Food & Fashion Symposium Speaker Bios
Bronwyn Cosgrave is a best-selling author, broadcaster, curator, prolific journalist and producer of theatrical documentaries about Kevyn Aucoin, Manolo Blahnik and Ronlald van der Kemp. She is a co-producer of Apple TV+ series, The Super Models. Her biography of Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel is a best-seller and Made for Each Other, Fashion and the Academy Awards, her best known book, is the first comprehensive fashion history of the Oscars.
Lucia Fainzilber is a photographer and art director represented by Praxis Gallery where she participated in group shows in London, Paris, Miami, LA, and Düsseldorf as well as in her solo shows Somewear, Wild Flowers, The Cookbook, and Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall in New York.
Madeleine Luckel is the Design Editor at Architectural Digest. Previously, she worked at Vogue and Vogue.com. Madeleine holds a Master of Arts in Costume Studies from NYU and a Bachelor of Arts in Classics from Brown University.
Angie Mar, a native of Seattle, is the chef and proprietor of the recently opened restaurant Le B. Her previous restaurant, Les Trois Chevaux (which will be moving to the Upper East Side in 2024) was named one of Esquire's Best New Restaurants in America in 2021 and one of Robb Report's 10 Best New Restaurants in America in 2022. Prior to this she was the chef & proprietor of The Beatrice Inn. Mar was named Food & Wine Magazine's Best New Chef in 2017 and her first book, Butcher + Beast: Mastering The Art of Meat, was nominated for an IACP Award.
Melissa Marra-Alvarez is curator of education and research at The Museum at FIT. She is co-curator of Food & Fashion and ¡Moda Hoy! Latin American and Latinx Fashion Today (2023). Her past exhibitions include Minimalism/Maximalism (2019), Force of Nature (2017), and Fashion & Politics (2009).
Tanya Meléndez-Escalante is senior curator of education and public programs at The Museum at FIT. She is co-curator of ¡Moda Hoy! Latin American and Latinx Fashion Today (2023). She is a contributing author to the books Food & Fashion (2023), Exhibitionism (2019), and Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color (2018).
Dr. Susie Orbach is a British psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, writer, and social critic. Her book Bodies won the Women in Psychology award for best book, and was updated in 2019. In 2001, she demonstrated at London Fashion Week with the demand for sustainable clothes on sustainable bodies. She is the recipient of the first Lifetime Achievement Award for Psychoanalysis given by the British Psychoanalytical Society.
Fabio Parasecoli is Professor of Food Studies in the Nutrition and Food Studies Department at New York University, and served as advisor to the Food & Fashion exhibition. Recent books include Food (2019), Global Brooklyn: Designing Food Experiences in World Cities (2021), and Gastronativism: Food, Identity, Politics (2022).
Ricardo Seco is a Mexican designer based in New York. He aims at empowering members of Latin American culture through collections inspired by key elements of his Latinx identity. Ricardo Seco is a streetwear brand with the mission of providing a voice to immigrant minorities.
Dr. Valerie Steele is director and chief curator of The Museum at FIT, where she has personally organized more than 25 exhibitions since 1997, including A Queer History of Fashion and Paris, Capital of Fashion. She is also founder and editor-in-chief of Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, the first peer-reviewed, scholarly journal in fashion studies.
Dr. Monica Titton is a sociologist, fashion theorist, and culture critic. She teaches fashion history, fashion theory, and visual research strategies at the Fashion Department of the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her work develops a critical, sociological perspective at the intersections of fashion, politics, art, and identity.
Elizabeth Way is associate curator of costume at The Museum at FIT and co-curator of Food & Fashion. She curated/co-curated the exhibitions: Black Fashion Designers (2016), Fabric In Fashion (2018), Head to Toe (2021), and Fresh, Fly, and Fabulous: Fifty Years of Hip Hop Style (2023).
Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson is professor and chair of the Department of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is a material culturalist whose research explores the ways in which Black people (broadly defined) engage their material worlds, especially with food and food cultures as well as historical legacies of race and gender (mis)representation.