Material Mode

Author: April Calahan

  • 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 ensuring our holdings’ availability to generations to come, however, is…

  • 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 Collections be willing to accept them gratis with no strings…

  • 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 to ensure that they will last for a long time,…

  • 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 & yet so little realized; so unappreciated & yet so beneficial…

  • 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 awkwardly for a photo op.  The snapshot was forever immortalized…

  • 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 fashions issued to accommodate, “the prospective new way of life…

  • Party of the Year: The Met Gala

    The first Monday in May marks one of the most anticipated fashion events of the year, The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit, otherwise known as the Met Gala.  Instituted in 1948 as a fundraiser to support the newly formed Costume Institute (which was created in 1946 following the donation of the holdings of…

  • Charm School Beauty: The Du Barry Success Course

    Prevalent during the 1940s, 50s and 60s, charm schools offered day programs in deportment, vocal coaching, makeup and skincare tips, and etiquette training. Not to be confused with finishing schools—which were typically elite boarding schools for wealthy young women—charm schools were a more affordable avenue for learning the social graces and proliferated in heavily populated…

  • Egyptian Elegance: Youssef Rizkallah

                One of the great pleasures of working with our collection is rediscovering the myriad of designers represented who—while well-known during their own time—have now faded into annals of history. The name Youssef Rizkallah will ring a bell with few, yet FIT Library Special Collections houses a formidable collection of both…

  • In memoriam: Hubert de Givenchy

    Hubert Taffin de Givenchy, 1927 – 2018 Born in Beauvais, France in 1927, the creative talents of Hubert de Givenchy were perhaps not unexpected. He descended from a long line of creative minds; his father was an architect and both of his grandfathers worked as designers in the renowned tapestry factories at Gobelins and Beauvais. …