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 […]
Year: 2020
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 & […]
Shoes to ‘Chutes: The Wartime Story of I. Miller & Sons
On January 12, 1945, the Grand Ballroom of the luxurious Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City was packed full as a thousand pair of curious eyes looked on as shoe industry executive George Miller and Lieut. Col. Harold L. Lister of the US Army posed […]
Emergency Mode: The Wartime Hats of Sally Victor
Promptly at 3pm on December 18, 1941, members of the American fashion press gathered at the legendary Rainbow Room in New York City and patiently awaited their introduction to emergency mode. A fundraiser to benefit the British Ambulance Corps, the event showcased the latest wartime […]