Exhibitions
Fashioning Wonder: A Cabinet of Curiosities
Learn More
An introductory gallery examines the history of cabinets of curiosities, explaining their significance to the Age of Exploration, their ties to colonialism, and the need to think more critically about contemporary museums and their objects. Within the main gallery, selections are organized into ten themed cabinets that highlight the connections between fashion and the natural world, fine art, human anatomy, and illusion. The immersive exhibition design also allows for interaction with objects, encouraging visitors to identify unusual or obsolete objects and to engage with the sensory appeal of fashion.
Fashioning Wonder: A Cabinet of Curiosities is curated by MFIT Senior Curator of Costume Dr. Colleen Hill.
Image: Mary Katrantzou, "Flyphoon" dress, spring 2019. Courtesy Mary Katrantzou.
FIT's School of Graduate Studies, in collaboration with The Museum at FIT, presents All That Glitters…, a virtual exhibition conceived and organized by graduate students in FIT's MA Fashion and Textiles Studies program. All that glitters is not gold—it can be any medium that catches the light, shines, and reflects. The post-World War II era saw a blossoming of new textiles and technologies that changed the relationship between fashion materials and light. All That Glitters… explores surfaces that shine, focusing on themes of material production, social and financial values, and conservation. It examines not only the bright side of these materials, but also their darker side–including their environmental impact and their use in protests, such as "glitter bombing."
Image: Paco Rabanne, evening dress, plastic and metal, 1969, France, gift of Montgomery Ward, 81.48.2
Cross-Pollination: Fashion Diasporas is a dynamic collaboration between The Museum at FIT (MFIT), Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), and LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore. Inspired by the Fall 2024 MFIT exhibition Africa’s Fashion Diaspora, this display brings together fashion design students from both institutions who conducted research, interpreted their findings, and created projects celebrating diasporas from Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe.
The students in New York and Singapore centered their work around three key themes: "Mothers and Motherlands," "Monumental Cloth," and "History Is Political." They drew inspiration from their own backgrounds and countries of origin, as well as from the fashion designers featured in the fall exhibition, to produce a diverse range of works. On view here are 27 projects from various fashion disciplines, including draping, childrenswear, virtual prototyping, accessory design, and 3D illustration.
The Cross-Pollination: Fashion Diasporas student exhibition marks the fourth collaboration between The Museum at FIT, FIT, and LASALLE's
School of Fashion in Singapore. It was curated by Campus Exhibitions Coordinator Gabrielle
Lauricella.
Image: Designer: Brianna Beidler (FIT student)
This piece is inspired by the women within Brianna's family and the opportunities
that they have allowed her. The jacket features digitally printed photographs of various
generations of her family's eyes as they take on a portal to the soul and have an
immortal sense to them. Also featured are the handwritings of these women, transferred
with essential oil, that speak to the importance of the mother.
The dress beneath is a series of dyed ropes that intertwine, representing the blending
of various lineages and the blood shared between.
Africa's Fashion Diaspora's Connection: Mothers and Motherlands, Thebe Magugu, Genealogy
collection, custom shweshwe cotton ensemble, spring 2022
Dress, Dreams, and Desire: Fashion and Psychoanalysis
Dress, Dreams, and Desire: Fashion and Psychoanalysis is the first exhibition to explore the complex relationship between fashion and psychoanalysis. Curated by Dr. Valerie Steele, director of The Museum at FIT, the exhibition will feature approximately 100 looks by designers such as Alexander McQueen, Elsa Schiaparelli, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Gianni and Donatella Versace, John Galliano for Christian Dior Haute Couture, Rick Owens, Thierry Mugler, Vivienne Westwood, and many more. Described by Suzy Menkes as "the Freud of Fashion," Steele has spent more than five years working on this exhibition and the accompanying book, which draws on the evolution of psychoanalytic ideas about sexuality and the unconscious, with sections devoted to themes such as the mirror stage, the skin ego, desire, and sexual difference.
Image: Photograph by Elizaveta Porodina of artist Alisa Gorshenina. Courtesy of photographer.
MFIT on the Road
There’s no shame in living in the past