The following Material Mode post is by Julie Sandy Boyle; previously the archivist/librarian at the New York School of Interior Design, Julie joined SPARC’s team in April 2025. With a decade of experience in scenic and prop design, as well as her background in architecture, […]
Dark Subculture in the FIT Archive
Fashion and culture are closely connected. What we wear tells others where we come from, what we believe in, and how we’re feeling. Our clothes can help us stand out or fit in, express ourselves differently or follow the crowd. Clothing worn by members of […]
The Fashion Illustrations of Harriet Meserole
Active from 1915 through the 1950s, illustrator Harriet Meserole is best remembered for her Vogue covers produced during the interwar years, though her career extended across a wide range of publications and commercial formats. She enjoyed a successful freelance practice during a period of profound […]
Douglas Says it All – Preserving the Legacy of Designer, Douglas Says
SPARC is pleased to bring you a guest post by scholar and FIT Fashion and Textiles Studies Master’s program student, Andy Salzer. Andy holds a BFA in Fashion Design with an Art History minor from FIT. During their studies, they spent one year at Polimoda […]
The Redfern Scrapbook: A Process-Based Provenance Report
SPARC is pleased to bring you a guest post by Addie Joseph who was a Special Collections volunteer over the Summer of 2025. Addie spent the summer of 2025 in SPARC assisting with a major reorganization of our rare book library, and took on this […]
Paris to New York – Fashion Piracy from the Early Twentieth Century
SPARC is excited to bring you a guest post from fashion scholar Cora Harrington. Cora has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology and Anthropology from Agnes Scott College. In her former career, she was an intimate apparel expert and author of In Intimate Detail: How […]
Collection Preservation: Demonstrating & Demystifying
Behind a keyed elevator, a succession of swipe-entry doors and monitored by surveillance cameras from every angle, the contents of FIT Library Special Collections & College Archives rest safely snuggled in our collections rooms thanks —only in part—due to security measures. Perhaps more important to […]
Miss 1966: Dobbie Coleman and Marc Bohan for Dior
In 2016, we received a phone call from a not-for-profit foundation with an offer almost too good to be true. They were looking to fund the donation of a set of sketches from the house of Christian Dior to a deserving institution; ‘might FIT Special […]
Preserving the Web at FIT
By Samantha Levin, Curator of Digital Assets The Fashion Institute of Technology’s Special Collections and College Archives (SPARC) is a unique repository. Housed within the college’s library, it holds a number of rare and fragile items, which are carefully stored, organized, and described in detail […]
The Tissue of Dreams: Paper Patterns in the Tailoring Trade
In the opening chapter of her book A History of the Paper Pattern Industry: The Home Dressmaking Fashion Revolution, curator and scholar Joy Spanabel Emery cites the October 1916 issue of Designer magazine: “There is nothing so cheap & yet so valuable; so common & […]