Lupo, Photography ’11, created the self-portraits on the cover and pages 2–3, as well as the fingerprints on this page. Read about her process, and her job at the New York City medical examiner’s office, on p. 16.
HTHE EDITOR SAYS GOODBYE TO HUE
AFTER 37 years at FIT and 17 as founding editor of Hue, I’m retiring in April. I’m so proud of what we accomplished. Some of our work was truly groundbreaking, and won recognition in the university magazine world. Of course, we were fortunate to have the extraordinary FIT community as a wellspring of stories, art, and inspiration. I’m sad to say farewell to Hue but pleased to leave it in the hands of two astoundingly talented wizards: chief storyteller Alex Joseph, who’s been there from the start, and managing editor Jonathan Vatner. I can’t wait to see what they do next.
linda angrilli
Jolene
Get a rip
The evolution of OXO's vegetable peeler
BY JONATHAN VATNER
Peeler
photos: Victoria Pizzo, Photography '19
If you’ve been poking around kitchens long enough, you’ve probably encountered a cheap metal peeler rusting in a cutlery drawer. You might even know the frustration of applying that peeler to an apple or a potato. Its sharp-edged, narrow handle is hard to hold, and it slips when your hands are wet. And when the blade is dull, it won’t grab onto the peel.
That old peeler became effectively obsolete after Sam and Betsey Farber founded OXO in 1990. Betsey was struggling with peeling apples because of her arthritis, and Sam envisioned a better solution. Together they designed a peeler with a wide, comfortable rubber handle. It was the beginning of OXO’s Good Grips line.
The company, now owned by consumerproducts conglomerate Helen of Troy, produces countless tools for the kitchen and beyond: salad spinners, food storage containers, brushes and dusters, and measuring cups, to name a few. Their original peeler is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
That iconic peeler has undergone a few updates since its debut, most recently in 2020. OXO streamlined the handle, strengthened its connection to the head, and lengthened the blade to make peeling larger vegetables easier. Improvements in manufacturing techniques have produced a sharper, more durable blade. Shannon Ballantyne, Home Products Development ’09, an associate director of product development, is one of many FIT alumni at OXO. In her decade at the company, she has refined kitchen gadgets like the peeler and graters, developed grilling implements, and launched a line of camping equipment in partnership with outdoor recreation retailer REI.
Ballantyne works with an engineer to update each product. The engineer sets up a precise tooling process that produces consistent quality, and she makes sure the product stays true to OXO’s universal design ethos.
Both engineer and product manager get involved with OXO’s obsessive testing.
“We’re pretty perfectionist when it comes to making products perfect,” Ballantyne says. “We try to get there with all things.”
The engineer sets up mechanical tests to mimic a gadget’s wear and tear over its lifetime, and Ballantyne ensures that it’s easy to use for a broad range of people. While testing graters, she zested hundreds of lemons and limes, reaching the point where she knew how a grating surface would perform just by running a finger over it.
Both OXO’s new and updated products take two-plus years to develop, and that care pays off in overwhelmingly positive online reviews—which is one reason Ballantyne loves her job. She also loves that the work is hands-on, collaborative, and creative, and that she’s helping create products she would want anyway.
“OXO is the gold standard for kitchen products,” she says. “It's been really awesome to be part of that.” ■
The OXO vegetable peeler (OPPOSITE ) massively improved upon the oldschool metal peeler (ABOVE ). BELOW : Ballantyne has worked in product development at OXO for more than a decade.
A Natural
In her office, de Lagarde keeps items from “key brand moments” for the company. The jewelry boxes, fragrance, and striped faux fur scarf are all licensed products.
Fit
Jackee de Lagarde, Fashion Buying and Merchandising ’98, oversees licensing at kate spade new york
BY NANCY A. RUHLING
jackee de lagarde , the vice president of global licensing at kate spade new york, always figured she’d become a fashion designer.
She grew up watching Style with Elsa Klensch, Fashion Television, House of Style, and Fashion File and dreamed of seeing her own work on the runway. In high school, she made her first sketches in a fashion class and organized a fashion show.
But after spending two summers in FIT’s precollege program, she changed direction.
“I realized that I loved the business aspect of fashion even more,” says de Lagarde, who went on to earn a BS in Fashion Buying and Merchandising in 1998.
At kate spade new york, de Lagarde oversees the brand’s 16 licensed categories, which include eyewear, watches, fashion accessories, fragrance, and home, to name a few. She develops long-term strategies; researches companies that can manufacture, sell, and market branded products; and is responsible for the bottom line.
Her division partners with these companies, known as licensees, to create products outside kate spade new york’s usual portfolio that are a natural fit for the brand, like fragrance or bedding.
The teams help licensees understand the brand aesthetic, identifiable by its bright colors, dots and stripes, and New York City heritage. “I often tell my licensees that if our product makes our customer smile, then we’ve done our job,” de Lagarde says.
Her teams also offer seasonal product design and marketing inspiration, and they ensure that the terms of the licensing agreement, which covers everything from minimum sales to intellectual property rights, are being upheld.
“The end consumer should not be able to tell whether a product was made by the brand internally or by a licensee.”
It was at her first full-time job, as a design and sales coordinator working on private-label brands for a boutique hosiery manufacturer and licensee, that de Lagarde was introduced to the world of licensing, a subject that, at the time, hadn’t been taught at FIT.
The company had the license for Nine West and other brands, and de Lagarde was intrigued by the product development process as well as how the merchandise was marketed to the consumer. One of the owners taught her about licensing and helped her get hired as a licensing and marketing manager at Randa, a men’s accessories company.
After that, de Lagarde worked for Sean John, French Connection, Dockers, and Kenneth Cole before joining kate spade new york a decade ago as director of global licensing. She was promoted to vice president in 2022.
“The beauty of licensing is that it doesn’t just apply to fashion brands,” de Lagarde says. “You can transition into consumer products, art, media, and entertainment. You can be on the licensee or licensor side of the business as well as work for an agency that manages brands on behalf of licensors. You can even become an intellectual property lawyer.”
As one of the few Black women in vice president-and-above roles in the fashion industry, de Lagarde says she has had to overcome bias and microaggressions.
“This affected how I showed up at work and the opportunities available to me,” she says. “I had an unwavering work ethic and the need to prove that I belonged in this industry. I felt I had to work harder than everyone else to get ahead and be respected.”
In the early 2000s, while at Randa, de Lagarde watched friends and colleagues find jobs in the urban streetwear market with companies like Rocawear, Sean John, Mecca, and ECKO UNLTD. She craved community and wanted to work alongside other Black professionals, while also building her career.
She networked tirelessly and, in 2003, got a licensing job at Sean John, which gave her what she was looking for. “I built a number of longstanding relationships and friendships through that role and learned a lot about myself, my worth, and what I want my path to be in this industry as a Black woman. I took what I learned and applied it to how I mentor and inspire others.”
She and her brother, Jonathan de Lagarde, vice president of design for the fashion company The House of LR&C, navigated the industry together, encouraging each other throughout their careers.
At kate spade new york, de Lagarde finds ways to build community and help other Black employees. She is a founding member and former co-chair of Black Alliance, the first Employee Business Resource Group at Tapestry, kate spade new york’s parent company. She is also a member of Tapestry’s Inclusion Council.
Ultimately, de Lagarde hopes her story will encourage and motivate others inside and outside the industry.
“I want people to remember me as a successful executive responsible for building iconic brands who also made time to listen and inspire others to do their best,” she says. ■
The soulful, commemorative quilts of Lori Weyand Mason, Textile/ Surface Design ’96
BY ALEX JOSEPH
“Textiles are such a visceral medium,” says Lori Mason ’96. For 25 years, people have sought her out after a loved one dies. The survivors send clothing worn by the deceased, and Mason turns these relics into quilts that commemorate a life.
AFTER LIFE
Eva’s Night Out
54 by 76 inches, 1998
One of the first quilts Mason created incorporated her grandmother Eva’s brightly colored ombre scarves. “I’ll put the essence of the person’s spirit in the center,” Mason says. “It was hugely healing to work with her things and feel her there.”
Joe’s Good Will 2
55 by 70 inches, 2021
The late mayor of Salinas, California, Joe Gunther also served as a Marine in Vietnam. The chevron shapes reference his life of service. “I usually come up with a simple idea, and the clothes make it sing,” Mason says. She appliquéd the name tag from his Salinas Police Department polo shirt to the bottom left corner.
Two brothers from Mexico died. They loved horses. Mason made a pair of quilts from their bandannas, each as distinctive as a fingerprint. An administrator at NYU, devoted to Buddhism, left behind a collection of chic socks: “He was impeccably fashionable from his toes to his ankles,” his widow said. From the stylish fabric, Mason created a quilt that recalls a mandala. The spouse of a former Marine sent a box of his plaid and white shirts, navy chinos, and khakis; Mason fashioned a quilt sporting chevrons to recall his life of service.
For clients, seeing the final products can be overwhelming. A dead person’s clothing is usually discarded, though it retains some of their aura; Mason redeems the items into meaningful pieces that evoke the deceased.
Her reputation spread by word of mouth. Today, customers come to her from Bermuda, England, Canada, Denmark. She starts by talking with them and establishing trust. “What I do makes people feel heard,” she says. “I offer them my eye, and my craft.”
At FIT, she studied color theory with Eileen Mislove. “She used to say there was no such thing as a ‘bad’ color. The colors you place next to it make it come alive,” Mason says. “I don’t get to choose the palette that comes to me in a box of clothing. What I can choose is how those colors and patterns sit in relation to each other.” After graduation, Mason worked as a patternmaker for Nike, where she helped create track and field outfits for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. She still sells her patterns to fabric companies.
Yet it’s the commemorative quilt projects that she cherishes most. “This is my ‘heart work,’” Mason says. “It’s how I feel I can help people in a way I couldn’t when I was in commercial design.”
By some estimates, human beings are touching fabric for 98% of our lives. In Mason’s work, it touches us back. ■
Sometimes Mason needs to convince survivors to give her the clothing of a deceased loved one. “I always talk to the survivors directly,” she says. “Trust is huge for me.”
Fernando’s Bandannas
54 by 70 inches, 2023
This recent piece features bandannas that reference the subject’s love of horseback riding.
Youssef’s Mandala
26 by 50 inches, 2017
Mason designs with computer software and sews the pieces together; she then sends the work to a business partner who quilts the three layers together (front, back, batting). The circular pattern of quilted stitching here is meant to recall a Buddhist garden. Most of the fabric comes from the late owner’s stylish socks.
ZAHRA TANGORRA, FINE ARTS ALUM, MAKES THE BEST LASAGNA EVER
LUSCIOUS LAYERS
BY VANESSA MACHIR
photos by joel goldberg , advertising and marketing communications
The path to culinary success is often rocky, and no one knows this better than chef, writer, and podcast host Zahra Tangorra, owner of Zaza Lazagna in Brooklyn.
In December 2006, she was traveling in California with a musician friend on his tour bus when the driver fell asleep and the bus went over a cliff. She remembers thinking, “I don’t want to feel myself die.” Luckily, everyone survived; Tangorra’s hand was gashed and broken. She decided not to return to her physically demanding job as a display designer. Instead, with the accident settlement money, she focused on food. It’s in her blood: When she was young, her parents owned specialty takeout and catering businesses (one of which was named after her childhood nickname, Zaza). “I loved to cook and I was an only child, so I spent a lot of time with the Barefoot Contessa,” Tangorra says.
In 2010, she opened Brucie, a restaurant in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. Tangorra combined her Long Island, Italian-American heritage with a welcoming, creative atmosphere. In 2014, a Beyoncé-themed Valentine’s Day dinner (dishes included Jay-Ziti and Breastiny’s Child) got the attention of publications like E! and People. “We had 1,000 people on the waiting list,” she says.
But in 2016, stress prompted Tangorra to close. “I hit all these walls,” she says. “When you own a restaurant, people love you, people hate you … I just didn’t want this thunderstorm in my heart anymore.” She catered and consulted until the pandemic hit. Inspired by pop-ups opening at the time, she and a few former coworkers started making heat-and-eat Italian takeout in winter 2021—and Zaza Lazagna was born.
sauce, “I love to roast whole tomatoes in the oven with thinly sliced onions, garlic, salt, pepper, and chili flakes—then mash it all up,” she says. “That way you’re not by the stove all day, making sure your sauce isn’t burning.” She uses fresh, uncooked pasta sheets and a mix of ricotta, pecorino Romano, fresh mozzarella, and provolone cheeses.
She also puts her own spin on the traditional dish, offering inventive flavors such as spanakopita and sweet potato. For a chicken bacon ranch lasagna, she evoked the nostalgic taste with “delicious products like organic chickens cooked down with crispy pancetta … and Cabot Clothbound Cheddar béchamel with a ton of chives and black pepper and dill,” she says.
Tangorra’s team would work until the small hours in the basement of a local deli with little refrigerator space. “We were getting 150 orders a week—I don’t know how we did it,” she says. Customers picked up their dishes on Friday evenings, leading Brooklyn Magazine to declare that night “‘Lasagna Night’ in Cobble Hill.” More important was “the collective loving energy” that Zaza Lazagna generated, Tangorra says. “It was so amazing to have folks wait to pick up our food and hear how much it meant to them.”
Tangorra focused on lasagna because it fits easily in a package, freezes well, and reheats nicely. And her lasagna is life-changing. For
In September 2023, Zaza Lazagna switched from pickup service to catering and seated dinners, like a pop-up restaurant with famed pizza joint Lucali. Also in 2023, New York Magazine’s Grub Street featured Tangorra, who wrote, “Give me a ladle full of cold sauce on a paper plate and I might just marry you.” No surprise that her upcoming memoir, to be published in 2025, is called Extra Sauce. Note to admirers, bring her favorite: “Red sauce, baby, all the way!” ■
FINAL EXAM
Jolene
Lupo ’11 photographs the deceased for the New York City medical examiner
BY JONATHAN VATNER
There’s nothing like the smell of death,” says Jolene Lupo, Photography ’11. “They say you never get used to it, but you get past it.”
As a senior photographer for the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, one of eight full-time forensic photographers for the agency, Lupo smells a lot of death. She photographs corpses on the autopsy table. Some are freshly dead from gunshot wounds or an overdose, others discovered weeks or months later, decomposing, covered in maggots, or even partially mummified. Lupo describes the scent of the “decomps” as sweet, pungent, and repulsive. After her first day on the job, she sat in a diner and thought, “If I take this job, I’m never going to eat again.” But she got past it.
The medical examiner performs autopsies in cases of sudden, violent, or suspicious death—about 6,500 per year. “We’re making sure we know why this person died,” Lupo explains. Suspicious deaths receive additional care and documentation in case the autopsy is needed as evidence in a criminal trial. Wearing full PPE to protect both herself and the bodies from contamination, Lupo snaps clear, evenly lit photographs of bloody clothes and bullets, wounds and organs. If the deceased is unknown, she documents tattoos or scars to aid identification. This visual record of the autopsy sometimes reveals more information than the examiner sees.
The power of photography to see more than the human eye, and therefore its use as documentation, has long appealed to Lupo. Human perception is limited and can be biased, whereas a photograph reveals all. She also values the methodical process and protocols of her work, and the way it blends art and science. And she loves uncovering the stories of people she would never have otherwise met.
“It’s a very intimate look at how people live and how people die,” she says.
She became fascinated by forensics in high school in Suffolk County, Long Island. Not only did her forensics teacher stage mock crime scenes that captured the attention of the whole campus, Lupo also participated in a 50-school regional competition. For college, she was accepted into a biomedical photography program at the Rochester Institute of Technology but ultimately chose FIT because she wanted
For this issue’s cover, Lupo used a special camera to capture the infrared dots that the iPhone projects onto the user as part of its facialrecognition technology. The image reveals the invisible connection between us and our phones.
“I was interested in how much biometric and personal information we give away as the cost of admission to many spaces,” she says.
While the cover has a futuristic feel, the “mugshots” on the next spread employ a historical wet-plate collodion process used by Alphonse Bertillon, the French police officer who standardized mugshots and crime scene photographs in Paris in the 1880s. Lupo used a 1918 camera for these selfportraits, with a modern flash to make the image
to study in New York City. “It was really exciting to wake up and be in Manhattan,” she says.
After a few years working in product photography and then at the Penumbra Foundation—which teaches historical photographic processes, another of her passions—she recalled those early forensics activities and yearned to explore that field. She signed up for a forensics convention run by the International Association for Identification, and she took workshops in blood spatter analysis and lifting fingerprints. She even won the convention’s photography contest. She returned the next year—and attended events in New York as well—and then applied to an online job listing with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
Her employment began in March 2020, a month forever associated with the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Brooklyn and Queens locations of the medical examiner’s office were packed with bodies, and the agency set up refrigerated trucks for the overflow. People died not just from Covid but also from pulmonary embolisms and other ailments caused by isolation and lack of exercise. The work gave her a sense of purpose in a chaotic time.
“Any time there’s a mass fatality event in New York City, our office is running overtime,” Lupo says. “While a lot of people felt helpless, I was able to serve the city.”
Four years later, very little fazes her. “I’ve seen so many hangings and homicides and motor-vehicle accidents that at this point, a death would have to be pretty weird to shock me.”
But the accumulation of bodies has changed her. After seeing how many people die from preventable causes, she takes her health more seriously. And she no longer jaywalks.
“You know people get hit by cars, but until you’re seeing it every day, it’s not so much of a reality. Now, even if there are no cars coming, I’ll wait for the light to change. Really, where am I going? Is it worth the risk?” ■
capture instantaneous. Her colleague Geoffrey Berliner developed the images in the darkroom because Lupo was pregnant and wanted to avoid the chemicals.
Last, to create the fingerprint image on page 4, Lupo used a wetplate technique to process her fingerprints, resulting in a smudged, watery abstract artwork. During the pandemic, she had
been thinking about the consequences of touch and the way fingerprints linger on surfaces. The idea for the image came to her in a dream.
Lupo teaches wet-plate collodion at the Penumbra Foundation, a New York City nonprofit that specializes in historical photographic processes; she was the tintype studio manager for seven years.
Lupo in the Queens location of the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, photographed by her supervisor, Gina Santucci.
Touch A Craftsman's
William Storms, Textile/Surface Design ’13, wove a nine-story fiber artwork for Amazon’s New York headquarters
BY ALEX JOSEPH
Ambitious creatives, take note: Social media can be your friend. Weaver extraordinaire William Storms ’13 found that out after an architect working for Amazon spotted his carefully curated Instagram feed. Now Storms’ massive fiber art piece, Love, Grandma Jo, takes pride of place at the landmark Lord & Taylor Building, today the retail behemoth’s Manhattan headquarters.
As an FIT student, Storms won a scholarship to study weaving at the storied ENSCi–Les Ateliers design college in Paris. There, he learned techniques in passementerie—intricate trimmings such as tassels and other embellishments used for clothing and furnishings. They can be woven, braided, or knitted; he focused on the woven style, which requires exacting precision. “Weaving is color intuition and math,” he says.
After graduation, Storms founded his own bespoke textile studio in Brooklyn. The weaving wunderkind incorporated unusual materials like bullets, industrial boat rope, and terracotta tubes handmade by Peruvian artisans. He collected rare looms, like a pair from Germany made
LEFT : This “collage” of the complete piece in the stairwell shows how its colors evolve from dark tones at the lowest levels, which incorporate walnut wood and terracotta tubes, to light hues near the skylight, where
in 1971. (Extremely heavy, they required a forklift to relocate; luckily, Storms owns one.) West Elm commissioned pillows and wall art; to-the-trade textile firm Crosby Street Studios collaborated on handwoven rugs. An interior designer hired Storms to create a piece for a client’s apartment using selenite crystals for their “cleansing energy.” Storms also worked day jobs at several textile mills, including Sunbury, mastering heavy, elaborate woven fabrics known as jacquards. He served as a classroom assistant in FIT’s knitting lab. His work paid the bills, but he hungered to become something more—an independent fiber artist. Then Amazon came calling.
In initial meetings with the design team, Storms was daunted by the scale of the piece, which would eventually stretch nine floors of the central stairwell. “Weave big,” the company’s art consultant advised. Storms found inspiration in a personal connection to the building: As it happened, his grandmother had been a Lord & Taylor devotee, and she gave Storms Christmas gifts from the place.
Executing the 300-yard piece took more than six months, during which Storms frequently gave presentations about his progress to the team. Each time, he included a photograph of the 10-foot loom in his studio to emphasize the piece’s handmade quality. “I wanted them to know what I made this on,” he says. The commission made him financially independent at last, and it retains this craftsman’s personal touch. In the top panel, Storms wove in a signature from one of his grandmother’s Christmas cards. In the future, an art historian may find it and see why it’s called Love, Grandma Jo ■
Storms wove in Lucite and brass. Viewers experience shifting vistas as they ascend or descend.
RIGHT : Ordinarily tiny and delicate, passementerie is transformed in Storms’ hands to hyper scale.
Each 7-by-20-foot woven panel of Love, Grandma Jo weighs 250 pounds. Many of the yarns are handspun and recycled.
RETAIL SPOTLIGHT
ADestination for DESIGN
This Philadelphia hotel and retail concept by Shannon Maldonado, Fashion Design '05, exudes eclectic style
All 13 suites at the new Yowie Hotel on Philadelphia’s South Street come with retail therapy. That yellow side table made of a semi-deconstructed tree trunk? It’s for sale. So’s the quirky lavender rug and the book of Amy Sherald paintings. And if you like the couch with the nubby fabric but want it in a different shade? Yowie can custom order it for you.
Maldonado opened the Yowie Hotel on South Street last August. When she was a teenager, the Philly native says, South Street “was our HaightAshbury.”
BEST SELLER
One hot item is this custom-made, cobalt blue soap dispenser from local ceramics studio Cloud Nine Clay. “We’re on our third restock,” Maldonado says. Items can be purchased in the Yowie store or ordered from the catalog. Nearly everything in the rooms, from mattresses to wall paint colors, can be sourced through Yowie.
A multifaceted project encompassing retail, design, product development, events, and, since August 2023, a hotel, Yowie is the brainchild of Shannon Maldonado, Fashion Design ’05. She launched the venture in 2016 after a decade of designing wovens for Ralph Lauren and Urban Outfitters, among others. Hungry to escape the corporate world and develop a launching pad for artists and makers, she returned to her native (and more affordable) Philadelphia. The business began as a website and lifestyle pop-up shop—room sprays, art prints—and then moved into a physical space where Maldonado, who comes across as serious but never solemn, hosted book groups, talks by curators and other Philly VIPs, and panel discussions by artists of color.
A local developer noticed the store and purchased some of its funky items. Not long after, he asked her to help renovate Philly’s First African Baptist Church into a hotel and event space. “That was my first interior design project,” Maldonado says, but her intuitive feel for color and room design made up for inexperience. Smart about branding and storytelling, she included local references—like a wallpaper motif featuring Philly 76ers star Julius “Dr. J” Erving.
Plans for the Yowie Hotel, which Maldonado co-owns, began in 2019, and financing had to be recalibrated because of Covid. It took three years to renovate the building and restore its 125-year-old facade. The new place is Yowie’s most ambitious iteration yet, housing a cafe called Wim and a new version of the store (just down the street from the old one), where items in the suites can be purchased. “Before, it was more of an art project; [my business partners] helped make it more of a 360-degree thing,” she says.
The rooms combine the sleekness of a showroom with cozy individuality, seamlessly blending local designers like Paradise Gray (that yellow tree table) with heritage high-end brands (Crate & Barrel, Blu Dot) in an effort to create “a level playing field” for the Philly creatives. Maldonado’s distinctive eclecticism and democratic sensibility mean nearly anyone is a candidate for inclusion: After years of printing documents at her local UPS Store, for example, she found out the owner was an artist; now his Josef Albers-style canvases hang in the hotel. The Center for Creative Works is a Philly art studio that represents artists with intellectual disabilities; Yowie features works, sourced from the center, by a neurodivergent painter.
Ideas for the space keep coming. Maldonado happily revealed plans for a free zine-making workshop in the store. And she’s starting a dinner event series in the cafe, with local chefs preparing meals that showcase their specialties—Caribbean for one, Filipino for another. “‘Yowie’ is Australian slang for Bigfoot, the mythical creature,” Maldonado says, as to why the name stuck. “I think in some part it's that this creature is always on the move and cannot be pinned down.” AJ
ABOVE : The hotel decor frequently references South Street area mainstays, like a sofa (not shown) whose striped damask recalls the awning of locally legendary Famous 4th Street Delicatessen. Other motifs incorporate the designer’s personal cosmology—like pendant lamps from Berlin-based design studio Llot Llov that, for Maldonado, evoke the McDonald’s Fry Kids.
RIGHT : Yowie rooms are playgrounds for Maldonado’s distinctive taste. “I love colors that are complementary, but also some that feel ‘off,’ or confrontational,” she says. She also favors highly contrasting textural combinations.
27& 7
THE VIEW FROM OUR CORNER
Fashion Design
MFA Grads on the Today Show
NBC’s TODAY with Hoda & Jenna partnered with FIT on a new weeklong series called Design the Look, the first time the show has collaborated with a college on a special series. Six Fashion Design MFA graduates representing four countries designed custom looks that hosts Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager wore each day the week of Feb. 19. The alumni discussed their designs on the show as well.
“These are people who are going to be famous one day,” Kotb said. “They’re young up-and-comers. We’re going to talk about them later in their life when they become famous, and we’ll remember that they made us an outfit.”
Students Upcycle for UNIQLO
Students from the class of 2024 worked with UNIQLO to create an upcycled collection called RE.LIVE. Fashion Design students Sam Cho, Nuo Cheng, and Bridgette Schaeffer repurposed Uniqlo products donated or returned by customers into new fashions that were sold at the RE.UNIQLO Studio inside its Fifth Avenue store. Advertising and Digital Design students Andrew Grechko and Minjeong (MJ) Park developed a digital marketing and advertising campaign that included in-store posters, social
media, and the UX/UI development of the RE.LIVE webpage.
This was the retailer’s first collaboration with a U.S.-based college, and it is the latest initiative from its RE.UNIQLO program, which is committed to extending the life of clothes through repairing, reusing, remaking, and recycling.
The project was arranged and overseen by FIT’s DTech Lab, with Juliana Cho, assistant professor of Fashion Design, and Joe Staluppi, associate professor and co-chair of Advertising and Digital Design, serving as faculty mentors.
Today Show : NBC/Nathan Congleton
Cristina and Margarita Ng Ng ’20, Kotb and Hager wearing the Ng Ng twins’ designs, Papa Oppong ’21, Deborah Won, Valeria Watson ’23, and Anthony Oyer ’23.
FIT’s Site is Connected to Civil Rights History
Two momentous events in U.S. civil rights history had connections to the site where FIT stands—the New York City Draft Riots in 1863 and the planning for the 1963 March on Washington. Both had significant anniversaries in 2023.
The draft riots were a violent, racist uprising against the Civil War military draft that convulsed New York. During the riots, an African American man named Abraham Franklin was dragged from his home on Seventh Avenue and 27th Street, now the corner of FIT’s campus, and lynched.
A century later, the March on Washington was planned, in part, across the street from FIT on Eighth Avenue, in the Penn South apartments of activists Bayard Rustin and
The Morning Show Features FIT
A. Philip Randolph. Labor leader David Dubinsky and the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, of which Dubinsky was president, contributed half the funds for the sound system that amplified Dr. King’s legendary “I Have a Dream” speech; today, FIT has a building named for Dubinsky.
Throughout fall 2023, the college hosted events to commemorate the anniversaries. The 1863-1963-2023 Project was planned by Taur Orange, director of FIT’s Office of Educational Opportunity Programs; Amy Werbel, professor of Art History and Museum Professions; and Daniel Levinson Wilk, professor of Social Sciences.
FIT GOT A MAJOR SHOUTOUT ON THE ACCLAIMED APPLE TV+ SERIES THE MORNING SHOW, A DRAMA THAT STARS JENNIFER ANISTON AND REESE WITHERSPOON.
In the episode, which aired Oct. 18, 2023, the series’ morning show hosts a benefit for FIT’s scholarship program. During the event, news breaks that the Supreme Court will strike down Roe v. Wade, and the celebration of fashion and femininity becomes a tragic historic moment. Three 2022 FIT grads designed red-carpet fashions worn by extras on the show.
The series brought in FIT because “we found the juxtaposition of talking about women’s autonomy and fashion to be fitting,” said executive producer Kristin Hahn at a special screening of the episode held in the Katie Murphy Amphitheatre on Oct. 20. Costume designer Sophie de Rakoff and media personality Hal Rubenstein joined her to discuss the show’s costumes.
Textile/Surface
Design student Keidy
Restituyo created this scarf, inspired by the March on Washington and incorporating colors from the PanAfrican flag, for a class project related to the FIT events.
Arm Candy at MFIT
Vanessa Friedman of The New York Times declared 2023 “the year of the power sleeve”— and the trend shows no sign of slowing. In The Museum at FIT’s Fashion and Textile History Gallery through Aug. 25, visitors can revel in exquisite pleats and ruffles, voluminous puffs and folds, and other expressive arm embellishments. Nearly 80 pieces from the museum’s permanent collection, by Balenciaga, Tom Ford, Schiaparelli, Vivienne Westwood, and many other designers, are on display in Statement Sleeves, organized by Colleen Hill, curator of costume and accessories.
Pierpaolo Piccioli, creative director of Valentino, supplied looks for the on-screen gala, including a replica of the gown Jennifer Aniston wore to the 2010 Golden Globes.
AI GENERATION
How faculty are tackling the complexities of artificial intelligence
In recent months, artificial intelligence, or AI, has seized the culture’s attention. New, widely available tools allow computers to “create” art; and what are called large language models allow programs like ChatGPT to “write” emails, papers, stories, and so much more. Despite ethical questions regarding copyright infringement and authorship, the implications are profound. As one New Yorker writer says: “Bodies of knowledge and skills that have traditionally taken lifetimes to master are being swallowed at a gulp.” The tool has already affected all the disciplines FIT teaches—and teaching itself.
Last year, the FIT faculty senate formed an ad hoc committee with 20 faculty members, charged with making recommendations for the use of AI technology and identifying resources needed to support its development. “We want to be prudent and also current,” says Jeffrey Riman, Center for Excellence in Teaching coordinator and co-chair of the committee. Hue asked members of the committee and others at FIT about how they are grappling with this revolutionary technology.
Katelyn Burton Prager Assistant Professor, English and Communication Studies; Co-chair, FIT ad hoc committee on AI
My students are allowed to use it, but they must disclose their use and be held accountable for its inaccuracies or hallucinations if they fail to verify the information with other sources. I’m trying to treat AI just like I would other digital tools. I know students are using Google and Wikipedia. I know they’re using Grammarly. My job is to teach them the strengths and weaknesses of these tools, the ways they can be beneficial and what they lose when they use AI to circumvent the critical-thinking process.
Jeffrey Riman Coordinator, Center for Excellence in Teaching; Co-chair, SUNY Fact2 Task Group on Optimizing Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education; Co-chair, FIT ad hoc committee on AI
I’m less worried about students cheating because there’s no reliable way for us to detect AI at this time. Instead, let's focus on elevating the work of our students using AI. Companies want to hire students with some education in how to use AI, instead of people who are uninformed about the risks of misuse.
How Many FIT Students Use AI?
As part of an assessment conducted between fall 2023 and spring 2024 semesters, all FIT students in writing classes were asked how they used generative AI to assist in their work. About 150 students responded.
As a playful experiment with AI image generation, Hue entered the following prompt into Dall-E 2: “Vintage photograph in the style of Mathew Brady of a giant squid attacking the Fashion Institute of Technology.” Clearly, this AI engine had not taken a campus tour.
Amy Werbel
Professor, Art History and Museum Professions, History of Art; President, Faculty Senate
In my online courses, I started getting homework responses that were not good at all. In the class discussion forum, you could see students using the chatbot in their replies. It didn’t sound like the human beings I’d been teaching. But now we’re getting to a point where it’s much harder to detect.
I use an “appealing to their better angels” approach. I’m clear about the value of understanding history and speaking to each other with integrity. If you’re having a bot reply to your classmate, that’s not a conversation I want to be in. It’s like, “Let’s be human together.”
Michael Ferraro
Executive Director, DTech Lab
We worked with Amy Sperber, assistant professor of Fashion Design, on a project sponsored by HSBC addressing the lack of disability representation in the metaverse. Using Midjourney, a cutting-edge AI, we generated aspirational images featuring a diverse community of individuals with disabilities in stylish fashion settings. The images could be curated for a virtual or physical exhibition.
DTech Lab is hosting an AI Symposium on March 21, exploring the multifaceted landscape of AI and its impact on the creative industries. Fashion icon Norma Kamali '65 will speak about integrating AI into her creative process, and we will showcase works from generative AI agency Maison Meta's AI Fashion Week.
C.J. Yeh
Professor, Advertising and Digital Design
A lot of people are wowed by these photolike images that AI can create, but I am more excited by how it can help us achieve what we want to do in more interesting and efficient ways. We can use AI to test out ideas quickly or create a storyboard without spending hours in Photoshop. Fewer junior coders and designers will get jobs because basic coding and design production can be done quickly with AI. But on the plus side, designers and creatives in the future will be a lot more powerful: You will be able to explore and execute what you want much faster.
Subhalakshmi Gooptu
Assistant Professor, English and Communication Studies
My students and I have conversations about how we can strategically use AI at different stages of the writing process, while still being critical of its outputs and impact. They use it for their initial brainstorming and less for revision because they’re skeptical of how it sounds and they value their own voices. For a writing teacher, that’s the biggest win.
Sonja Chapman
Associate Professor, International Trade and Marketing for the Fashion Industries
I don’t believe AI should be used to replace your own thinking, but it can enhance your thinking. Students used an AI chatbot for a practicum assignment. They put their topic in and got some suggested outlines for their papers and then went back to their classmates to ask what they thought. The most advanced students said the AI outline was too simplified. For the others, it provided robust guidance. But they still had to do research and fill in the details. If students use the technology properly, they’ll probably do more work than they would have without it, but it does give them ideas that weren’t at the forefront of their consciousness.
One image from the DTech/HSBC project to generate stylish portrayals of people with disabilities. The project was executed by Ferraro, Sperber, and Fashion Design student Alyssa Casa.
Bot of Darkness
If the protagonist of Joseph Conrad’s masterpiece were AI, what would he, er, it say?
This semester, Calvin Williamson, professor of Mathematics, is teaching a class in large language models (LLMs), one of which is ChatGPT. As a playful exercise, he uploaded the text of Joseph Conrad’s classic novella Heart of Darkness (1899) to another LLM, an AI “assistant” named Claude. With the text as a guide, Claude answered Williamson’s questions as if it were Conrad’s protagonist, Charles Marlow. In the story, Marlow travels into the unmapped center of an unnamed African country to find a missing ivory trader named Kurtz, who may have gone insane. The novella is frequently interpreted as a metaphor for colonialism—perfect for this moment, when power dynamics between AI and human beings are being sorted. In the end, will we be in control, or the bots?
Following is a short excerpt from that “conversation.”
CALVIN WILLIAMSON : Do you believe we all have our own heart of darkness?
“ CHARLES MARLOW,” REPRESENTED BY CLAUDE : Unfortunately, I fear the answer is yes. No matter how civilized we fancy ourselves, each man and woman has an abyss inside. Most manage to keep it locked up, but knock away the shackles of society and it comes clawing out eventually.
WILLIAMSON : Did going on this trip make you face your own particular heart of darkness?
MARLOW : I’d like to believe my soul is not as black as Kurtz’s became. But his fall did make me take account of my own weaknesses and flaws in a more honest light. Strip away the rules that bind us, and how long till any man descends to savagery?
HUE Q
ONE QUESTION FOR AN FIT COMMUNITY MEMBER
How can research into FIT improve the college?
Susan Hayes, executive director of Institutional Research and Effectiveness
One role of the Institutional Research office is to analyze college data and then circulate that information to our faculty, staff, and administration. That data can inform decisions, plans, and budgets to improve the student experience and campus environment.
Every three years, FIT participates in the National Survey of Student Engagement. The survey is given to students who are in the spring of their first year and those in the spring of their last year, and it asks: How do you spend your time? How has your FIT experience contributed to your personal development? Are you interested in studying abroad? What has influenced your career plans? From their responses, we learn where we are ahead, where we could be doing better, and a little bit of the why and how.
From the survey we administered in spring 2023, we learned that almost three-quarters of first-year students expected to do an internship, and close to 60% of seniors reported that they had done one. Half of first-year students were interested in studying abroad, and 16% of seniors had done so, more than double that of other SUNY institutions.
But when we dug deeper into the results, we found that fewer first-generation students and students of color were participating in these high-impact experiences. They were spending more hours a week on average working, commuting, and helping out at home.
I’ve already begun presenting the results to the president’s cabinet, the deans, and the chairs, and I plan on speaking with students as well. Together, we are developing strategies to improve access to all the high-impact experiences FIT offers. We can’t just create a report, file it in a drawer, and be done. We need to use that data to make a difference for our students.
I CONTACT A STUDENT IN FIRST PERSON
Grace, Kacie, and Madison Lacadie
Fashion Business Management ’27
Hue: You’re identical triplets. How do people tell you apart?
Madison: Once people get to know us, they can tell by our personalities. But also from how we dress and wear our hair. A lot of people ask us if our mom dressed us alike, and the answer is just, “No.”
Why did you all decide to study at FIT?
Kacie: We spend 99% of our time together, but growing up, we were seeking something that expressed our individuality. Fashion did that for us.
Madison: We’ve had this dream to go to FIT together since our sophomore year in high school. We work best together. We push each other.
Are you rooming together?
Madison: We wanted to be in a triple room but they didn’t have that, so Kacie and I have a double room, and Grace lives across the hall with a roommate.
Kacie: We drew names out of a hat. I’ve always been lucky.
What do you want to do with your degrees?
Madison: We want to go into wardrobe styling for movies. We are really passionate about films, and in high school we worked backstage styling costumes for school productions.
Kacie: You tell a character’s story through how they dress. We’re all interested in storytelling.
Grace: And we know how important clothing is for a character because we use it to express ourselves.
How would you describe your style?
Grace: Classic with a twist. I really like basic pieces.
Madison: I am very chic, and I like a little glamour.
Kacie: I’m more sporty.
Would you all try to get hired as a group? Do you envision yourselves working together at some point?
Madison: Obviously, if we get separate jobs, we’ll be individuals and work by ourselves. But it would be a dream to work together.
and
Madison, Grace,
Kacie Lacadie.
NEWS & INSIGHTS
Are Infographics Unbiased?
By Kyunghee Pyun
As a scholar of the history of collecting, I have paid close attention to world expositions from the 19th century. These world’s fairs were crucial opportunities to introduce non-Western art and culture to European audiences and then to Americans. A 2023 exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum called Deconstructing Power: W. E. B. Du Bois at the 1900 World’s Fair inspired me to launch a new research project.
For the 1900 world’s fair, in Paris, American civil rights activist and sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois and his students at Atlanta University created 63 hand-drawn infographics demonstrating the social progress of Black Americans over three decades. These data visualization posters incorporated graphic design so modern that it shocked me.
Around the same time, while researching my upcoming article on labor in the Korean textile industry for the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, I came upon postcards featuring infographics created by the Japanese colonial government in the 1920s to ’40s. Korea was a Japanese colony in the early 20th century. From 1910 to 1945, there was no mention of Korea on the world map; Koreans were part of the Empire of Japan and subject to exploitation. On the postcards, sophisticated pie charts and bar graphs deceptively illustrate dazzling progress with “objective” statistics to validate Japan’s imperial expansion and falsely show that it was bringing enlightenment to its colonies. The cards also show subtle disdain for folkloric
and cultural customs, as rural Koreans were depicted in shabby, ethnic clothing or as drunkards or fools.
In the 1930s, the journalist and historian Yi Yeoseong exposed the truth behind the statistics. For example, Yi pointed out that the growth of the Korean population and industries they worked for (see bottom illustration) were not the result of the colonial government's efficient management and scientific techniques, but because the land was ruthlessly exploited and taxed by the Empire of Japan.
The depiction of data reflects the intent of the presenter. Du Bois’ graphics showed the progress of African Americans after the Civil War despite persistent racism in many parts of the country. The Japanese used seemingly objective data visualizations to justify colonial governance and implicitly emphasize "uncivilized" aspects of ethnic groups under its authority. As I often point out in my classes, infographics leave much room for interpretation and contextualization.
Kyunghee Pyun is an associate professor of art history. Her scholarship focuses on the history of collecting, reception of Asian art, and intersectionality of art and technology, and industrial history. Du Bois' posters inspired her to include data visualization and pioneering graphic designers from the late 19th to the late 20th century in her research. She received a fellowship from the Korea Foundation to continue the project in South Korea in 2024.
ABOVE : Population charts (pie) showing Japanese (443,402) versus Korean (19,020,030), Chinese (58,057), and other foreigners (1,456) by Government General Postcard, 1926.
BELOW : Population charts (lower graph) showing different professions in the
Japanese Empire in 1929. With employment in farming at 80% and engineering/ manufacturing and government at only 2% and 3%, respectively, it’s clear that Japanese measures were not changing conditions for Koreans. The woman is shown in “ethnic” clothing.
A CAMPUS TREASURE REVEALED
Dream Weaver
FIT’s computerized jacquard loom mixes old and new technology
FIT’s new jacquard loom, the TC2, gives students the power to create just about any pattern—including a photograph—in fabric.
“It’s a hand loom, but the pattern control is all electronic,” explains Patrice George, the retired associate professor of Textile Development and Marketing (TDM) who helped FIT acquire it in 2021. “It gives the weaver total freedom to envision something large and try out structures instantly.”
The jacquard loom, invented in 1804, made it possible to weave complex designs. Nowadays, jacquard looms used in industry are fully automated and massive, not suitable for a
college campus. Contrast that with the manually operated TC2, which is compact, easy to set up, and affordable, ideal for an educational context: MIT, Cornell, and Stanford all own this model.
The downside is that the weaving must be done one thread at a time, so a small piece of fabric could take hours to construct. But handweaving allows for the use of nontraditional wefts (the yarns that run horizontally), such as conductive fibers, straw, and gold chains, to make e-textiles or artworks.
“Any sort of mechanical loom would reject those immediately,” says Whitney
Crutchfield, assistant professor of TDM. “I’d love to see students experiment with circuits, sensors, or LED lights.”
George had long wanted a TC2 for FIT, and Covid-19 brought an unexpected opportunity. A demo loom that had been traveling around the U.S. as a sales tool was sitting idle when the pandemic suspended in-person meetings. Its Norwegian manufacturer, Tronrud Engineering, offered it to the Jay and Patty Baker School of Business and Technology at a deep discount. Now it’s used in the yearlong Woven Technology class for TDM students, and Crutchfield and George have bigger plans.
They envision interdisciplinary collaboration between textile experts and computer scientists at FIT and beyond, specialists who could program the loom in innovative ways.
“It’s a really accessible entry point for programmers and weavers to come together,” Crutchfield says.
JV
Crutchfield weaves on the TC2, affectionately called “Nell,” named for Nell Znamierowski, a beloved faculty member who died after the TC2 arrived. All the machines in the knitting lab have pet names: R2D2, Chewie, and more.
The loom can replicate a photograph with remarkable accuracy.
ALUMNI NOTABLES
Speaking the Language
Asiah James, Advertising and Marketing Communications ’15, guides corporate strategy at Condé Nast
The world of media has changed radically since Asiah James started at FIT in 2011. As a student intern at Ebony James, Advertising and Marketing Communications ’15, launched the magazine’s Tumblr and Instagram accounts on her personal phone. Now, as director of corporate strategy and partnerships at Condé Nast, she needs intricate knowledge of a complex ecosystem of channels: not just print, web, and social but also podcasts and events.
In her position, James analyzes each of the global media company’s brands— Vogue, Allure, Glamour, and more—and brainstorms strategies to expand their reach and strengthen engagement.
“What are people loving about it?” she asks. “What do they want more of? Are there opportunities that we’re not paying attention to because we’re so accustomed to the status quo?”
For example, Bon Appétit has long produced charming videos about cooking
and dining that perform very well on YouTube. Edited down for Instagram, those clips garnered 10 times the views.
James also works with corporate partners like legacy TV networks to get Condé Nast editors onto red carpets and into green rooms for major awards shows and other events, “moments we don’t naturally own but definitely cover,” she says. She also oversees partnerships for Condé Nast “tentpoles”—major cultural moments like the Met Gala and GQ’s Men of the Year Party.
In just eight years at Condé Nast, James served as beauty marketing director, leading the relationship with beauty retailers like Ulta and Target, and worked with auto and food/spirits advertisers, “nonendemic” categories for a company focused on fashion and beauty. And as director of emerging audiences, a role she
cultivated advertisers who wanted to target diverse groups like LGBTQ or Black readers.
It takes creativity and a nimble attitude to thrive in an increasingly splintered media landscape. Condé Nast no longer competes just with other magazine publishers for ads; it now needs to win against TikTok, Google, Meta, and any other company with access to consumers’ eyeballs.
“When I walked in eight years ago, I assumed I’d be selling ads into a book,” James says. “I didn’t realize I’d have to be well-versed in a new language.”
And James has embraced not only the lingo of the new media landscape but also that of corporate America. “During the pandemic, when I was working from home, I would finish calls and say to my fiancé, “‘Oh, we could do something turnkey for lunch.’
He’d ask, ‘What does that mean?’ It’s part of the lifestyle!”
—Jonathan Vatner
Niña Mata, Illustration ’08, created two bestselling children’s books with LeBron James Slam Dunk
Niña Mata ’08 has a literary partnership that might make other illustrators extremely jealous, especially if they’re NBA fans. The New Jersey–based children’s literature illustrator has teamed up with Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James on two books, with the latest to be published in April.
The new book, I Am More Than (HarperCollins, 2024), riffs off James’ reply to Laura Ingraham when the Fox News host said on air in 2018 that the NBA champ should “just shut up and dribble.” James wrote on Instagram, “I am more than an athlete.”
Mata says, “We want to tell kids that they can be multifaceted and they don’t just have to choose one thing for their career.”
I Am More Than is a followup to her first collaboration
with James, the picture book I Promise (HarperCollins, 2020), which instantly rocketed to No. 1 on The New York Times children’s picture book best seller list.
“My friends and family assume I’ve met him, but I haven’t,” Mata says. The first book debuted during the pandemic, so in-person readings were canceled, and the virtual readings were prerecorded. In fact, when Mata applied to illustrate I Promise and took an art test, she had no clue James was the author. Only after she was hired did she learn that James was attached to the project.
“What I love about our books is that the plot, the characters, they aren’t about him, but about multicultural kids and the message he wants to get across,” Mata says. I Promise centers on stories of children from various backgrounds striving to better one another and themselves.
The illustrations sprang from Mata’s childhood in Queens.
“[The book editor’s] only suggestion was that the books had to appeal to kids from different races, so I pretended it was all happening in Queens,” she says. “That was my life there,
growing up with Colombians, Koreans, and so many other folks all blended together.”
Jeffrey Ampratwum was studying to become a dentist when he switched gears to fashion styling. “A little Louis Vuitton angel tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Do you really want to do this?’”
After taking Continuing and Professional Studies courses in Fashion Styling at FIT and assisting established stylists like Joseph DeAcetis, Fashion Merchandising Management ’09, and Sadia Seymour, Fashion
Design ’92, Ampratwum now does personal shopping and image consulting, directs fashion editorials and brand campaigns, and teaches Menswear Styling at FIT. Celebrity clients include Tua Tagovailoa, quarterback for the Miami Dolphins; and R&B singer/songwriter Ryan Leslie. In 2023, he self-published Menswear Style Guide: New York City, and he serves as brand ambassador for an ongoing collaboration between Dapper Dan and the Gap. He also keeps one foot in the dentistry world as fashion director of Incisal Edge magazine’s 40 Under 40 top dentists in America coverage. Each year, he styles the honored dentists for the magazine shoot. Here, Ampratwum shares some of the biggest fashion mistakes he sees, for both men and women.
1. Casual bottoms. People used to working from home and attending Zoom meetings might forget what they’re wearing from the waist down, he says. “I like to call it laptop luxury. Once they step outside, they’re getting their look all wrong.”
2. Color overload. A pop of color can elevate a look, but too much can be very loud. “If you’re doing a blush cheek and a glossy red lip, and you add a bright bag, that’s going to scream ‘pop art,’ and most women don’t know they’re doing it.” For clients who love bright hues, he recommends different colors for the shoe and the handbag.
3. Tight clothes. “If you are unsure of your size, always go one size larger. What we’re seeing is people who haven’t let go of their favorite clothing item, and they’re busting out of it.” Also, he says that men’s jacket sleeves should reveal exactly half an inch of the dress shirt. “If your jacket is too small, the sleeve is going to recede, and that’s no bueno. James Bond never did that!”
—J.V.
Smart Dummies
Gina Larochelle Egan, Fashion Merchandising Management ’14, sells mannequins of all kinds
When you’re out shopping for that cute new look, the mannequin modeling the outfit might be the last thing you notice. But it has an effect. At Target, for example, having garments properly displayed on mannequins, as higher-end department stores do, increased sales by 30%.
“It speaks volumes to walk into a store and see what clothing looks like on someone similar to your size,” says Gina Egan, Fashion Merchandising Management ’14, an account
“Everyone's a different shape, and that's exactly how we approach mannequins.”
gina larochelle egan ’14
executive at Fusion Specialties, the world’s largest mannequin producer in a $7 billion industry. “Everyone’s a different shape, and that’s exactly how we approach the mannequins.”
Fusion produces mannequins in a wide range of forms and finishes, including its Empower line for plus-size garments, Prism for gender-neutral looks, and Para for adaptive wear for people with disabilities.
The company provided forms from its Para line for a Runway of Dreams Foundation fashion show “so disabled kids and adults could see the fashions on the runway, then on wheelchair mannequins in the store,” Egan says.
Nike increased sales by featuring Fusion’s plussized mannequins. And custom models are gaining traction for gender-neutral and athleisure lines.
Egan ensures smooth executions of custom orders.
“Our catalog offers baseball forms, but Dick’s Sporting Goods might want a catcher or golf forms posed in different swings, so we’d design it,” she
says. Fusion also supplies Abercrombie & Fitch (plus subsidiary brands Hollister and Gilly Hicks) with proprietary hand-stitched forms that are tea-stained to look vintage.
To create a mannequin template, an artist makes a clay sculpture of a live model and then photographs it and scans it into 3D software.
The company manufactures in Mexico, Spain, Turkey, and China to keep shipping costs and lead times low. Fusion is committed to sustainability, and its manufacturers use recyclable packaging and renewable energy. The company also offers the Re-Flex line of zero-waste mannequins, which are both recycled and 100% recyclable. Allbirds, a sustainable footwear and apparel brand, uses Re-Flex mannequins. “Sustainability is becoming huge in the fashion world,” Egan says.
—Winnie McCroy
Fusion Specialties creates mannequins in a variety of sizes and skin tones as well as some with physical disabilities.
WHAT INSPIRESYOU?
Black Power Wave: Weaving Helleborine, graphite and acrylic paint on hand-cut cotton rag paper, 49 by 67 inches, 2022.
Oasa DuVerney, Fine Arts ’07, is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work has been exhibited at Art Expo Chicago; the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC; and the Studio Museum in Harlem; and is in the collection of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York. Her art “reimagines elements from both the natural and urban landscape as active sites in building Black liberation. The figures in these works are rendered with the care, compassion, and understanding that the Black body deserves but isn’t always afforded.”
Developing Patience
Abi Ishola-Ayodeji, Advertising and Marketing Communications ’04
I was born and raised in Miami, but my sister and I spent a year of secondary school in Lagos, Nigeria, where our parents were born. All my classmates were so passionate about politics, and I remember thinking that in America, sixth graders didn’t care about politics to that degree. I never forgot that.
My novel, Patience Is a Subtle Thief, takes place in the early ’90s, a particularly volatile time in Nigeria’s history. In my book, the main character, Patience, has been separated for much of her life from her mother, who was banished by her father. When Patience goes off to school in Lagos, she learns her mother is in America. But Patience needs money if she’s going to reunite with her mother. She visits her cousin and meets his friends. They are petty thieves, and she eventually gets involved with their scams.
Part of why I wanted to write this novel is because Nigerians became known for the 419 scams—even though plenty of thieves in other countries were guilty of them, too. [Ed.: The name comes from the section of the Nigerian criminal code dealing with fraud.] These scams swindled foreigners out of their money—letters and phone calls promising romance or some giant windfall in return for a small investment. I wanted to explore the motivation behind this behavior and its origins in Nigeria before foreigners had become the target. Sometimes poverty is involved, or greed. Much of it goes back to politics—in this case the unkept promise of democracy after the military annulled Nigeria’s first democratic election. Nigerians are intelligent and crafty, hard-working and ambitious, even when facing political turbulence. I wanted to put a human face on this type of crime and explore the lives of those who were desperate enough to do it.
As told to Denne Michele Norris
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