Fall Fashion Culture online program

The Museum at FIT’s fall Fashion Culture program is free and now available for access from anywhere. This season offers a series of seven thought-provoking half-hour-long conversations that feature designers, scholars and fashion industry leaders, covering a range of topics, such as sustainability, activism, Native American culture, politics, journalism, and fashion history.

We invite you to register so you don’t miss out on these fascinating conversations. Each talk will feature a live Q&A. 

Fashion Metropolis Berlin, October 13, 6pm EST, YouTube Premieres.
Berlin was a fashion capital in the 1920s, with hundreds of thriving clothing manufacturers—most of them Jewish—before it was snuffed out by the Nazis. Author Uwe Westphal shares this history in a discussion with FIT historian Keren Ben-Horin and journalist Jennifer Altmann, whose grandfather ran one of Berlin’s fashion houses. Organized in partnership with the Museum at Eldridge Street. Live Q&A.

About Power in Fashion, Stefano Tonchi and Grazia D’Annunzio in conversation, October 20, 6pm EST, YouTube Premieres.
Join Stefano Tonchi, chief creative officer of L’Officiel, and Grazia D’Annunzio, former deputy director of Vogue Italia, as they discuss the power of military uniforms and their influence on high fashion. Tonchi is the coauthor of the book Uniform: Order and Disorder. Live Q&A.

Fashion and Political Power, Robin Givhan in conversation with Valerie Steele, October 27, 6pm EST, YouTube Premieres.
Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Robin Givhan will discuss the current relationship among fashion, politics, and power. Live Q&A.

Jeffrey Gibson and Korina Emmerich in conversation, November 5, 6pm EST, YouTube Premieres.
In a conversation moderated by Regan de Loggans (Mississippi Choctaw), Jeffrey Gibson and Korina Emmerich will discuss Native American fashion design. Gibson is an award-winning Choctaw-Cherokee artist, whose work combines traditional Native American elements with contemporary references. Emmerich is the founder of EMME, a fashion brand that reflects her indigenous heritage stemming from the Coast Salish territory, Puyallup tribe. Live Q&A.

Lauren Fay in conversation with Ronald van Der Kemp, November 12, 6pm EST, YouTube Premieres.
Join couture designer Ronald van der Kemp and The New Fashion Initiative founder Lauren B. Fay for a discussion on Van der Kemp’s career and his devotion to craftsmanship, upcycling, and reducing waste in fashion. Van der Kemp is a Dutch fashion designer and founder of demi-couture fashion house RVDK, his namesake label, which shows at Paris Couture week and uses exclusively upcycled fabric. Lauren Fay has spent her career committed to improving sustainability, transparency, and accountability in the fashion industry. The New Fashion Initiative (TNFI) was born out of a need to create a more collaborative and interdisciplinary approach to fashion and brings together brands, nonprofits, and academics to educate future industry leaders. Live Q&A.

Fashion Victims: Dressing Up the Death Drive, Patricia Gherovici and Jamieson Webster,  November 17, 6pm EST, YouTube Premieres. 
If looks can kill, who is the victim in fashion? Scholars Patricia Gherovici and Jamieson Webster will engage in psychoanalytic readings, ranging from the phallic charm of Gucci to fashion as art or creation as understood in the Lacanian notion of sinthome. Live Q&A.

Prabal Gurung in conversation with Valerie Steele.
In case you missed it, check out our first fall Fashion Culture kick-off event here. Prabal discusses his career, his passion for activism, and why he didn’t leave New York City during the shutdown.

Also this month: ​MFIT’s “100 Years of Fashion” videos are now available in Spanish (100 años de moda). Created for high school students, the videos celebrate fashion history from the late nineteenth century through the 1990s, highlighting more than twenty-five objects from MFIT’s collection: 100 años de moda, part 1, part 2 / 100 Years of Fashion.               

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