The Museum at FIT Fashion Culture Podcast

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

Hip Hop History with Ralph McDaniels of Video Music Box | Fashion Culture

“We wanna be fabulous. We wanna be fly. We wanna be fresh!” declares Ralph McDaniels.

For #BlackHistoryMonth we’re excited to share this conversation between Video Music Box co-creator Ralph McDaniels and FIT professor and author Elena Romero about the styles, sounds, and scene of early hip hop in NYC. 

Ralph McDaniels is the founder and curator of the Video Music Box, which airs on NYC-TV, (channel 25 or 22). McDaniels, also known as "Uncle Ralph," has directed and produced over 400 music videos, and co-produced the films Juice (1992) and You’re Watching Video Music Box (Showtime, 2021). McDaniels's microphone is held in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Elena Romero is assistant chair and assistant professor of Marketing Communications at FIT and was a co-curator of Fresh, Fly, and Fabulous: 50 Years of Hip Hop Style. Romero is the author of Free Stylin': How Hip Hop Changed the Fashion Industry (2012) and is a featured expert in the style documentaries The Remix: Hip Hop x Fashion (2019) and Fresh Dressed (2015).

This talk was recorded in Feb 2023. 

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

SHOWStudio's Nick Knight in conversation with Amy de la Haye about his rose photography | Fashion Culture

Nick Knight and Amy de la Haye engage in a conversation about his photographs of roses for The Museum at FIT's 24th academic symposium Ravishing: The Rose in Fashion held on April 30, 2021. This virtual event explored how the beauty, mythology, and symbolism of the rose have long influenced fashionable dress. #RoseInFashion

Nick Knight OBE is one of the world's most visionary, innovative and creative image makers. Working primarily in the realms of fashion and style, his award-winning images have been instrumental in challenging conventional notions of beauty and identity. In order to champion fashion film and develop a forum to explore experimental technologies, he launched what was to become the award-winning SHOWStudio website in 2000. He has developed his passion for posting iPhone photographs of “Roses from my Garden” on Instagram to create major unique artworks that explore AI.

Amy de la Haye is Professor of Dress History & Curatorship and Joint Director of the Centre for Fashion Curation at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London. She has worked as a curator, interpreting museum collections and archives for thirty years; from 1990 to 1991 she was Curator of 20th Century Dress at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She has published extensively on subjects including British fashion, curatorship and practices of collecting; the Women’s Land Army; subcultures; the Worth archive and is author of the V&A’s "Clara Button" books for children. Her next major project involves working, with Simon Costin, on a series of exhibitions on British folklore costume.

Watch the 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

Image: "Sunday 6th, November 2016."  Courtesy of Nick Knight.

From Sylph to Swan: The Tutu and Fashion | Fashion Culture

Patricia Mears, deputy director of The Museum at FIT, explores the history of the tutu in ballet and fashion at The Museum at FIT's 14th annual fashion symposium, Dance & Fashion, held on October 23 & 24, 2014. This symposium explored how dance costume has inspired fashion, and how fashion designers have increasingly been creating dance costumes.

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

Ballet Shoes: Function, Fashion, and Fetish | Fashion Culture

Colleen Hill, curator of costume and accessories at The Museum at FIT, discusses the romance and femininity but also discipline and pain of ballet shoes.

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

Careers in Fashion Media | Fashion Culture

Elizabeth Way, in conversation with Teri Agins, Dario Calmese, and Constance White discusses the evolving field of fashion journalism at The Museum at FIT's Black Fashion Designers symposium held on Monday, February 6, 2017. The one-day symposium featured talks by designers, models, journalists, and scholars on African diasporic culture and fashion.

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

50 Years of The Museum at FIT | Fashion Culture

Dr. Valerie Steele and Colleen Hill reflect on past exhibitions at The Museum at FIT in celebration of its 50th anniversary. This talk was originally presented at the Exhibiting Fashion symposium on Friday, March 8, 2019. This symposium explored the history of fashion curating, the different ways fashion is displayed in museum settings, and how national and regional identities influence fashion exhibitions.

 

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

On Patrick Kelly: Dr. Monica Miller and Eric Darnell Pritchard | Fashion Culture

Dr. Monica Miller and Eric Darnell Pritchard, in conversation about Patrick Kelly at The Museum at FIT's annual fashion symposium, Black Fashion Designers, held on Monday, February 6, 2017. The one-day symposium featured talks by designers, models, journalists, and scholars on African diasporic culture and fashion.

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

Modest Body Politics | Fashion Culture

Reina Lewis presents “Modest Body Politics: Faith, Fashion, and Ethnicity” at The Museum at FIT's 19th fashion symposium, Fashion and Physique, held on Friday, February 23, 2018. The one-day symposium featured lectures and panels on topics such as the emergence of the plus-size fashion industry in the early twentieth century, the impact of popular culture on how we assess the female body, and fashion accessibility for the disabled in the technological age.

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