Textile Development and Marketing

The color, print, and form of a design may catch your eye, but it’s the fabric that makes the product work. Textiles are the language and the heart of fashion and allied industries. Would you like to be a part of a $2 trillion global industry? In New York City alone, there are currently over 180,000 jobs related to textiles.

The Textile Development and Marketing (TDM) program takes you from fiber to finished product, through all aspects of the industry, from knitting and weaving to dyeing and finishing to performance textiles. You’ll explore critical issues like sustainability biodesign and analyze textiles in our state-of-the-art lab.

Learn about the elements that make a textile what it is—and make a designer’s creation look and perform exactly as it should. This two-year program will help you to jumpstart your career in the creative world of textile development and fashion. The textile and fashion industry are global, and our graduates often travel internationally. Once you have an AAS, you can apply for a BS in Textile Development and Marketing.

Degree Details

You’ll study textiles in the fashion and home furnishings industries, learn hands-on in our industry-standard labs, and master professional equipment and software. By graduation, you’ll be ready to use innovative technologies to turn ideas into the products consumers crave.

Degree Details

Industry practices like research, development, quality assurance, and marketing take place in our classrooms — and our grads’ global careers.

Professor Whiteny Crutchfield uses FIT's new jacquard loom, the TC2

FIT’s new jacquard loom, the TC2, empowers students to create just about any pattern—including a photograph—in fabric.

Adjunct Professor Lorenza Wong’s recently revamped Textile Development and Marketing capstone course focuses on craftsmanship, working with artisans, and forging a sustainable livelihood.

Faculty members Preeti Arya and Ajoy K. Sarkar, Textile Development and Marketing, introduce a natural method for improving cotton fabrics and expanding their usefulness in their paper “Cotton-Cork Blended Fabric: An Innovative and Sustainable Apparel Textile for the Fashion Industry.”

diagram of creating resuable fase masks from plastic waste

With assistance from their FIT students, three Textile Development and Marketing faculty members—Assistant Chair Ajoy Sarkar and Assistant Professors Huipu Gao and Imran Islam—received a $75,000 People, Prosperity, and the Planet (P3) grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop one-of-a-kind reusable, antiviral face masks made from plastic waste.

FIT professors Imran Islam and Ajoy Sarkar

Textile Development and Marketing faculty and students collaborate on research that provides momentum to the possibility of using more natural fiber in winter wear—which could have potential social and environmental benefits.

A material world … The denim in jeans, organic cotton in sheets, recycled plastic in high-performance carpet. You’ll learn about all of these —and what they mean for the consumer and the environment.

It’s hard to know what seed you’re planting in their minds, but hopefully these future designers will become more conscious of where material comes from and where it goes.

Lydia BairdTextile Development and Marketing ’16, part of the Muslin Compost System, used for FIT's dye garden

There’s a growing demand for professionals who can develop, produce, and market the right textiles at the right price while ensuring that production meets quality and legal standards. Recent graduates are employed at Polo Ralph Lauren, Lafayette 148, Tory Burch, American Eagle Outfitters, Patagonia, Tommy Hilfiger, Haddad Brands, The Children’s Place, Macy’s, Bass Pro Shops, The North Face, Levi’s, Cotton Incorporated, A/X Armani Exchange, and Marc Jacobs. Graduates find positions worldwide with apparel manufacturers, design and fashion organizations, fiber companies, home furnishings manufacturers, and global sourcing firms, pursuing careers in line building, fabric sourcing, textile and apparel, retail private labels, product management, project design, fabric research and development, and color management.

Beyond Graduation

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Our faculty members have both the expertise and the industry connections to get you started in this exciting career. Meet more Textile Development and Marketing faculty.

Ajoy Sarkar

Sarkar is a professor in the Textile Development and Marketing Department. He holds undergraduate degrees in chemistry and textile chemistry from the University of Mumbai and MS and PhD degrees in textile sciences from the University of Georgia. Sarkar is the author or co-author of over 45 publications.

Sean Cormier

Cormier is an expert in the production of textiles. He is an associate professor and chair of Textile Development and Marketing.

This annual project is a unique opportunity for students to work together to develop, design, manufacture, and market a product line. Documentary created by LAIA CABRERA & CO. Film and Multimedia Productions

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