From top left: Margarita and Cristina Ng Ng (Ng2 Studios), Justin Chi, Anabella Bergero, Youngjun Lim, Qiuyi Luo, Bingjin Zhu, Brit Shaked
Our D-Tech Lab, an extension of the FIT Center for Innovation, continues to deliver a holistic vision of business in the creative industries, and with student interns, faculty and academic and industry partners, it is developing new local, national and international markets in branding and in technology-driven sustainable production. It is also gaining a glowing global reputation. Indeed, the lab recently was selected to become the first higher education partner of Bambuser—an international leader and pioneer in interactive live video shopping based in Sweden. Bambuser, which started in 2007, is today the platform of choice for some of the world’s leading luxury fashion and beauty brands. And so, in early April, we launched DTech Live, powered by Bambuser, and used it to launch the collections of the MFA fashion design class of 2020. The presentation is called 7 Collections because it features the seven alumni of that class—each of whom comes from a different country.
During the presentation, you get to meet the designers, see their collections, and watch them in interview with the director of the Museum at FIT, Dr. Valerie Steele. More important, you have the opportunity to purchase items from the collections which will be custom-made for you. I was very proud of this group of alumni. Proceeds go to the designers themselves who will have full oversight of the production and fulfillment of the orders.
While I am dazzled by the technology that brings us the collections, I am just as dazzled by these graduates. They created their collections during the pandemic and demonstrated determination, resiliency and agility—and they stayed focused and true to their vision. The collections are stunning and you can see them through June, 2021:
This is an important moment for the college. DTech Live is a first in higher education. With it we have advanced our investment in experiential learning, advanced possibilities for students in many different programs, and raised our profile all the more as an innovator in higher education. I am thrilled that we are one of the drivers in this new development in retail. Our partnership with Bambuser enables great experimentation for our students who are, after all, the next generation of talent for the creative industries.
Emerging designer Anabella Bergero
Emerging designer Anabella Bergero
Emerging designer Bingjin Zhu
Emerging designer Brit Shaked
Emerging designer Bingjin Zhu
Emerging designer Brit Shaked
Emerging designer Justin Chi
Emerging designer Justin Chi
Emerging designers Margarita and Cristina Ng Ng (Ng2 Studios)
Emerging designers Margarita and Cristina Ng Ng (Ng2 Studios)
The Great Depression, with its pitiless lessons of economic ruin, cast a shadow over my family, as it did for so many others who managed to scrape their way through the 1930s. It was always there, hovering over the shoulders of my mother and father as they set out to make a life for themselves. I think about this as I reminisce about my family in the context of Black History Month with its theme: The Black Family: Representation, Identity and Diversity. As someone who, many years ago, studied, wrote, presented, and chaired task forces on the Black family, I am well aware of how complex the subject is and that its “representation, identity and diversity have been reverenced, stereotyped and vilified from the days of slavery to our own time,” as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History says.
That my small family managed to survive the Depression and the years that followed, when my sister and I were born, is a matter of faith, fortitude, and hard, hard work. We were not that stereotypical broken, dysfunctional Black family so often written about—but neither were we the upscale professional Huxtables nor part of the expanding nouveau riche middle class (á la the Jeffersons), for that matter. But we were not all that unusual, either. Despite the history of racism that savaged African American life, we were among those many Black families that managed to move, slowly and at great sacrifice, into the fledgling middle class.
Zora Neale Hurston
My parents met in Harlem during the Depression years, when Blacks from the south were streaming in as part of the Great Migration. Many families met and began that way. Just a decade earlier, Harlem had been home to a great cultural renaissance, a glamorous and dynamic time that attracted luminaries like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, Bessie Smith and Romare Bearden, W. E. B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey. But much of that faded with the onset of the Depression.
My father’s family came from Virginia, and he was born in New York City. My mother’s family was from New Orleans, where she was born. She and my grandmother left for Chicago in search of a better life. I don’t know the precise circumstances which prompted them—or my father’s family—to leave. I rather like what the author Isabel Wilkerson said in reflecting on those who went north: “They left on their own accord for as many reasons as there are people who left. They made a choice that they were not going to live under the system into which they were born anymore and, in some ways, it was the first step that the nation’s servant class ever took without asking.”
As devastating as the Depression was for the rest of the country, it was that much worse for much of Harlem. Certainly some escaped its ravages, and some neighborhoods continued to do well, but as a whole the area suffered from dire unemployment, increased poverty, and deteriorating health and living conditions.
Despite those woes, Harlem retained its vibrant, exciting nightlife, its commercial heart emanating the glamour of show business, its celebrated nightclubs and speakeasies thriving with big bands and dancing showgirls, as if the jazz age had never ended.
Album cover of “For Dancers Only” by The Great Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra
It was at this time, and into this environment, with its mixture of highs and lows, bleakness and bright lights, that my father made his way as a young man. Although he was not an entertainer, he was drawn to the vibrancy of show business and became associated with, and traveled with, the Jimmie Lunceford Band, one of that era’s best known swing ensembles. Quiet and cautious, he neither drank nor smoked, but surrounded himself with creative entrepreneurial people.
My mother grew up in Chicago, supported by her mother, whose skills as a seamstress I have bragged about at length here at the college. It was my mother’s talent as a dancer that brought her, and her mother, to New York. By the time she was 16 or 17, she was a member of Harlem’s storied Cotton Club chorus line. The Cotton Club also hired my grandmother to design and make its costumes. Eventually, my great-grandparents joined them as did my great uncle when he retired from the merchant marines.
Mother joined the club in its 1930s heyday. She rubbed shoulders with Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong and Lena Horne. In fact, when Ms. Horne was called upon to dance, mom was her understudy. Mother was never a featured dancer but was proud to occasionally be selected as the last dancer on stage—a coveted position.
Cotton Club mural in the Hotel Edison
Unlike my dad, my mother did not relish the life and talked about it very little. If she, or my grandmother, were offended by the “whites only” audience policy, she never said. If she was ever unduly bothered by men, she never said. She once did say that keeping a smile on her face while dancing was difficult because people were not very nice to each other. In fact, it was a hard, demanding life—physically strenuous—and one she adopted only after dropping out of school to help support her family.
Gateway entrance to the City College campus. Photo from: CUNY Central Photo Archive
Fast forward a decade and more, and my parents, my sister and I are living on Convent Avenue, in the heart of the Hamilton Heights/Sugar Hill district, right across the street from the City College campus. Not far away is Lewisohn Stadium, the then-famous amphitheater where the college’s commencement was held, as well as athletic events and classical concerts It was—and still is—an iconic residential neighborhood, filled with handsome old buildings that once was home to the likes of W. E. B. DuBois, Thurgood Marshall, and Count Basie. And it was within this conclave of blocks and historic buildings that I grew up.
My father always wanted to own his own business and never wanted to work for anyone else. He had an entrepreneurial spirit, but very little luck and very little money. For several years, he tried his hand at a couple of small businesses which he ran with my mother. They worked very hard, but unfortunately, each of the businesses failed. So in the end, both of my parents took steady office jobs, he with the post office, she with the New York City Housing Authority. For them, it was a matter of survival. They were determined that my sister and I would have a different kind of life—a better life—and that life would be achieved through hard work. On this, my parents were as inflexible as steel: This was the American ethos, for blacks and whites and everyone else, the American belief that with hard work and sacrifice, each succeeding generation would rise on the socio-economic scale, and would do better than the last. As a measure of what my mother thought of her life as a Cotton Club dancer, she ruled out dance lessons for either of her daughters. Instead, she bought a piano so that my sister and I could learn how to play—which was what every respectable child in that era was meant to do.
The church played a role in our household as well. I was sent to Catholic schools from K-12, despite its costly tuition. And there was no question about college. College was the ticket to transformation—an education was the one thing no one could ever take away from you. I drank in this message and was mesmerized by the City College students I watched for hours out our windows as they emerged from the subway at 145th Street and streamed down Convent Avenue, clutching their piles of books, looking so smart and serious. I wanted to be just like them.
When I reminisce about family, I also think about two other people: one was my maternal grandmother, the seamstress, with whom my sister and I stayed every weekend in the years my parents had their businesses. Somehow she managed to open a business of her own. I vividly recall the long table of sewing machines and ladies sitting at their stations, stitching garments that were sold under famous designer labels in Fifth Avenue department stores. She made all of our clothes: if I could describe it, she could drape it and make it. Quite often, we would all go with her to Macy’s Herald Square to select fabrics and finishes for whatever ensemble was being created for one of us. To this day I love the touch and feel of fabrics and wonder at the miracle that talented designers and seamstresses can create.
Prom coat, made and designed for Dr. Brown by her grandmother
Prom coat, made and designed for Dr. Brown by her grandmother
And then there was Lois, a family friend who owned a hair salon. I called her my aunt, and she was like an Auntie Mame—always lighthearted, always fun, almost always with a drink in her hand. From the time I was nine, I would finish up my household chores on Saturdays and then run to her salon where I would do anything just to be there: sweep the hair on the floor, put change in the parking meters for her customers, run whatever errands needed to be run. None of this was for money—although I received a dollar for the day and tips from the ladies, so I never had to ask my parents for an allowance ever again—but just to bask in its special ambience and the sense of belonging that has remained with me to this day.
Of course I went to college: Marymount in Tarrytown, a fine women’s liberal arts institution—also Catholic—that is today part of Fordham University. And then it took me 10 long years of work and study to complete my PhD from NYU.
So you see, there are many ways that Black families not only survived, but built legacies. Black History Month offers an opportunity to remember and reflect on what we have learned from our own family histories. What my parents’ generation had in common was the haunting specter of the Depression. From them, from the church, from the rest of my family, I learned discipline, determination, and sacrifice. From them, too, I learned that failure was not an option—I would have to excel. I learned to never give up on my goals and that, especially as a Black woman, no one was going to hand me success. I learned, as well, that it is possible to make a difference in the world and that, though it is a cliché: to those to whom much is given, much is expected. And as I look back on my family, much was given. As one sociologist put it: “The richest inheritance any child can have is a stable, loving, disciplined family life.” By any standards, mine was rich indeed.
I am very proud to say that FIT was represented at the inauguration of President Biden and Vice President Harris by three alumni, all from the class of 2008. You may already know about Daniel Roseberry ’08, the Schiaparelli designer whose extravagant gown was worn by Lady Gaga.
The girls were Vice President Harris’ great nieces and the coats were designed and made by Sydney Hawes ’08, whose company’s sourcing director and former FIT roommate, Susan Trottiner’08, sketched the coats.
In September, we held the last of our FIT Design Entrepreneurs competitions. This was the program that we started eight years ago in collaboration with the city as part of then-Mayor Bloomberg’s effort to boost New York’s fashion industry. We called it a mini-MBA program because it was for designers who had the creative talent to succeed, but lacked the business skills to survive. We weren’t looking for dreamers or novices. We wanted people who were already testing themselves in the market and who had sales of at least $50,000. (We actually had several designers whose annual sales reached $2 and $3 million—a nice sum, but no guarantee of survival in the fickle fashion industry.) Each one we accepted into the program had the potential to thrive financially and to become contributors to the city’s creative economy. We offered intense weekend workshops and mentors and in the end, selected as winners those designers who devised the best, most effective business plans.
Monisha Raja, designer, sustainable shoes (2013)
Julie and Jason Alkire, womenswear designers (Haus Alkire), 2nd place winners (2015)
As designers, they were all outstanding. Every year, as I paged through the Look Books and saw the finalists products on display, I was reminded of how much sheer talent we harbor here in New York City. Like hard working “creatives” in every field, these designers were all looking for a breakthrough. They made jewelry and coats, menswear and dresses; shoes and ladies lingerie, and so on. But, as I said, as much as the judges might have admired their artistic creativity, it was the viability of their business model that counted.
Several years ago, the city, having initiated and supported the development of the program, turned it over to FIT to run. We were delighted and fortunately, we did not lack support. Indeed, from the outset, Morris Goldfarb of GIII was the backbone of the project: he provided financial support, he solicited financial support, he acted as judge and cheerleader. Several years ago, too, Morris bolstered the program by offering $150,000 each year in prize money to help winners support their businesses. We also had numerous generous gifts from industry—perhaps the most touching was the $50,000 that Mike Gold from YM Fashion contributed for the last three years of the program to honor his father Israel Goldgraub.
Jeannette Nostra, former president of GIII, helped us all get the program off the ground and acted as its executive in residence; each year she would kick off the program with a rousing session on branding that set the tone for the students. She was joined by FIT’s Chris Helm who designed the program and managed it skillfully. I always say that FIT is in the business of helping our students realize their dreams. And for the last eight years, that is what we have been doing through FIT Design Entrepreneurs. But the program has run its course. During its time, 254 designers representing 225 companies have been its beneficiaries; all of them have learned how to build a business plan that will help them fulfill their dreams. I wish each of them the very best and look forward to seeing their unique products on the streets, online—and post-pandemic—in shop windows throughout the city.
Chris Helm, FIT Design Entrepreneurs manager; Becca McCharen-Tran, lingerie, swimwear and bodywear designer (2013)
Bita and Rouzita Vahhabaghai, handbag designers, 1st place winners (2014)
Andrea Bocchio, accessories designer (2014)
Morris Goldfarb (center) with judges J. Michael Prince (l) and Barry Kay (r) (2015)
Daniel Joo, co-owner Haerfest; with his brother Tim, 2016 1st place winners
Melissa Hall, FIT Design Entrepreneurs instructor; Nora Gardner, 2 nd place winner; Jeannette Nostra; Design Entrepreneurs executive-in-residence (2019)
Andrea Diodati, womenswear designer; Morris Goldfarb; Jeannette Nostra (2013)
Morris Goldfarb, Chairman and CEO, G-III
President Joyce Brown
Luxury eyewear by Kerin Rose Gold (2014)
James Talbot (childrenswear), Jeannette Nostra; Jessica Wade (womenswear); Mimi Plange (womenswear, furniture)–all three first year winners (2012)
One of FIT’s many remarkable talents is its ability to reinvent itself. Over its 75 year history, FIT grew from a two program trade school focused exclusively on fashion to a world renowned college offering about 50 degree programs in the related fields of art, design and business. At each step along the way, FIT stayed connected and relevant, reflecting the many new disciplines in the creative industries it served.
But as the year 2020 has demonstrated, the college’s ability to reinvent itself isn’t limited to new academic programming. With the rapid onset of the COVID-19 crisis, FIT transformed almost immediately to remote instruction in March, and then moved quickly into contingency planning for the new academic year. That we were able to do so is testimony to the commitment and diligence of the entire FIT community—and the strategic efforts and creative solutions of our IT and Academic Affairs divisions, including the Office of Online Learning and Academic Technologies and the Center for Excellence in Teaching, each in its own way collaborating to make the new FIT possible for Academic Year 2020-21.
None of this could have happened without the sweeping upgrades to our technology systems over the course of the summer. The IT Division, working with Academic Affairs, Human Resources, and Enrollment Management & Student Success, implemented a total of nine new products, services, or initiatives. I will never forget the pivotal role our stalwart faculty played in all this: they willingly trained for hours to learn new programs or rewrote curriculum to accommodate our new circumstances. Without their positive attitude and hard work, our sophisticated new systems would have lay fallow.
Still, I marvel at what some of these new products can do and sometimes wonder what we would have done had this crisis taken place ten years ago. FIT Remote Labs, for one, unlocks the software that had been ‘trapped’ on-campus in the spring, by creating a virtual classroom that allows students and faculty to ‘remote into’ the actual computers in our classrooms. So a fashion design instructor, for instance, working out of her loft in Dumbo, can teach garment construction using 3D visualization and simulation software accessed from our classrooms. Or a class of fashion business management students learning how to allocate retail inventory can work directly in the software, entering their retail plans, watch the plans being updated and then report back the results.
The launch of FIT Book It, another new service, was critical to our ability to reopen our on-campus studios for those students enrolled in studio-based classes. To ensure the safety of students who reside on campus or are within commuting distance, we needed a process to reserve a ‘socially-distanced’ studio space before a student entered the campus. IT, partnering with the Registrar’s Office, met this critical need with FIT Book It, and in these first weeks of the semester, local students have been eagerly reserving spaces in studios—delighted to be able to use sewing machines and dress forms in draping studios or cameras, light meters and lenses in photography labs.
The IT division also partnered with Human Resources to implement #CampusClear, a mobile app that allows any student or employee to check their health before they come to campus. This ensures that all visits to the college follow established health and safety guidelines—a vitally important safeguard for which we should all be grateful.
These are just a few highlights of a campus-wide collaboration that dramatically reconfigured our information technology offerings—no small task even in ‘ordinary’ times. As a result of these efforts, the new academic year opened with systems and services that make us safer, stronger and more resilient, and will continue to benefit FIT on that happy day when we all return to 27th Street. Indeed, what was achieved goes beyond transforming our ability to facilitate remote instruction and work; it goes beyond responding to the crisis of today. It has reinvented and rebuilt our technological capabilities for FIT’s future.