $30,000. Click here to read the original article.

When you look at Fashion Design BFA alumna Hee Jin Hwang’s exquisite designs, you are also seeing the impact and influence of her sculptor father. Titled The Sculptor’s Daughter, Hwang’s capsule collection for the 2023 Supima Design Competition featured structural looks, a lot of texture, and a great deal of surface manipulation and volume. Each of the eight finalists in the Supima show created a look in twill, velveteen, jersey, denim, and shirting, using Supima cottons. The runway competition took place in early September, and the finalists were mentored by noted designer and FIT alumnus Bibhu Mohapatra. “My dad was a sculptor, and I consider every one of my pieces as sculpture,” Hwang said. “I wanted to bring volume and structural effect into the garments, which is why I did a lot of surface manipulation and surface treatment. The texture I’m channeling in fashion is his inspiration and his taste. In order to do that, I did a lot of hand smocking. He molded ceramic;I molded fabric.” Hwang, who grew up in South Korea, won a $25,000 CFDA scholarship in 2022 and was a finalist in the 2023 Macy’s x FIT Capsule: The Every Body Collection. Click here to read the original article.  

On September 6, at the David Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, The Museum at FIT (MFIT) held its annual Couture Council Luncheon, honoring sustainability trailblazer Gabriela Hearst. Hearst, creative director of her namesake brand and French luxury fashion house Chloé, received the 2023 Couture Council Artistry of Fashion Award. “Just when I thought I couldn’t feel any more special or get more emotional,” Hearst said, “I get this honor from one of the most renowned fashion institutions in the world.” FIT President Joyce F. Brown and MFIT Director Valerie Steele both gave a warm welcome to guests. Jamie Nordstrom, chief stores officer of Nordstrom, shared remarks expressing pride in Nordstrom’s support of FIT and its up-and-coming, creative talent. Click here to read the original article.

Intelligent.com, a site that helps prospective students choose colleges, has ranked two FIT majors at the top of its list of the Best Interior Design Programs of 2023. FIT’s Interior Design program, which offers an AAS and BFA, was ranked first among the top 40 undergraduate programs, with a score of 99.13 out of 100. The list included many state universities and private colleges with renowned interior design programs. “Interior Design at FIT is exceptional because we are CIDA accredited, have a robust curriculum, and are committed to diversity,” says Carmita Sanchez-Fong, chair of the department. “We work closely with several nonprofit and mentorship organizations, including IIDA, ACE, Urban Assembly, and New York Cares.” Click here to read the original article.

Preeti Arya, Textile Development and Marketing, has developed a bio-based, biodegradable textile using a combination of lab-grown materials including SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) made from kombucha. In addition to its earth-friendly properties, the new composite is also edible. Her son had challenged her to create the textile. He knew about her interest in sustainability and asked, “Why don’t you make something completely biodegradable?” She applied for and received a Faculty Development Grant and a Sustainability Grant to fund the research. Arya experimented with various combinations of materials. It took a few attempts to get the mix right. Vartest Laboratories, an independent New York City textile-testing lab, found that the material was strong enough for numerous applications, including as a bag, wallet, or glasses case. Click here to read the original article.

Delphine Horvath, assistant professor, Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing, teamed up with alumna Lindsay Karchin six years ago to fill a critical educational gap the two saw in the beauty industry. The textbook that resulted from that collaboration, Cosmetics Marketing: Strategy and Innovation in the Beauty Industry, was published by Bloomsbury in July, and is making its way into curricula nationwide. The first marketing textbook devoted solely to the beauty industry, it is available through most major book retailers including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The book provides thought-provoking, industry-led exercises and case studies to demonstrate the role of aesthetics, authentic communication, emerging technologies, cultural trends, and the measurement of marketing efforts. There are also practical, beautifully illustrated resources for entering the field, exercises for boosting creativity, preparations for interviews, as well as an overview of the beauty products and theory used by makeup artists and product developers. Click here to read the original article.

  For thousands of years, the Yamuna River has been considered one of the most sacred bodies of water in Vedic (ancient Hinduism) literature and, along with the Ganges, has played a significant role in modern India’s political history, religious culture, and economy. Increasingly, pollution has endangered the Yamuna, making it difficult for residents to use the river for personal hygiene, and challenging its reputation as a source of spiritual rejuvenation. In the exhibition, Chasing a Dying River: Ghat 24 Yamuna, Delhi, India, Praveen K. Chaudhry, professor of Social Sciences, presents a collection of large-scale color photographs that document the humanitarian and social crisis currently visible along the shores of the Yamuna.  Click here to read the original article.  

In the early decades of the 20th century, FIT founder and president Max Meyer (1876–1953), then a buyer for a major New York City cloak and suit manufacturer, commissioned thousands of drawings of French couture designs to be licensed for production in the U.S.. A new show in FIT’s Art and Design Gallery, Unconventional Then, Now, & Always: A Helix of FIT Influence from Max Meyer to Daria Dorosh, juxtaposes some of these watercolor and ink images from houses such as Chanel, Poiret, and Lanvin with comparable examples of actual garments from the study collection of FIT’s graduate program in Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice.  Click here to read the original article.  

Elena Romero, assistant chair, Marketing Communications, has received her first New York Emmy nomination for Best Public Affairs Program (Series) as part of the LATiNAS team at CUNY TV. The monthly magazine-style news show showcases Latinas from all walks of life. She’s been a  correspondent and producer with the show since its inception in 2019. Romero also recently won her third Telly—a Silver Award, the organization’s highest achievement—for “LATiNAS: Best of Season 3″ in the Television: Diversity and Inclusion category. She’s won in previous years for her work on LATiNAS for a profile of a Latinx Muslim family in season one and for an entire season of on-air reporting done during the pandemic. Click here to read the original article.

  Fashion Design student Tessa Kent ’23 got over 550,000 hits for an augmented reality filter she created on Snapchat. The filter allows Snapchat users to “wear” two garments from her thesis collection, “Sentimental Fool,” which is embroidered with quotes from her great-great-grandmother’s memoir. Check out this one-minute video below or on FIT’s Vimeo channel to see how she did it. Click here to read the original article.

  Fashion Design MFA students, in consultation with world-renowned designer Bart Hess, designed a garment that will be part of his Unwearable Collection, a collaboration with the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim. The collection interprets the devastating impact and unpredictability of a rare skin disease, generalized pustular psoriasis (GPP), through fashion. The new piece brings to life one of the most common experiences of people with GPP: the emotional uncertainty of how it will impact their life each day, and how others will perceive them. GPP is a potentially life-threatening disease characterized by widespread eruptions of painful pustules across the body. Patients say the pain is equivalent to “10,000 papercuts.” Flares can greatly affect a person’s quality of life both physically and emotionally, and in severe cases, lead to complications including heart failure, renal failure, sepsis, and death. Click here to read the original article.

Fashion exhibitions have become an increasingly popular mainstay at museums—nearly 1.7 million people visited The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2018 show Heavenly Bodies, for example, making it the most-visited exhibition in the museum’s history. At the same time, major fashion brands such as Prada and LVMH have started foundations for displaying art. The work of Andy Warhol in particular prefigured many of these developments, says Natasha Degen, professor and chair of FIT’s Art Market Studies MA program. Her new book, Merchants of Style: Art and Fashion After Warhol, examines the convergence of art and fashion, and teases out some of its troubling implications. She answered a few questions on the subject for FIT Chief Storyteller Alex Joseph. Click here to read the original article.