The Museum at FIT Fashion Culture Podcast

Lifestyles with Debra Rapoport | Fashion Culture

Lifestyles is a six-episode original short podcast series from The Museum at FIT. Join MFIT Digital Media Manager Tamsen Young as she sits down with people whose distinct expression of style is outside conventional fashion trends. Discover how they use clothing to define themselves on their own terms.

Learn more about the Lifestyles podcast series, and view more images of our guests, on our website. 

New episodes drop twice a month. Subscribe and listen to find your own style inspiration. 

The artist and maker Debra Rapoport brings a playful exploration of beauty and ingenuity to both her fashion and her life. Her style, a blend of making and thrifting, reflects a lifelong commitment to sustainability. Debra studied weaving in Stockholm, Sweden, holds a BFA from Carnegie Melon University and an MA from UC Berkeley where she graduated in 1970. She taught throughout the 1970s at UC Davis and continued teaching here in New York City, including at the Museum of Modern Art, MAD Museum, and NYU, just to name a few. Debra's work has been featured in numerous art museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the National Museum of Sweden. Debra was featured in Advanced Style, a film about the style of people over the age of 60, as well as in the three Advanced Style books that followed.

Transcript (pdf)

The Museum at FIT (MFIT) is the only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of fashion in New York City. https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum

Tim Gunn in Conversation with Dr. Valerie Steele | Fashion Culture

From the 19th-century corset to the modern waist trainer, the fashion industry has long held that most bodies require correction. In this episode, Dr. Valerie Steele and Tim Gunn trace the historical arc of body ideals in Western fashion, from the voluptuous Venus of the Victorian era to the increasingly narrow and homogeneous standards that dominate runways today.

Drawing on decades of curatorial scholarship and industry experience, Dr. Steele and Gunn examine the persistent reluctance among designers to create beyond a narrow range of sizes, the structural barriers facing fashion students seeking education in plus-size design, and the enduring interplay between clothing, sexuality, and self-presentation. Gunn reflects on his own encounters with industry exclusion while Dr. Steele situates these conversations within a longer history of medical, cultural, and commercial pressures on the female body.

This episode was recorded live on Friday, February 23, 2018, as part of The Museum at FIT's 19th Annual Fashion Symposium, Fashion and Phsyique.

Watch the full video with captions on YouTube.

The Museum at FIT (MFIT) is the only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of fashion in New York City. https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum

Norma Kamali in Conversation | Fashion Culture

Norma Kamali studied fashion illustration at FIT before taking a job at Northwest Orient Airlines. From 1964 to 1968, she traveled to Britain every weekend, where she immersed herself in the culture of 1960s London. In 1967, she and her husband opened a boutique in NYC and filled it with items purchased in London. She supplemented her stock with her own designs and eventually began to focus primarily on her original creations. Among her most celebrated creations is the “sleeping bag coat" and a swimsuit worn by Farah Fawcett in one of the most memorable photographs of the 1970s. However, she also designed high heel sneakers, adjustable dress from parachute silk, created a suit from sweatshirt fabric, and is renown as a pioneer in athleisure. In this conversation, Norma Kamali and MFIT's Patricia Mears speak at the museum's fashion symposium, Fashion, Science, and Exploration, held on October 10, 2017.

Watch the full video with captions on YouTube.

The Museum at FIT (MFIT) is the only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of fashion in New York City. https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum

Yves Saint Laurent's Mondrian Dress Series | Fashion Culture

Piet Mondrian's abstract paintings were appropriated by various aspects of popular culture throughout the 1960s, notably by Yves Saint Laurent in his 1965 dress series. Co-authors Nancy J. Troy and Ann Marguerite Tartsinis join MFIT's senior curator of costume Dr. Colleen Hill to discuss the wildly popular dress series and how art, commerce, and fashion became intertwined in the postwar period. 

This talk was recorded March 6, 2024.

Watch the full video with captions on YouTube.

The Museum at FIT (MFIT) is the only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of fashion in New York City. https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum

 

Robin Givhan on Virgil Abloh with Dr. Elizabeth Way | Fashion Culture

Robin Givhan, the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, presents her new book, Make It Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh. Appointed as head of menswear for Louis Vuitton in 2018, Abloh was the first Black designer to serve as artistic director in the brand's 164-year history and his rise was amid a cultural moment that would upend a century's worth of ideas about luxury and taste. In this conversation with Dr. Elizabeth Way, The Museum at FIT's associate curator of costume and accessories, Givhan discusses Abloh’s disruptive impact on the fashion industry, his controversial design methods, and his legacy as a figure of optimism. She notes that in the current cultural climate, choosing optimism is a "radical" act, and Abloh did so not out of naivety, but as the only way to move forward.

Robin Givhan spent more than 25 years writing about politics, race, and the arts at The Washington Post as a fashion critic and most recently, senior critic-at-large. 

This talk was recorded August 26, 2025.

Transcript (pdf)

The Museum at FIT (MFIT) is the only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of fashion in New York City. https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum

Fashion Design in Colombia | Africa's Fashion Diaspora Symposium

Colombian designer Lia Samantha Lozano, a pioneer of Afro-Colombian fashion and speaks with Professor Dr. Tamara J. Walker about Lozano's eponymous brand, Lia Samantha, which translates the power of Black and Indigenous peoples’ cosmovisions, traditions, wisdom, spirituality, and beauty into contemporary design.

Walker, an associate professor of Africana studies at Barnard College, Columbia University, centers her research on slavery, gender, and racial formation in Latin America. Walker’s first book, Exquisite Slaves: Race, Clothing, and Status in Colonial Lima (2017), won the 2018 Harriet Tubman Prize.

This talk occurred on October 25, 2024 at The Museum at the FIT's Africa’s Fashion Diaspora Symposium at the Fashion Institute of Technology. The symposium explored key histories, networks, and industries led by Black designers who are actively shaping fashion culture. Scholars and designers illustrated the breadth and depth of diasporic fashion networks, from the African continent to South America and the United States. #FashionCulture

Transcript (pdf)

The Museum at FIT (MFIT) is the only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of fashion in New York City. https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum

Transforming Fashion Education | New Directions in Fashion Research Symposium

How can fashion schools institutionally cultivate support and accelerate the many changes already happening in the classroom around inclusion and equity? Ben Barry, Dean of Fashion at Parsons School of Design, explores the decolonization work at Parsons and the successes, challenges, and discussions that arose from that process.

Ben Barry was named to the Vogue Business inaugural “100 Innovators” list in 2022. Barry is leading the Parsons fashion community to embed equity, inclusion, and justice in its curriculum and culture. His current research, funded by the Ford Foundation, explores how to redesign fashion education and the fashion industry to enable disabled designers to thrive.

This talk, "Transforming Fashion Education: Possibilities and Limits of Equity, Inclusion, and Decolonization," was originally given in 2024 at MFIT’s New Direction in Fashion Research Symposium. 

The Museum at FIT’s 31st symposium, New Directions in Fashion Research, focused on new avenues of study in the interdisciplinary field of fashion. Scholars, curators, and collectors explored topics such as practice-based research, collecting practices, theories and methodologies, and the role of diversity, equity, and inclusion in fashion education.

Read Transcript (pdf)

The Museum at FIT (MFIT) is the only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of fashion in New York City. https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum

Olivier Rousteing in Conversation with Valerie Steele

Olivier Rousteing, creative director of the house of Balmain, joins Dr. Valerie Steele for an intimate conversation with FIT students. He recalls his personal struggles and hardships, offering a candid look into his journey and the lessons he’s carried along the way. Speaking on diversity and inclusivity in fashion, Rousteing shares: “We always win when there is love… We can build a community of people that believe in the same world, and we’re all here to shape this world.” He takes a number of audience questions and gives thoughtful and personal answers to the students' questions.

This talk was recorded September 3, 2025.

Watch the full video with captions on YouTube.

The Museum at FIT (MFIT) is the only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of fashion in New York City. https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum

 

Television's Most Stylish Shows with Hal Rubenstein | Fashion Culture

Costume design can make or break a character or TV show. Author, consultant, fashion director, and media personality Hal Rubenstein shares amusing insights about the most influential fashion on television from the 1950s to today. Based on research from his book Dressing the Part: Television's Most Stylish Shows, Mr. Rubenstein reveals the surprising ways our favorite shows have reflected and often shaped the way we dress. He is joined by costume designer Eric Daman, whose work includes looks for the TV show Gossip Girl.

This talk was recorded February 15, 2024.

Watch the full video with captions on YouTube.

The Museum at FIT (MFIT) is the only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of fashion in New York City. https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum

Hilfiger and Hip Hop Artists | Fashion Culture

Andy Hilfiger reminisces with MFIT curator Elizabeth Way about the early days of Tommy Hilfiger and how Hip Hop artists incorporated the brand into their style. This talk was part of MFIT’s 2023 fashion symposium Fresh, Fly, and Fabulous: Fifty Years of Hip Hop Style.

Andy Hilfiger has been blurring the lines between music and fashion for decades. He began his fashion career at 12, selling jeans at his brother Tommy Hilfiger's first business, The People's Place. Hilfiger relocated to New York City to perform in the downtown rock scene. He was instrumental in introducing the Tommy Hilfiger brand to pop culture. He currently serves as the vice president of Business Development for Authentic Brands Group.

Dr. Elizabeth Way is curator of costume and accessories at The Museum at FIT and co-curator of the Fresh, Fly, and Fabulous: 50 Years of Hip Hop Style exhibition. Her past exhibitions include Global Fashion Capitals (2015), Black Fashion Designers (2016), Fabric in Fashion (2018), and Head to Toe (2021). Way edited Black Designers in American Fashion (Bloomsbury, 2021).

Watch the full video with captions on YouTube.

The Museum at FIT (MFIT) is the only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of fashion in New York City. https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum