Founded in 1969 by the Fashion Institute of Technology, The Museum at FIT is a specialized fashion museum famous for its innovative and award-winning exhibitions. The museum has been the site of more than 200 exhibitions since the 1970s, and Exhibitionism commemorates approximately 33 of the most influential of these, including Fashion and Surrealism (1987), a groundbreaking show that explored the relationship between art and fashion; The Corset (2000), a beautiful and brilliant exploration of the most controversial garment in fashion history; and Fairy Tale Fashion (2016), a magical look at the such enchanted and emblematic items as the glass slipper and the red riding hood. Exhibitionism also includes highlights from more recent, award-winning exhibitions, such as A Queer History of Fashion: From the Closet to the Catwalk (2013) and Black Fashion Designers (2017). Each exhibition will be highlighted using garments, photos of its original installation, and text that explains its importance, providing an engaging, “behind the scenes” look at the process of exhibition making.
May 17, 1971
Curator: Robert Riley
FIT’s 1971 retrospective on Hollywood costume and fashion designer Gilbert Adrian was not an exhibition — it was a live runway show. Organized to raise money for student scholarships, it featured more than 200 garments borrowed from private lenders and institutions across the US.
Upon hearing about the event, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer unearthed movie costumes that Adrian had designed for stars like Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo — and donated them to The Design Laboratory at FIT. – Colleen Hill
May 25-September 11, 1976
Curator: Robert Riley
In 1970, Robert Riley, director of FIT’s Design Laboratory, returned from a visit to Paris, where he had met Paul Poiret’s widow, Denise. Now he wanted to organize an exhibition of her late husband’s work. His colleagues were puzzled: Who was Paul Poiret? The revolutionary designer of the early twentieth century, once famous for abolishing the corseted silhouette, had been forgotten.
That would change in 1976 with Paul Poiret, King of Fashion. The exhibition featured more than 75 looks, some loaned by Denise Poiret, others by museums in France and the United States. The Design Laboratory at FIT also began to acquire its own collection of Poirets. – Valerie Steele
May 11 – October 2, 1982
Curators: Hubert de Givenchy and Laura Sinderbrand
Givenchy: Thirty Years featured almost 100 garments by the French couturier Hubert de Givenchy. The gala opening was co-chaired by Marvin Traub of Bloomingdale’s and Givenchy’s muse, Audrey Hepburn. There was also a live fashion show of Givenchy’s most recent couture collection.
A year later, the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened an Yves Saint Laurent retrospective, which received so much criticism that the Metropolitan Museum banned fashion exhibitions devoted to a single living designer until 2017. Clearly, fashion in an art museum aroused controversy, which it did not at a school like FIT. – Valerie Steele
February 24 – April 18, 1987
Curators: Richard Martin, Harold Koda, and Laura Sinderbrand
Three Women originated when one of the curators described Rei Kawakubo as the modern equivalent of Madeleine Vionnet or Claire McCardell. The exhibition brilliantly juxtaposed the work of these three designers: Vionnet, a French couturier whose body-worshipping gowns revolutionized fashion between the wars; McCardell, a New York ready-to-wear designer whose sportswear epitomized the American Look of the 1940s and 50s; and Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, a Japanese designer whose radical, deconstructed clothes transformed fashion. According to the curators, “these women make clothes that make women.” – Valerie Steele
October 30, 1987 – January 23, 1988
Curators: Richard Martin and Harold Koda
Fashion and Surrealism was one of FIT’s most popular and influential exhibitions. “The Surrealist preoccupation with the body . . . lends itself to fashion, said Richard Martin, adding: “Fashion is where Surrealism still lives.” Key Surrealist tropes included bodies and parts of bodies, as well as mannequins and chess pieces, often in a state of transformation and charged with Freudian symbolism. Thus, there were hats in the shape of shoes, shoes in the shape of feet, and garments featuring disembodied eyes, associated with the libido for looking. – Valerie Steele
April 4 – May 6, 1989
Curators: Richard Martin and Harold Koda
This visual “proposition about the way men dress in the twentieth century” featured a dozen “types,” including jocks (powerful athletes) and nerds (socially awkward brainiacs). The exhibition also included masculine tropes, such as those who wore regimented garb (military men, businessmen, sportsmen) and blue collar wear (“prol” gear), as well as outdoorsmen (farmers, cowboys, hunters), the urbane (man about town and the dandy), the young (Joe College), and the counterculture rebel. Jocks and Nerds presaged contemporary interest in menswear. – Patricia Mears
October 29, 1991 – January 11, 1992
Curators: Richard Martin and Harold Koda
Monographic exhibitions are commonplace today, but museum presentations devoted to a single designer were relatively rare until recently. Halston: Absolute Modernism debuted less than two years after the designer’s death. Halston hallmarks such as cashmere and Ultrasuede separates were on view, but the most compelling works highlighted the designer’s innovative construction methods.
Richard Martin’s assistant Fred Dennis drafted a selection of patterns to be displayed on the walls. Garments crafted from a single pattern piece were cut with nary an armhole or closure evident. – Patricia Mears
October 24, 1994 – January 7, 1995
Curators: Zette Emmons and Dorothy Globus
Hello Again was the first major exhibition of items made from recycled materials. Placed within an exhibition design that featured old television sets and a pile of used tires, the 250 objects on view included furniture, household items, and sporting goods.
Yet it was fashion that took center stage: Maison Martin Margiela’s sweater made from old army socks and XULY.Bët’s ensemble refashioned from secondhand and bargain-store finds are early examples of what is now known as “upcycling.” – Colleen Hill
February 16 – April 24, 1999
Curator: Valerie Steele
China Chic explored the influence of Chinese dress on Western fashion —
and also the influence of foreign dress on Chinese fashion. It is easy to find examples of Western designers inspired by China, such as Yves Saint Laurent.
What is more difficult – and more important – is to demonstrate that “fashion” is not a purely Western concept. The qi pao (also known as the cheongsam) is not a “traditional” Chinese style. Rather, it is a modern fashion invented in China during the 1920s as a cross-cultural fusion of Chinese menswear, Manchu womenswear, and Western flapper dresses. Earlier Chinese fashions were also influenced by foreign styles. – Valerie Steele
January 25 – April 22, 2000
Curator: Valerie Steele
Women throughout the western world wore corsets from the Renaissance into the 20th century. Although some argued that corsets were dangerously unhealthy, others believed that corsetry was necessary for women to look attractive and respectable. Women gradually stopped wearing corsets, adopting brassieres and elasticized girdles instead. Corsetry was also internalized through diet, exercise, and plastic surgery.
In the late 20th century, street styles such as punk brought corsets back into fashion — underwear as outerwear. The corset took on new meanings, evoking everything from romantic Victoriana to fetish-wear. – Valerie Steele
October 17, 2001 – January 12, 2002
Curator: Valerie Steele
London has long been one of the world’s most important fashion capitals. During the 1960s, as the site of an emerging youth culture guided by popular music, London was associated with new styles of dress, such as Mary Quant’s mini-skirts. During the 1970s, Vivienne Westwood made punk subcultural style fashions. The late 20th century saw new stars emerge, such as John Galliano, Lee Alexander McQueen, and Hussein Chalayan. London Fashion received the first Richard Martin Award from the Costume Society of America. – Valerie Steele
February 1 – April 19, 2008
Curator: Patricia Mears
Madame Alix Grès was a prolific creator whose output spanned six decades. Her work has often been described as unchanging and classic, but in fact she kept pace with the times and set trends.
This exhibition was the first to document Grès’s innovations via her three primary stylistic approaches: classically-inspired, “Grecian” pleated gowns; sculpted, three-dimensional coats and gowns; and highly innovative and influential, geometrically constructed “ethnic” caftans and pajamas dating to the 1960s and 1970s. – Patricia Mears
September 5, 2008 – February 21, 2009
Curator: Valerie Steele
Gothic: Dark Glamour demonstrated that designers such as Alexander McQueen and Rick Owensdid not appropriate goth street style. Rather, designers and goths were drawing on the same visual vocabulary, one that had also inspired the art and literature of the erotic macabre.
Simon Costin, who had collaborated with McQueen, helped create a dramatic mises-en-scène, with settings such as a ruined castle and a haunted palace — architectural metaphors for a disturbed mind, as well as a laboratory with rubber walls, where fashion “monsters” were created. – Valerie Steele
November 6, 2009 – April 10, 2010
Curator: Patricia Mears
American Beauty featured two dozen designers who specialized in everything from activewear to evening gowns. They were chosen for the beauty of their work, for the fact that most of their clothing was produced in the United States, and because they utilized clothing construction as the departure point in their design process.
Covering work from the 1930s to the present, American Beauty made clear that America’s most innovative designers created clothing that was not limited, as is often assumed, to the production of casual and functional clothing such as denim jeans
and sportswear. – Patricia Mears
September 17, 2010 – January 8, 2011
Curator: Valerie Steele
Japan Fashion Now opened with the 1980s designs of three pioneers of modern Japanese fashion — Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons. It went on to explore the diversity of Japanese fashion in subsequent decades, organized by different themes and neighborhoods in Tokyo, one of the world’s great fashion cities.
Approximately 90 ensembles represented fashions from labels such as Sacai and Undercover; menswear by Number (N)ine; and subcultural styles, including Lolita looks. There was also a platform devoted to Cosplay. – Valerie Steele
September 16, 2011 – January 7, 2012
Curators: Valerie Steele and Daphne Guinness
There have been many museum exhibitions about great fashion designers, but few about women of style. More than a muse, Daphne Guinness is a true fashion icon, whose individual style has inspired many designers, especially the late Lee Alexander McQueen.
Daphne Guinness co-curated the show and styled every ensemble herself. The looks were organized according to the different aspects of her personal style, including sections on dandyism, armor, and exoticism. – Valerie Steele
September 14, 2012 – January 5, 2013
Curator: Patricia Mears
“Ivy style,” also known as the “Ivy League look,” is one of the most enduring and recognizable sartorial modes in the world. Viewed today as a conservative, even static, way of dressing, Ivy style was originally a cutting-edge look, created when students at Princeton appropriated elements from the English gentleman’s wardrobe.
Ivy Style was a pioneering exhibition that spearheaded the recent surge of menswear exhibitions. It illustrated how a small repertoire of classic items — tweed jackets, button-down shirts, khaki pants, and “weejuns” loafers — moved from elite, all-male universities to the realm of international fashion. – Patricia Mears
September 13, 2013 – January 4, 2014
Curators: Valerie Steele and Fred Dennis
A Queer History of Fashion was the first museum exhibition to explore 300 years of fashion history through a queer lens. From Christian Dior to Alexander McQueen, the importance of gay designers to modern fashion is undeniable, yet seldom mentioned.
But fashion has also played an important role within the LGBTQ community, as people developed styles that enabled them to recognize each other in an often hostile environment. This pioneering exhibition received several awards. – Valerie Steele
February 7 – April 19, 2014
Curators: Patricia Mears and G. Bruce Boyer
1930s fashions emerged during one of the most tumultuous periods of modern western history. Set between two horrific world wars — during a catastrophic economic depression — fashion of the decade exuded an elegance that sought inspiration from neo-classicism. Elegance presented women’s high fashion and bespoke menswear from Paris and London (capitals of haute couture and bespoke tailoring respectively), as well as Naples, New York, Los Angeles, Havana, and Shanghai. – Patricia Mears
February 6 – April 18, 2015
Curators: Patricia Mears and
Emma McClendon
Yves Saint Laurent and Halston dominated the 1970s. This exhibition was the first to juxtapose their work, and it highlighted a time of momentous change in fashion: haute couture was diminishing while designer-led conglomerates were on the rise.
At the onset of the 1970s, Saint Laurent and Halston designed numerous garments that were remarkably similar; perhaps this parity was crucial to their maturation as designers. Eventually, the distinctive hallmarks of each designer emerged, such as Saint Laurent’s brilliant use of color, drama, and fantasy, and Halston’s unparalleled mastery of modernism and minimalism. – Patricia Mears
January 15 – April 16, 2016
Curator: Colleen Hill
Fairy Tale Fashion illustrated fifteen classic literary fairy tales using clothing and accessories. Tales by prominent writers such as Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Andersen were selected for their direct references to clothing or their mention of important recurring motifs, such as blonde hair or red roses.
The garments were placed in floor-to-ceiling mises-en-scène that depicted archetypal settings, including the forest, the sea, and the castle. Objects ranging from an 18th-century red, hooded cloak from England to a Japanese, 3D-printed “glass slipper” from 2014 underscored that fairy tales are rarely set in a particular place or time. – Colleen Hill
February 10 – April 15, 2017
Curator: Colleen Hill
While London is often considered the nexus of 1960s fashion, Paris continued to play a significant, yet often overlooked role in the fashion industry. It was during this era that French prêt-à-porter (ready-to-wear) came into its own, led by a group of young, innovative women that included Emmanuelle Khahn and Sonia Rykiel.
Traditionally trained couturiers also recognized the changes taking place in the fashion industry, and by the second half of the 1960s, Pierre Cardin, André Courrèges, and Yves Saint Laurent had created young styles and established successful ready-to-wear lines. – Colleen Hill
September 15, 2017 – January 6, 2018
Curator: Patricia Mears
Expedition was the first large-scale exhibition to examine the influence on high fashion of clothing developed for survival in brutally harsh environments. It showed how quests to reach the North and South Poles, scale the highest mountain peaks, plumb the ocean depths, and travel to outer space inspired designer versions of Arctic furs and parkas, down-filled outerwear, space age jumpsuits, and deep sea diving suits. Ensembles were placed within “extreme environments” designed for the museum’s galleries. Some garments reflected growing awareness of the human impact on Earth’s ecosystem. – Patricia Mears
May 2 – November 13, 2010
Curators: Colleen Hill and
Jennifer Farley
Sustainability has become integral to today’s fashion industry, but its long-term viability was unknown when Eco-Fashion: Going Green was organized. The exhibition examined fashion’s relationship with people and the environment, featuring garments from the mid-18th to the 21st centuries.
Presented chronologically, current methods of “going green” were used as a framework for studying the past. The objects selected represented the following themes: repurposing and recycling; material origins; textile production; quality of craftsmanship; labor practices; and treatment of animals. – Colleen Hill
June 2 – November 14, 2015
Curators: Elizabeth Way and Ariele Elia
During the first decades of the 21st century, “fashion week” became a worldwide phenomenon, as cities around the world eagerly invested in local fashion industries.
Global Fashion Capitals examined twenty fashion cities, from the uncontested leaders — Paris, New York, Milan, and London — to acknowledged centers in Tokyo and Antwerp, to the exciting emerging industries in Stockholm/Copenhagen, Berlin, Moscow/St. Petersburg, Kiev, Istanbul, Madrid, Mexico City, São Paulo, Johannesburg, Lagos, New Delhi/Mumbai, Seoul, and Shanghai. – Elizabeth Way
December 7, 2015 – May 3, 2016
Curator: Emma McClendon
Denim: Fashion’s Frontier emphasized the impact denim has had on fashion. Although denim has become a mainstay of fashion runways and carries intricate layers of cultural meaning, it is first and foremost a workwear fabric. As a result, people have not often considered denim important enough to keep and preserve.
This makes the museum’s collection of over 200 denim objects all the more significant. The museum’s denim garments include 19th-century men’s trousers, a 19th-century woman’s workwear jacket, and a prisoner uniform from 1913, in addition to many high-fashion styles. – Emma McClendon
December 6, 2016 – May 16, 2017
Curators: Elizabeth Way and Ariele Elia
In 2016, black designers represented only 1% of designers covered by the mainstream fashion press. Black designers who did receive attention were often pigeonholed by fashion industry professionals searching for a monolithic “black style.” Black Fashion Designers challenged both erasure and stereotyping, presenting work by more than sixty black designers that highlighted their broad range of talent.
The most comprehensive exhibition of black fashion design to date, it expanded on MFIT’s 1992 Tribute to the Black Fashion Museum, a collaboration with Harlem’s Black Fashion Museum. – Elizabeth Way
May 30 – November 18, 2017
Curator: Melissa Marra
The beauty and complexity of the natural world has often inspired fashion. Indeed, science and art have long influenced one another.
Force of Nature comprised ten sections, each highlighting the complex relationship between fashion and the natural sciences. “The Botanic Garden” and “Physical Forces” examined the appeal of scientific discoveries that found expression not only in books, but also through clothing and textiles. Other sections, such as “The Aviary” and “Metamorphosis,” highlighted symbolic associations between fashion and nature. – Melissa Marra
December 5, 2017 – May 5, 2018
Curator: Emma McClendon
The Body explored the complex relationship between fashion and body politics from the 18th century to the present. The fashion industry has historically treated the body (particularly the female body) as malleable and imperfect. A “fashionable” body must be shaped through the use of foundation garments, diet, exercise, and even plastic surgery, depending on the period.
Taking current conversations on body positivity and the lack of diversity in fashion as a starting point, the exhibition featured garments alongside videos of designers, models, scholars, and activists to provide greater awareness of beauty ideals. – Emma McClendon
May 25—November 17, 2018
Curator: Colleen Hill
Fashion Unraveled was an unusual fashion exhibition. Rather than focusing on pristine clothing that exemplified a theme, time period, or designer’s aesthetic, the exhibition examined the concepts of memory and imperfection in fashion. By selecting garments that had been mended, altered, left unfinished, the curator highlighted the fact that clothing is designed to be worn. Many garments show traces of wear or alterations, but those with visible flaws tend not to be featured in museum exhibitions. Fashion Unraveled chose to highlight imperfect garments, illuminating their unique histories. – Colleen Hill