Summer, and the Reading is Lazy…

http://parkchelseanews.blogspot.com/2014/08/fashion-institute-active.html

Hi, all!

Things are quiet here at the FIT this week.  The “High School Live” programs are almost finished, plus summer school is slow, and nearly finished.  If you walk along 27th street, you can see new dorm furniture being unloaded, and the benches around campus are nearly empty most of the day.

It’s been a newsworthy summer, although none of it seems to directly concern FIT.  The Supreme Court handed their last cases down, men and woman have tossed their hats into the presidential campaign ring, Wimbledon has wrapped up, and President Obama has negotiated a peace treaty with Iran.

The first rainbow flag used as a symbol of gay rights, designed with FIT alum James McNamara
The first rainbow flag used as a symbol of gay rights, designed with FIT alum James McNamara

http://news.fitnyc.edu/2015/06/30/the-betsy-ross-of-gay-pride/

Since it’s quieter now, I thought I would take a moment to talk about Volumes and Issues and some of our future articles.

We’ve been able to post more regularly as the library has committed to the blogging process.  We’ve had a couple amazing days lately where the traffic has been over 100 views, and we routinely have 600+ views a month now.  This means traffic here has doubled in the last year.  Thank you, all of you, for reading!

The site stats have shown support for several regular pieces.  I will be writing more “Needles in the Stacks” with Denise this fall. This is our series of book reviews.  We’re working our way through the hundreds of sewing and fabric-technique manuals here in the library’s collections.

Denise n Beth
Denise and Beth

 

People responded to them.  Right now we’re thinking of doing an post on corset-making books and another on historic-reproduction handwork books.  We’re open to suggestions, if you’d like us to review anything in particular.

http://blog.fitnyc.edu/volumesandissues/2013/12/10/needles-in-the-stacks-with-beth-denise/

Anne Appert’s post about Maurice Sendak is a favorite, so I’ve asked her to keep an eye on our collection for more illustrators’ work to post.

http://blog.fitnyc.edu/volumesandissues/2012/05/15/oh-please-dont-go-well-eat-you-up-we-love-you-so/

Anne, one of our staff up in the Periodicals area on the 6th floor, is also a talented illustrator in her own right.  You can take a look at her stuff here:

http://anneappert.com/

The Periodicals and Electronic Resources (PERS) department has also just rehoused our terrific collection of historic forecast materials, and I’ll be writing something about that once the new school year begins.  This archive of fashion forecasts is one of only a very few in the world, and will shortly become available for scholarly and designer use.

anorak_shopup2
From “the Shop-Up!” at http://www.anorakmagazine.com/studio-anorak/

 

We’re in the process of adding a bunch of new magazines to the PERS collections, and I’ll be writing something about them once more of them begin coming in.   Some of the new titles we’ve ordered include Cereal, Anorak, Dapper Dan, Numero Homme, Port, and Wrap.  Unfortunately, several of my favorite titles, Anthology and Address, seem to have ceased publishing.

 

2 Vog Valentino Red Gown 1984 C
Valentino gown from Vogue, 1984

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, working with one of our student aids, Shannon Lindsey, I will be writing some features about fashion design houses that have reinvented themselves with young, hip designers.  We’ve found lots of terrific images to compare and contrast.  So far, we’re looking at images comparing early Valentino, Dior, and Balenciaga with the new designers’ work for those venerable couture houses.

That’s what we’re working on for the next few months of writing for you.  In the meantime, there will be some vacation time, so the blog will be a bit quiet.  That doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten you, though!  We’ll be back late August with more really great stuff!

 

 

Comments

3 responses to “Summer, and the Reading is Lazy…”

  1. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    Typo alert in the very last paragraph, 2nd sentence.
    … bit instead of big.

    1. Beth Avatar
      Beth

      Heh. Thanks!

  2. […] wrote a little about Anorak last summer (http://blog.fitnyc.edu/volumesandissues/2015/07/15/summer-and-the-reading-is-lazy/) but we have three or four copies now, and we’re pretty excited about it. Published […]