Past Exhibitions 2024-2025

Africa's Fashion Diaspora
Special Exhibitions Gallery
September 18–December 29, 2024

Africa's Fashion Diaspora examined fashion as a medium of storytelling and as a vital way for designers to contribute to longstanding and evolving ideas of transnational Black cultural spaces. Whether described as Négritude, Pan-Africanism, the Black Atlantic, Black consciousness, or Afrofuturism, Black thinkers and creatives, from philosophers to writers, musicians, and visual artists, have theorized cultural connections between diverse communities of African descent. This exhibition explored designers from Africa, the Americas, and Europe who interpret and construct the culture of their distinct localities and communities for an international audience and/or reach across geographies to tie Black cultural practices together through their designs.

Examples included South African designer Sindiso Khumalo's textile print inspired by American abolitionist Harriet Tubman, British designer Grace Wales Bonner’s tuxedo informed by the court of Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia, and French designer Olivier Rousteing's collection for Balmain based on Black American cowboys. Through approximately 60 ensembles, textiles, and accessories, Africa's Fashion Diaspora illustrated how fashion designers have contributed to international dialogues to chronicle, evaluate, and expand modern ideas of Blackness. 

Africa's Fashion Diaspora was curated by MFIT associate curator Elizabeth Way.

Explore the exhibition online.

Image: Sindiso Khumalo, printed cotton dress detail, spring 2021, South Africa, museum purchase, 2023.32.1

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This Must Be The Place
Museum at FIT Lobby/Goodman Resource Center
November 2–December 8, 2024

The Fashion Institute of Technology and the Museum at FIT proudly presented the Photography and Related Media BFA Junior exhibition: This Must Be The Place. This collection, from 42 students, showcased photo based installations ranging from the documentation of intimate life, directed staged narrative tableaus, and visual representations of conceptual ideas. This vast scope of work reflected contemporary trends of fine art photography, showcasing individual creative vision, while reflecting the time and place we all inhabit.

This Must Be the Place was a student led exhibition, produced and created in the Photographic Concepts and Exhibition course where throughout the semester, students produce photographs to push their technical and creative abilities, as well as working collaboratively in committees to bring this show to life.

Image: Coral Day, Jan Edward, Fabiana Torres

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Statement Sleeves
Fashion and Textile History Gallery
January 24 - August 25, 2024

Whether puffed, ruffled, split, or sheer, statement sleeves have been a ubiquitous fashion trend for the past decade. These dramatic, contemporary creations can enliven and update a wardrobe, yet many current sleeve styles have cycled in and out of fashion for decades, if not centuries. Although sleeves can be especially challenging to make, they also inspire countless creative ideas. 

Statement Sleeves took an original approach to the history of fashion. The selected garments date from the 18th century to the present, but they were not presented chronologically. They were instead organized by type. Following an introduction to basic sleeve shapes–from gigot to raglan–visitors encountered the myriad ways in which designers have reinterpreted and remixed sleeves through variations in material, shape, embellishment, and even functionality. More than sixty styles, all from the museum's permanent collection, emphasized how sleeves hold the power to define a look–in both the past and present. 

Explore the exhibition online. 

Image: Madame Grès, evening gown (detail), navy blue silk taffeta, circa 1980, France, gift of Mrs. Mildred Hilson, 82.234.3

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