Hue Magazine Summer Issue by Fashion Institute of Technology

VOLUME 14 | NUMBER 3 | SUMMER 2021

The Magazine of the Fashion Institute of Technology

On the Cover Juhye Cho MFA ’18 specializes in drawing cats acting like humans— which she did, brilliantly, in our cheeky homage to video conference calls. For the cover, we thought her illustration of a sleeping cat perfectly fit our summer mood.

The Magazine of the Fashion Institute of Technology Hue is for alumni and friends of FIT, a college of art and design, business and technology. It is published three times a year by the Division of Communications and External Relations, 227 West 27th Street, Room B905, New York, NY  10001-5992, (212) 217-4700.

Vice President for Communications and External Relations Loretta Lawrence Keane

for Communications Carol Leven

Editorial Director Linda Angrilli

Chief Storyteller Alex Joseph MA ’15

Managing Editor Jonathan Vatner

Photography Coordinator Smiljana Peros

Art Direction and Design Gary Tooth/Empire Design Studio Hue online: hue.fitnyc.edu Email: hue@fitnyc.edu FIT Newsroom: news.fitnyc.edu Like the FIT Alumni page on Facebook and follow @FITAlumni on Twitter and Instagram. Use #FITAlumni when posting. Email the Office of Alumni Engagement and Giving at alumnirelations@fitnyc.edu and let us know what you’ve been up to. Also check out FIT’s official social media accounts: Facebook.com/FashionInstituteofTechnology Instagram.com/FITNYC Twitter.com/FIT

Printed by Grand Meridian Printing on Accent Opaque Please recycle or share this magazine.

Recent Accolades

Contributors

The Division of Communications and External Relations won a 2021 Telly Award (Silver) in the Educational Institution category for FIT’s 2020 virtual commencement. The project was spearheaded by Hue editors Alex Joseph, chief storyteller, and Linda Angrilli, editorial director, and produced in collaboration with videographer Ken Browne. Founded in 1979, the Telly Awards celebrate work “for all screens” and receive more than 12,000 entries annually.

Jahné Brown ’20 (“The Nexus of the [Marketing] Universe”) is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist born and raised in Baltimore. Her work consists of fine art, fashion, and portraiture. Using lens-based and other media such as painting, she creates narratives through storytelling and amplifying voices. Photo by Victor Llorente ’19.

Hue’s 75th anniversary issue, winter 2020, received a 2021 bronze award from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) in the category of Magazines–Special Issues. CASE is a global nonprofit association dedicated to educational advancement.

Juhye Cho MFA ’18 (“Kitty Zoom”) is a freelance illustrator who loves animals, especially cats. She makes whimsical illustrations of what she sees during her daily life, using animals in place of people.

Features

André Chung (I Contact) has taken photographs for The Washington Post, NBC News, The Atlantic, the NAACP, and Apple. He won the 2021 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Journalism Award for Domestic Photography for coverage of Black Lives Matter, and his work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and the HistoryMiami Museum. Liz Leyden (“Pandemic Pursuits”) is a freelance writer based in New Jersey. Her work has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Globe and Mail.

Departments

6 (Re)commencement Unstoppable students in an unprecedented year

14 The Nexus of the (Marketing) Universe Strategy meets analytics at this alumna’s firm

10 Dynamic Duo This alumni romance began with a piece of chalk

16 Kitty Zoom Feline foibles foil cartoon cat call

11 It Takes Two Alumni couple are partners in life, their fashion line, and the classroom 12 Virtually There The Fashion Design MFA show breaks new ground Smiljana Peros

Assistant Vice President

18 The Persistence of Memory Artist Abigail DeVille ’09 assembles fragments of lost history 22 Pandemic Pursuits Against all odds, six alumni launched new businesses in lockdown

4 Hue’s News 8 Retail Spotlight 9 I Contact 28 Alumni Notables 31 What Inspires You?

Above: DeVille in the Bronx, sporting her customary inimitable style. When asked how she decides what to collect for her art, she says, “Usually, when I touch it, I know.”

hue’s news

Courtesy of Saemi Jeon

STUDENT DESIGNS PREMIERE ONLINE Most years, work by students graduating from the School of Art and Design’s 17 majors can be viewed in every entryway, gathering place, exhibition hall, and corridor of FIT’s campus. This year, the Graduating Student Exhibition debuted at fitnyc.edu/gse and on Instagram.

A Trip Through Time

Rising hemlines and bold patterns characterized both the flapper era and the 1960s “youthquake.” What’s the connection? An online show at The Museum at FIT, The Roaring Twenties and The Swinging Sixties, compares the fashions of those two decades, both periods of crisis and change. Both decades foregrounded ideas of the “modern woman,” which sexed up fashion in similar ways. The exhibition features 26 objects from MFIT’s permanent collection, including garments by Poiret, Dior, and Pierre Cardin, as well as fashion illustrations from the Special Collections and College Archives in the Gladys Marcus Library. The show was curated by students in the MA Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice program in FIT’s School of Graduate Studies.

Best Fashion School in the World —CEOWORLD magazine

Best Fashion School in the U.S. —PrepScholar

Best Colleges TOP that are RANKED Shaping the Future Bachelor’s Degree of Fashion No. 1 Best in Advertising

THE FUTURE OF FASHION IS VIRTUAL

May 19 marked the debut of the Future of Fashion Showcase, which featured nearly 200 senior thesis collections from the class of 2021 Fashion Design BFA program. Normally presented in a runway show, this year’s designs can be viewed through digital portfolios including sketches, photography, and personal statements. A related video, Runway from Home, weaves together the work of graduates from 42 countries, along with faculty commentary. The website design was led by Julian Catasus y Brüggemann, Advertising and Digital Design ’20, and the video was edited by Emiliano Sanchez, Film and Media ’20. Take it all in at fashionshow.fitnyc.edu. This gold silk chiffon Paul Poiret evening dress, circa 1926, and linen Mila Schön dress, circa 1968, present a similar silhouette despite the decades separating them.

MFIT

—Forbes

FIT Partners with MIT (Again) • Team Peacock prototyped athletic apparel that changes color to highlight movement, which can then be analyzed through an app. • Team Ecollab designed environmentally conscious apparel and footwear using polyethylene and a color-changing material. • Laboratory 56 created long-lasting footwear using polyethylene and proposed a recycling app to further mitigate its negative impact. Based on this experience, the two schools developed a guide for educators to build innovative partnerships focused on interdisciplinary workshops to tackle real-world problems. “Use our story to write your own,” the playbook encourages.

Numerous organizations provide college rankings, used by students and parents in making decisions on colleges and programs and by education administrators and alumni to see how their institution compares with others. FIT placed well in a number of 2021 rankings. Here are some highlights.

Critic-award winner Saemi Jeon’s collection, The Memory Vessel, was inspired by memory jugs, which hold “small objects representing cherished memories.” Mixing textures and weave structures, this garment is a statement about the patchwork nature of memory.

Since 2018, students from FIT and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come together three times to participate in the Advanced Functional Fiber Product Concept Workshop, a two-week program that connects design and engineering to envision high-tech products that could eventually be produced. The program is supported by Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA), a Cambridge, Massachusetts– based nonprofit public-private partnership that develops integrated systems and networks using fibers and textiles. In this year’s program, held remotely in January, three interdisciplinary groups devised products for the athletic apparel and footwear industry:

Recent Rankings Recognize FIT’s Excellence

No. 1 Public Illustration School in the U.S.

—Animation Career Review

Most popular school in the U.S. for:

Public Relations & Advertising, Specialized Sales, Merchandising & Marketing, Design & Applied Arts —College Factual Top 13 Interior Design Schools —House Beautiful

Top 20 Marketing Programs Nationwide —University HQ

QUICK READ

This spring, the Office of Alumni Engagement and Giving hosted a virtual entrepreneurship series featuring alumni luminaries like Norma Kamali, Dayna Isom Johnson, and Chris Madden. Watch the interviews at fitnyc.edu/speakerseries.

Summer 2021

For the eighth year in a row, FIT students were accepted to Clinton Global Initiative University, held virtually March 23–26. Namra Khan, Fashion Business Management ’22, and Nicole Windram, Fashion Design ’21, committed to a project called Waste X Change, promoting sustainability in industry and on campus.

President Joyce F. Brown was named to City & State New York magazine’s 2021 Higher Education Power 100, recognizing New York college presidents, deans, chancellors, public officials, and philanthropists.

C.J. Yeh, professor of Communication Design Pathways, was appointed creative adviser for the Social Innovation Team at Johns Hopkins Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. The team uses technology to maintain a centralized information hub and a registry to recruit volunteers for testing and trials.

FIT’s student-run fashion and culture magazine, Blush, won a Pacemaker Award from the Associated Collegiate Press for the second year in a row. The award, considered the “Pulitzer Prize of collegiate journalism,” is based on content, writing and reporting, leadership, design, photography, and graphics.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, the HBO documentary series about the Golden State Killer co-produced and directed by Josh Koury, associate professor of Film and Media, won awards for outstanding series and cinematography from Cinema Eye Honors, which recognizes nonfiction and documentary filmmaking. hue.fitnyc.edu

(Re)commencement Amid a waning pandemic, FIT held both in-person and remote celebrations

A YEAR AFTER COVID -19 scuttled commencement plans, FIT responded with an unprecedented series of virtual and in-person graduation ceremonies that gave every student the opportunity to celebrate this hard-won milestone. Despite the tremendous challenge of hosting a large in-person event during a pandemic, FIT held ceremonies for the classes of ’20 and ’21 and their families in Central Park on June 2 and 3. To maintain social distancing, eight events with limited attendance took place over the two days. Emmy-winning actor Debra Messing, whose iconic Will and Grace character, Grace Adler, graduated from FIT, shared a message of congratulations in a video projected on stage. “We need you more than ever to create beauty and originality to wake us up again because we have all been hibernating,” she said. In her address, President Joyce F. Brown reflected on perseverance. “In the face of an unfathomable and unfair fate, you focused on your future,” she said. “Step by step, you walked through uncharted territory, you adapted, you faced down setbacks and disappointments … and in the end, you completed your studies.” It is rare for a SUNY chancellor to attend an FIT commencement, but Chancellor Jim Malatras delivered his remarks in person: “I know that this past year has been one of the most challenging in recent history,” he said. “But with grit and determination, you persevered and, through your creativity and studies, continued to bring beauty and grace to the world.” The Central Park events took place after an array of virtual commencement ceremonies, held May 19–21. Every graduate had the opportunity to submit a brief celebratory video. To keep the ceremonies to a reasonable length, 36 separate events were produced, organized by major. Tracee Ellis Ross, star of Black-ish, executive producer of Mixed-ish, and founder of hair- care company Pattern, delivered the virtual keynote. In her enthusiastic speech, she praised the work of creators, who she says inspire her. “What unites everyone graduating here today is creativity,” she said. “That is what brought you to FIT. You all are dream weavers … the spice rack of our lives. I can tell you from experience that we need people who are professionally bilingual, who speak both design and business, creativity and commerce.” Kory Marchisotto, MPS Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing and Management ’09, CMO of e.l.f. Beauty, offered inspiration to the School of Graduate Studies master’s degree recipients. “You chose to invest in you, and your future self is grateful,” she said. “Trust me.”

“We need people who are professionally bilingual, who speak both design and business, creativity and commerce.” –Tracee Ellis Ross

Top left of photo grid: President Brown welcomes grads to the online ceremony. Other images: In addition to photographs taken by FIT at the in-person commencement ceremonies in Central Park, grads sent in photos taken at those ceremonies, at FIT, and at home. 6

Summer 2021

Joe Carrotta ’17, Smiljana Peros, and student submissions

hue.fitnyc.edu

retail spotlight

i contact

EXCHANGE IS GOOD Ashley Hajimirsadeghi, International Trade and Marketing ’21 You have received three separate fellowships from the U.S. State Department to study international languages and cultures, including one to study writing with college students from India and Pakistan. What did you learn? I didn’t know anything about South Asia. During the partition of India in 1947, 15 million people were displaced, and many died. The first written accounts were all by men. It wasn’t until the 1990s that a woman published an account of her experience. After I finished the writing program, I thought, I should be looking at other parts of the world.

Robert Fuller’s vintage retail spot supplies home comforts BY VANESSA MACHIR

Above: Fuller’s Hudson, New York, store is styled to look like a wellappointed home. Left: Fuller perches on a book-case made from a vintage TV. 8

Summer 2021

relaxing,” confesses Robert Fuller, Visual Presentation and Exhibition Design ’98. “I have to be doing something constructive.” His résumé is proof: During the week, he’s the director of visual merchandising for fragrance and beauty at Chanel, but on weekends, he commutes to his Hudson, New York–based vintage retail gallery, Robert at Home. He also makes furniture from found objects and designs interiors on the side. This isn’t Fuller’s first time running a retail operation. As a child, he built a mock store out of a cardboard box so neighborhood kids could “shop” for dolls and action figures. Though the store was pretend and no money was exchanged, it helped him realize how much he enjoyed creating experiences. “I’m a very nostalgic person by nature,” he says. “I’m always attracted to carousel horses and gumball machines.” Not surprisingly, his store has a vintage carousel horse available for purchase. These interests inspired him to look for a retail space in Hudson, a stylish refuge north of New York City and one of his favorite towns for antiquing. In 2017, he settled on a 1,000-square-foot showroom within Door 15, a collective of about 50 antique and vintage vendors. Though the warehouse has a central sales desk, Fuller is on the floor most weekends. “I wear all of the hats,” he says, “and I have fun doing it.” His store and website are organized by room. For example, in the Canteen (kitchen) section, you’ll find a vintage Coca-Cola sign, and the Sanctuary (bedroom) section offers a 1940s dresser and leather suitcases and trunks. “It shows customers how they

can use every piece I sell in their own houses,” he says. Fuller stocks his store with pieces that “make you feel comforted,” but functionality is also key, as many of his customers are space-poor New Yorkers. Most of his wares are in their original state, but he also sells his own creations—apple-crate ottomans and nightstands made out of old TVs. He estimates 10% to 15% of his sales are driven by his website and social media, and he hopes to be able to offer delivery in the future. Fuller was worried about sales at the beginning of the pandemic, but customers’ heightened focus on their living spaces has fueled growth. Hoping to expand to a second location in the Catskills, he sees home goods as his ultimate calling. “Even if I retired from my industry, I’d still be involved in furniture.”

How does your interest in language and culture relate to business? I was always interested in the international aspect of the major. Trade relates to cultural exchanges. Through things like fashion, film, and literature, we can build relationships. What’s an example? In my Politics and the Middle East class, I learned about the Arab Food Festival in Israel. Traditional Palestinian and Arab peasant cuisines were dying out, so they started the fair to revive them. Israelis came to the festival and began building relationships with the people who were presenting the food. Like fashion and film, food brings people together regardless of their background. How do you plan to use your interest in international cultures professionally? I want to get my Ph.D. in anthropology. Through poetry, writing, film, and photography, I want to document the living history happening right in front of us. When I saw FIT’s Black in Time exhibition last year, there were garments, videos, and recordings blasting down on you; it was so much more than just a textile on the wall with some text.

BEST SELLER

Customers adore Fuller’s ottomans made from apple (or pear!) crates.

You’re the literary director for The Young Writers Initiative, which offers free editorial services to writers under 25, and you’re the co-editor in chief of the TYWI’s literary journal, Juven. Where can we read your own work? My first poetry chapbook, Cartography of Trauma, is coming out this summer from dancing girl press, which is dedicated to women writers. One poem I’m particularly proud of, “Homebound,” was nominated for Best of the Net 2020. It’s about two neighbors, one Japanese, one white. It’s about finding where home is for yourself. André Chung

HOME AWAY FROM HOME

“I HAVE A HARD TIME watching TV and

You’ve received a prestigious and competitive Critical Language Scholarship for Bangla (Bengali) this summer. What’s involved? Our cohort will be studying virtually with the American Institute of Indian Studies in Kolkata, India. It’s 20 hours a week, with language instruction and cultural field trips via Zoom, and we will have local language partners. I applied for the program with the intent of using Bangla to help advocate for women’s rights in the garment factories of Bangladesh. When I first came to FIT, I hadn’t considered the ethics of the fashion industry. It’s sad that women around the world suffer while producing our clothes.

hue.fitnyc.edu

Dynamic Duo

This alumni couple met at FIT, years after graduating. Their relationship dovetails with decades of service to the college.

10 Summer 2021

Rispoli and Klesenski in the ’90s.

Professor Irving Schild hosted a party for Photography students in 1980. Deborah is in the back row, just right of center.

associate vice president of academic affairs. Though she loved commercial photography, she’s been happy “to focus on helping students achieve their goals.” “The twist,” Deborah says, “is that I became less of a photographer while Frank became more of one.” Since the ’70s, Frank loved going out in the wee hours to clubs like Area, Mudd Club, and Danceteria and taking photos of women wearing high-heeled shoes. “New York was in terrible condition—drugs, crime, squeegee guys,” Frank says, but despite (or perhaps because of) the grittiness, he was inspired. He maintained his practice throughout the disco/ punk/new wave era, and he documented the vintage heels craze. His photos appeared in i-D Magazine and Dazed, and NYU’s Fales Library has asked for his archive. Through Instagram, a publisher found these gloriously outré images, captured on lurid (and now discontinued) Kodachrome. In September, Circa Press in London will release his first book, High Heels, with two more to follow. “That’s a big step for me,” Frank says of the attention these publications may draw. “My work is so personal.” Deborah says, “When I met Frank, I never realized he was doing all these photographs. He’s been true to his muse for a long time.”

It Takes Two

New MFA Fashion Design faculty members Sonja Rubin ’93 and Kip Chapelle ’93 strive to create perfect forms BY JONATHAN VATNER

Frank’s first book captures NYC’s downtown scene via edgy footwear.

shooting still life for corporate clients including Avon, Coty, Olympus, and Revlon. After about 10 years, she shifted to on-location food photography for Bon Appetit, Newsweek, and Hearst publications, among others. She began teaching in 1990 at New York University in the International Center for Photography—and at FIT, where she came to serve as chair of the department for six years, overseeing the transition to digital formats. In 2016, she became FIT’s assistant dean of curriculum, providing guidance and support to faculty, department chairs, and deans. She is currently the interim

Wanda Klesenski, Deborah’s mother, earned an AAS from FIT in 1977; she assembled this vest out of Frank’s old ties.

Smiljana Peros

A PIECE OF CHALK: This humble writing implement helped initiate the 28-year relationship of Deborah Klesenski-Rispoli, Photography ’80, now an FIT administrator, and Frank Rispoli, Interior Design ’69. Though they graduated more than a decade apart, both were teaching at FIT in 1993 when Frank spied Deborah in a classroom. “I immediately wanted to meet her,” Frank says. When he came in and pretended to need chalk, Deborah saw through the ruse: “I knew it wasn’t really about that.” They went out for coffee; two years later, they married. When Frank attended FIT in the ’60s, it was just two buildings—what is now the Feldman Center and Nagler Hall. People could smoke in the classrooms, and Frank’s rendering professor went through half a pack per class. One memorable assignment was to represent an entire room in pink and orange watercolor. Robert Gutman, who taught the history of interior design, and Julius Panero—“he helped put the program on the map”—both made an impression. At the time, FIT only offered an associate’s degree, so after a summer stint as a renderer for Bloomingdale’s, Frank completed his BFA at the Pratt Institute. In the early ’70s, when his career began, “the world was exploding—politically, socially, and artistically,” Frank says, and he found he was interested in all facets of design. He got his start at Henry Dreyfuss Associates, an industrial design firm, and then moved on to consultancies with various companies. For Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, he worked on the graphics program for the new airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and he consulted with I.M. Pei on architectural graphics projects. He took on a wide variety of multidisciplinary projects, including interior, retail, showroom, and exhibition design, working with a wide array of methods and materials. In the early ’90s, Panero suggested he apply to teach at FIT in what is now the Visual Presentation and Exhibition Design Department; Frank got the job. Deborah came to study at FIT in the late ’70s. Photography faculty member Steve Manville, she says, “encouraged us to experiment; a lot of commercial photography at that time was formulaic.” After graduation, she apprenticed for a few years, and by 1986, she had her own studio on West 25th Street,

Ease of getting dressed is important to them— and it’s only gotten more important since the pandemic began. “We want to give women a uniform that can be thrown on like a T-shirt but that gives them the empowerment of a tuxedo,” Rubin says. “It’s so easy for men to get dressed and have power encoded in their clothes. Our clients say that about our clothes, that they feel they can do anything in them.” The duo has been in business since they graduated in 1993; in 1997, they opened an office on West 25th Street, and they are now a nimble team of eight. They used to wholesale with Barneys, Bergdorf Goodman, and Neiman Marcus, but they now sell exclusively through their boutiques and online. The reason, they say, is that they didn’t want to overproduce their clothes and watch them get marked down after six weeks. “If you go on the hamster wheel,” Rubin says, “you have to produce more to get a lower price, and the excess goes to the off-price retailer, or people burn it, or whatever is happening. We decided that is not the route we wanted to go.” Instead, they produce in frequent small batches, with the aim of selling every item. If demand is high for a piece—as it is for their satiny sport jackets and sleek pants—they refine the design and produce more in the next batch. They’re not wedded to the fashion seasons, either: When each new collection arrives every 8-12 weeks, Rubin and Chapelle contact their clients, inviting them to take a look.

THEY GOT THE CALL last summer, when the world was shut down. Sonja Rubin and Kip Chapelle, the married co-creators of the acclaimed women’s fashion line Rubin & Chapelle, had been volunteering at a food bank while their retail stores, in New York and Malibu, remained closed. When Cathleen Sheehan, acting chair of FIT’s Fashion Design MFA program, invited them to teach, they immediately said yes. “We thought it made more sense to use our expertise to teach than to volunteer,” Rubin says. The MFA program is known for its unique thesis process: When students apply, they propose an idea, which they explore in depth over two years. The process encourages original thinking and innovation, a disruption of the fashion system. Rubin and Chapelle, both Fashion Design ’93, are teamteaching all four semesters of the thesis course for the 19 students of the class of 2022. The program seeks students from diverse academic and artistic backgrounds because they bring a fresh, outsider perspective. “They are artists, graphic designers, biology majors,” Rubin says. “There is strength in naïveté, but it’s also, of course, a challenge. It’s very important to acknowledge the different aesthetic of each student and let that flourish.”

To get to know the students, Rubin and Chapelle asked them to “identify a perfect form, a real bullseye in the world of design,” Chapelle says. The students mentioned a museum in China, fertility statues, and a teapot, and together they analyzed each one. The exercise gave them perspective on what to strive for. Rubin and Chapelle, CFDA members since 2011, also strive for perfect forms in their own work. “One thing that satisfies me is striking a perpetual modernity,” Chapelle says, “something that’s not just timeless but that really has some impact, that lasts.” Indeed, their best pieces possess a startling architectural simplicity. Though many of the garments are loose-fitting and sculptural, even the most abstract shapes offer an element of body contact: a squeeze along the arms or a nuzzle against the spine—a subtle, comforting hug. The color palette is mostly black, white, and gray, with occasional pops of color. Contrast of shapes, colors, and textures runs throughout their work. Rubin and Chapelle design by draping on a dress form and favor a bias cut, which endows the garment with natural stretch and fluidity. They work mainly in different weights of silk—twill, silk cotton, duchesse, and charmeuse—for its drape, durability, and easy care. They recently began sourcing peace silk, which is created without killing the silkworms.

Throughout the pandemic, many School of Graduate Studies classes were held in person. Here, Rubin advises student Stephanie Chen.

“We never had an interest in making anything that goes out of fashion,” Rubin says. “We are the opposite of trendy.” Their personalities complement each other. Rubin is outgoing and direct; Chapelle is reserved, choosing his words carefully. They met as students in the Fashion Design program and fell in love. “I always took his tools, and at one point he had to recover them,” Rubin recalls. “It hasn’t changed,” Chapelle says with a wry smile. “My things just sort of gravitate to her office.” Visit hue.fitnyc.edu for extras, including Rubin & Chapelle’s favorite designs and examples of their students’ work. For pieces by recent graduates, turn the page.

hue.fitnyc.edu 11

The graduates of the MFA in Fashion Design put on a show to remember

On April 6, selected members of the Fashion Design MFA classes of ’20 and ’21 presented their thesis collections in a live, interactive virtual fashion show. The seven artistic segments, filmed and edited by the designers, brought viewers into a sun-dappled field to see Bing Zhu’s long layered and pleated dresses, into the dark to watch models put on and take off Justin Chi’s playful overalls with big plastic handles, and into an empty hotel ballroom for Anabella Bergero’s trippy, punk-rock “queerceañera.” After each segment, Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of The Museum at FIT, interviewed the designers about their inspirations and aspirations. Throughout, viewers were able to comment on the show and buy some of the featured garments and accessories. This event represented FIT’s first foray into real-time shopping during a fashion show. The innovative, immersive show was one response to the canceling of in-person events due to the pandemic. It was organized by FIT’s DTech lab, which brings together students, faculty, and industry partners to solve real-world problems. This was the first in a series of interactive events, branded DTech Live and powered by Bambuser, a video streaming and shopping platform. “Through this experience, the designers overcame the challenges of the pandemic to focus on craftsmanship while remaining true to their artistic vision,” said Cathleen Sheehan, professor and acting chair of the Fashion Design MFA program. “The breadth of themes and approaches represented is very exciting, and we can’t wait to watch these designers shape the future of fashion.” Watch a recording of the show at dtech.fitnyc.edu/live. —JONATHAN VATNER

01 01 For Queerceañeras, Anabella Bergero was inspired by the quinceañera, the Latin American coming-ofage celebration for girls turning 15. “With the queering up of this rite, my main desire is to offer different possible comings and becomings of age,” Bergero says. 02 Justin Chi exaggerated the fasteners on his designs to emphasize the act of dressing and undressing. Each garment comes with instructions and tools to adjust the attached plastic handles and make the process more interactive.

12 Summer 2021

03 Cristina and Margarita Ng Ng, who design under the name Ng2 Studios, based their thesis on their identity as twins, highlighting their similarities and differences in a streetwear collection with voluminous silhouettes. They also developed a complex pattern grading system that considers the effect of aging and the environment on bodies. 04 Bing Zhu’s designs celebrate “soft power”— feminine strength she learned from her mother. “My mom would always smile and calm me down whenever I was upset or impatient. But behind the softness, there has always been power.”

05 For her bright and bold collection, Brit Shaked created a physical representation of sound waves using color and drape, and she investigated how changes in the tone of a voice affected the shape of the garment.

07 Concrete Utopia, Youngjun Lim’s collection, draws on his background as an industrial designer to construct a modular clothing system that embraces diverse body shapes.

06 Qiuyi Luo’s collection plays with the ways people perceive artwork. Inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s readymade sculptures like Fountain (1917), Luo created clothing shapes based on a fountain (a urinal), bicycle wheel, and chair, and then he changed the proportions to shake up viewers’ perceptions. 03

07 hue.fitnyc.edu 13

NEW BEHAVIORS

TRENDING PRODUCTS

The Nexus D

of the

evon Zdatny’s open, upbeat personality seems tailor-made to reassure clients in challenging times—say, a global pandemic. As a specialist in both market analytics and strategy, her company has been helping businesses navigate COVID-induced economic turmoil. Zdatny, Direct and Interactive Marketing ’13, is the founder and CEO of First & First Consulting, a direct and interactive marketing firm focused on the Gen Z demographic. At a time when people were stressed, bored, and feeling trapped indefinitely in their homes, Zdatny predicted emerging trends her clients could jump on to satisfy consumers’ yearning for distraction, entertainment, and some degree of normalcy. First & First foresaw an uptick in the demand for inflatable pools, weed edibles, and even laser eye surgery for people annoyed that face masks caused glasses to fog.

(Marketing)

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

Universe Devon Zdatny ’13 blends analytics and strategy to remarkable ends Portrait by Jahne Brown ’20

14 Summer 2021

Zdatny has a long relationship with FIT. She started as a Fashion Design student in the Precollege Program and then earned an AAS in Advertising and Marketing Communications and a BS in Direct and Interactive Marketing. “I applied to 13 schools because my parents made me, but if I didn’t get into FIT, I don’t know if I would have even gone to college,” she says. Now she teaches at her alma mater and serves on the consortium advising the Baker School of Business and Technology.

The company draws on a mix of 25 methods, including social media listening tools and consumer insight platforms, to advise its 75 clients, including Facebook and Combs Enterprises (as in Sean “Diddy” Combs). “The big brands come to us with a particular target consumer to find out what sort of marketing they should do, what sort of consumer insights they should look for,” Zdatny says. She finds that a blend of analytics (studying data to uncover trends that can inform business decisions) and strategy (developing a plan to meet business goals) provides the best answers to clients’ questions. It seems obvious that satisfying your customers while hitting your own objectives is key to success, but oddly, this two-pronged approach is rare in the industry. In fact, Zdatny says, there’s a chasm between them. “Researchers and analysts are like toddlers with a plate of peas and carrots, and the peas can’t touch the carrots. But we take the peas and slam them in the middle of the carrots and mix them with the mashed potatoes.” The name First & First harks back to a beloved Seinfeld episode in which Kramer phones

“The big brands come to us with a particular target consumer, to find out what sort of marketing they should do, what sort of consumer insights they should look for.” Jerry from the intersection of First Avenue and First Street in the East Village—and realizes he’s at the “nexus of the universe.” (It also harks back to Zdatny’s past; she once lived in the area.) Now her company works at the nexus of the marketing universe, where analytics and strategy meet.

BRANCHING OUT What she loves about direct and interactive marketing is that it “holds you very accountable to selling”—you directly measure consumers’ response to your marketing and advertising efforts, so you know what worked and what didn’t. Zdatny’s insights apply not only to companies, but also to any institution that promotes its reputation and services to attract an audience, such as a college. To that end, Zdatny now teaches social media marketing at FIT and serves on the Baker School of Business and Technology’s Strategic Planning Consortium, which advises on curriculum and student recruitment for the next decade. She says Gen Z is anxious and questioning of authority, a challenge the school will need to address when seeking prospective students. Meanwhile, Zdatny’s expertise has helped her own company survive the pandemic. Although she closed the physical office in 2020 in the face of a 65% drop in revenue, she’s proud to have kept all nine of her full-time employees, five of whom are FIT alums. First & First used the downtime to strengthen its marketing, branding, and operations in an effort to “future-proof” the business. Despite the challenges, Zdatny’s optimistic outlook and belief in her business model prevail. “Right now,” she says, “I feel like I want to be doing this forever.” hue.fitnyc.edu 15

The pandemic made us experts in videoconferencing. But sometimes it’s still like herding cats.

Story by Hue / Illustration by Juhye Cho, MFA ’18

The Persistence of Memory Artist Abigail DeVille, Fine Arts ’09, brings obscured American histories into the present

Opposite: Brian Forrest, Top: Nate Dorr, Right: Smiljana Peros

BY ALEX JOSEPH MA ’15

Opposite: Among the materials for No Space Hidden (Shelter) (2017), according to the artist: accumulated debris, discarded heirlooms, hair extensions, plastic fruit, LED lights, box fans, ladders, tar paper, and car seats. The immersive piece presents the viewer with insoluble riddles. “I can take the audience captive,” DeVille says.

HE HUNTS POINT Slave Burial Ground takes up an unassuming corner of Joseph Rodman Drake Park in the Bronx. The unmarked site was rediscovered in 2010, after the Museum of the City of New York uploaded a mysterious 1910 photograph with the phrase “Slave Burial Ground” scrawled on the back. Historians identified this sliver of land, just outside the perimeter fence of the Drake cemetery, as the location in the photo and began to investigate. The last person interred may have been “Aunt Rose,” a nanny who was enslaved on the nearby Abraham Legget estate and died in 1840. Gravestones marking the presence of perhaps a dozen or more enslaved people’s remains have disappeared over time. Here was a perfect place for the artist Abigail DeVille to start a project. “If you’re having a conversation with history,” she says, “you’re really trying to understand the present.” For DeVille, remembering is a form of resistance. She scours the landscapes of marginalized communities past, present, and gentrifying, and intuitively sources materials that speak to the locale’s hidden history. Toys, tools, floor tiles, fabric scraps: Where some see detritus, she finds clues to an obscured narrative, which she turns into immersive sculpture. “She combines the material in very intricate ways,” a New York Times critic wrote, “but still leaves the components warm with their individual histories.” Her 2017 piece No Space Hidden turned a gallery at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art into a hoarder’s apartment, replete with plastic hangers, pots, pans, ladders, hubcaps, and much more. Half Moon, a project for the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, assembled roofing plywood, bottles, plantation cocoa bean sacks, and (according to the artist) cat piss, into a queasy structure that resembled a beached, decaying sloop. “I read recently about what our brains are doing when we remember something,” she says, “and we’re not remembering the actual experience; we’re just remembering the last time we remembered.” The

messiness in her work “reflects the inability to accurately understand or interpret the past. History speaks to us through imprints on a landscape, or snippets in a book, or an interview, or an audio recording, but even all those things put together don’t equal the original event. But it’s still worthwhile to try to remember.” IT WAS A GORGEOUS DAY in the Bronx. Drake Park occupies a lone, grassy city block surrounded by auto body shops and produce wholesalers. There was scant evidence of the enslaved people whose lives ended two centuries ago. DeVille passed over stray burger wrappers and plastic bottles, and paused beneath a lush willow that grew at the approximate burial ground site. She considered the tree carefully. She grew up in this borough. Her recent piece Homebody at the Andrew Edlin Gallery in Soho, drew on the story of her family, which DeVille situates within the narrative of the Great Migration: Among the six million Black people who fled the rural South to escape racial segregation and Jim Crow laws, her forebears moved from Richmond, Virginia, to New York in the 1930s. DeVille continually returns to the question of her ancestry: “Both of my parents have small families, and both grandfathers were orphans, so I constantly wonder, where do we really come from and who are we?”

Above: To make enormous works like Half Moon (2016), which was installed in the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, Queens, DeVille reaches out to friends with carpentry skills. “I’m mean with a drill and a staple gun—those are my paintbrushes,” she says. “But I’m always looking for someone who will put something together in a safe and sound way.” Variable dimensions. Below: DeVille, shown at the Hunts Point Slave Burial Ground, was FIT’s artist in residence in the summer of 2019. She worked on sculptures in the college’s Art and Design Gallery and discussed with students questions like, “What does the American Dream mean now?”

hue.fitnyc.edu 19

Opposite: Smiljana Peros, Top: Photo courtesy of the artist

Four generations lived together in one Bronx apartment; in 2012, when they moved, DeVille collected the floor tiles that her great-grandmother installed in 1970. For Homebody, the artist covered a whole wall with the tiles, scuffed and scarred from years of wear. For college, thinking her niche might be in commercial art, she initially chose an Illustration program at the Pratt Institute. After a year, she dropped out and worked as a messenger. Her parents weren’t happy; a friend of theirs who was a dean at FIT told DeVille about the Fine Arts program. She learned to work big. An early exposure to Jackson Pollock’s enormous works enticed her with the possibilities of scale. At FIT, she made paintings that were 14 by 17 feet—so large that they had to be suspended from a parking garage roof to be photographed. “Maybe part of it was unconsciously, ‘I’m going to be as obnoxious as possible with the space I take up,’” she says with a laugh. “Being obnoxious is necessary—you’re pushing against the limits of the institution.” When DeVille couldn’t afford materials for an oil painting class taught by Don Perlis, she began her practice of gathering whatever was available for free: Posters advertising albums and clubs displayed in the streets around the college became her canvas. Her experience helped in another way, too: In most art programs, students must choose a medium; at FIT, she was exposed to them all. Now, she says, when she thinks about how to convey an idea, she can choose freely among methods.

20 Summer 2021

AT THE BASE OF THE WILLOW, the artist knelt. Removing a small metal tool from her knapsack, she began digging in the dirt. Though DeVille had invited a journalist and a photographer specifically to observe this activity, watching felt intimate, even voyeuristic. She scratched at the earth with intense concentration and put soil, along with a leafy branch, into a big white plastic bag. DEVILLE ’S WORK HAS RISEN to prominence at the same time as the traditional narrative of American history has come into question. The New York Times’ controversial 1619 Project places slavery

at the foundation of the national story. What were known as the Tulsa Race Riots, now better understood as the slaughter of hundreds of Black people, are called the Tulsa Race Massacre; and across the South, monuments to the Confederacy are coming down. Right now, our history does indeed feel like a decaying ship or hoarder’s closet; it’s hard to know what to focus on or believe. Perhaps as a result, DeVille’s salvaging projects feel increasingly essential. Since earning her MFA from Yale in 2011, she has participated in numerous exhibitions (including at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art), received prestigious grants (a U.S. Artists Fellowship, Marion T. Mitchell Rome Prize, a Joan Mitchell Foundation award), and residencies (at the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation). Her work is regularly reviewed in the Times, Artforum, and many other outlets. Art is her day job. Last fall, Madison Square Park hosted Light of Freedom, DeVille’s reimagining of the Statue of Liberty’s hand and torch. From 1876 to 1882, the original was exhibited in the park while funds were raised to complete the statue. This fact, along with reflections about the Black Lives Matter protests, inspired DeVille to represent the torch swaddled in scaffolding: “It’s this idea of freedom being constantly under construction and reconstruction.” The base of DeVille’s piece encloses a weathered bell, and the flame is composed of mannequin arms painted blue, as if reaching for the liberty that has so far eluded them. The piece feels like a big, culminating statement, neither cerebral nor bleak. “The protests were positive,” DeVille says. “The beacon of hope is unfulfilled, but it’s still there.”

Above: DeVille created Sarcophagus Blue (2017), a statement about immigration, shortly after President Donald Trump’s Muslim ban. Variable dimensions. Opposite: DeVille painted the arms composing the flame in Light of the World (2020-21) blue because “blue is the hottest fire there is.” The color also references artist Faith Ringgold’s story-quilt We Came to America (1997), in which a Black Statue of Liberty presides over a blue Hudson Bay full of thrashing bodies.

IT WASN ’ T CLEAR what DeVille planned to do with the dirt and tree limb, but it’s likely to be incorporated, somehow, into a future project. She headed out of the park. Behind her, the willow branches swayed. For a moment, the thousands of leaves recalled components of a DeVille sculpture. Nourished by the soil, they turned in the breeze, each one a flickering, viable entity.

hue.fitnyc.edu 21

How six entrepreneurs launched businesses during lockdown by Liz Leyden

22 Summer 2021

The coronavirus reshaped the world at the very moment Ashley Klein, Fashion Design ’10, chose to launch her clothing line. All her careful plans—built upon nearly a decade’s worth of dreams—suddenly went out the window as she scrambled to steer her brand-new business through a catastrophe few saw coming. “It’s definitely been a growth experience, at the very least,” she says with a laugh. Klein is one of many FIT alumni who embarked on new business ventures in 2020 despite the chaotic and terrifying economic landscape. For some, the pandemic complicated projects already in motion; for others, it provided the spark for a new enterprise. Delsy Gouw, Advertising and Marketing Communications ’21, picked up her crochet hook to fight off lockdown-induced cabin fever, but after she posted a photo of a cheerful pink and orange bag on Instagram, a business was born. Fatima Vali, MPS Global Fashion Management ’19, started Soulitude to sell sustainable masks when the pandemic forced her to suspend her job search. As life slowly resumes, these entrepreneurs are looking ahead, growing their customer base, expanding product lines, and taking a breath after a tumultuous year. “I’ve learned to accept that you can’t necessarily control everything that’s going to happen,” Klein says, “and that’s OK, as long as you really believe in what you’re creating.”

No.1

SEN MORIOKA FASHION DESIGN ’16

His new brand’s lookbook was at the printer when the lockdown hit New York, but Sen Morioka didn’t panic. Since falling in love with fashion as a boy while watching his mother, a dressmaker, trace patterns, Morioka had worked toward creating his own clothing line. He studied Fashion Design at FIT, interned with Narciso Rodriguez, and built his skills working with the kinds of luxury fabrics he hoped to use in his designs. Rather than churning out clothing to match trends, Morioka chose a slow-fashion strategy—sourcing quality fabrics and designing small-batch collections meant to last a lifetime rather than a single season. After years of determined effort, on the cusp of launching his brand Senbo, even the extreme twist of a global pandemic couldn’t shake Morioka’s belief in the future. “That’s the good thing about being a slow-fashion company,” he says. “I believed in myself. I believed in my work.” Early on, Morioka caught COVID-19, which hit him hard. Finally recovered in April, he wondered what to do with the garments—flowing dresses and skirts in soft cottons and linens whose precise pleats and asymmetrical hems added an air of low-key romance—that were ready for launch. He listed them on Depop, an online marketplace, where his first customer immediately bought three pieces. “That was a good sign,” he says. Throughout the year, Morioka continued to design and steadily drop new pieces with a focus on both comfort and beauty that he hopes will help customers maintain “good spirits in difficult times.” “Nothing will be easy,” he says. “But with or without a pandemic, there is always a way to do our best. I’m very optimistic.”

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No.4

NISHALI ALLEN TECHNICAL DESIGN ’19

No.2

Nishali Allen turned to a favorite pastime to give her mind a break. She’d lost her job as a stylist when the pandemic hit, and her mother was facing heightened health risks working in a nursing home. Beset by worries, Allen found solace at her sewing machine. “Everyone has their safe space,” Allen says. “That definitely was mine. I felt like if I wanted to have some type of control, I could just turn my sewing machine on, listen to my music, and sew for hours.” Bucket hats became Allen’s balm. She took pleasure in the details, her eyes peeled for puckers, popped threads, and the slightest misshape. With vibrant colors and geometric prints, Allen aimed to evoke the exuberant style of the ’90s, her favorite fashion era. In May, she launched Phoeline (pronounced ‘feline’), named for her favorite mythological creature (the phoenix) and her zodiac sign (Leo). Allen’s first sale went to a buyer in Texas. Nearly a year later, she has customers across the country checking in for new designs. She’s applying for local business grants and creating a five-year plan that includes a small boutique—a path she never would’ve predicted for herself. “I just thought it was going to be a little hobby,” she says. “For me, it’s been a surprise success.”

AARON STEWART

HOME PRODUCTS DEVELOPMENT ’00

The week before San Juan shut down, Aaron Stewart visited his local Walgreens to stock up on cleaning supplies. Inspiration struck as he grabbed a few bottles of hand sanitizer. “I knew in my gut we’d be using this for a very long time,” says Stewart, former creative director at Sferra and vice president of product design at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. “I was staring at the shelf just thinking, ‘Why is this so ugly? It looks it like came from a hospital supply closet.’” That moment marked the beginning of Stewart’s quest to create chic hand sanitizer. As the pandemic curtailed activity on the island, Stewart immersed himself in the project, sourcing supplies, scouring Pinterest for packaging ideas, and quizzing his nieces about their preference between spritz and gel. (Spritz prevailed.) In November, Stewart launched Portococo, a wellness and lifestyle company offering “sanitizing items disguised as fashion accessories.” He designed the company’s first featured product—a sleek, reusable bottle of hand sanitizer available in vivid orange and blue hues—to be mistaken for something more glamorous: “I want people to see someone using our product and say, “Oh my God, what is that? Is it perfume?”

24 Summer 2021

No.3

ASHLEY KLEIN FASHION DESIGN ’10

For years, Ashley Klein sketched and saved and plotted and planned to launch the fashion line of her dreams. She researched fabrics, interviewed manufacturers, and honed her vision for a sustainable brand until finally— thrillingly—filing for a business license in late 2019. A few months later, Klein flew to Los Angeles from her Seattle home to oversee final fittings before production began, but her exhilaration was short-lived. The next day, the president declared a national emergency. The manufacturer shut down. Klein’s vendors went dark. “I would be lying if I said there weren’t many a breakdown,” she says. “You didn’t know what was going to happen with life in general, and you didn’t know what was going to happen to this dream you’d tried to build.” Uncertainty and new challenges—from navigating supply chain delays to twice switching manufacturers—consumed her days. Klein connected with other female entrepreneurs and journaled to cope with the stress. Ultimately, conquering each roadblock sharpened her determination. Klein launched Akala in November with a capsule collection made from natural fibers to fit bodies of all sizes. This spring, her rose-colored jumpsuit was featured in a Today show segment. “Last year was a lot of pivots, but I have no regrets,” Klein says. “I learned to give myself a lot of grace.”

“Last year was a lot of pivots, but I have no regrets. I learned to give myself a lot of grace.” —Ashley Klein

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No.6

DELSY GOUW

ADVERTISING AND MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS ’21

Stuck indoors last spring, Delsy Gouw dyed her dark hair blonde. She embraced new card games, tackled origami, and made TikTok’s favorite whipped coffee for a frothy quarantine treat. But nothing cured her restlessness until she picked up her old crochet hook and resumed the hobby she’d practiced as a little girl. Gouw found new inspiration in a world of glittery, bright yarns and eventually designed a colorful bag for a friend. “Until then, I’d always thought crochet was ugly,” Gouw says. “I never thought about it looking cute.” She snapped a photo of the bag and proudly posted it to Instagram. Business was not on her mind, but friends immediately began asking for bags of their own. By fall, Gouw was juggling dozens of commissions for bags, hats, and bikinis alongside classes and a new job at a market research company. To her shock—and delight— her budding brand Memorial Day has lately gained high-profile fans, including Kylie Jenner and Ella Emhoff, the stepdaughter of Kamala Harris. “It snowballed,” she says, still amazed by what grew from such difficult days. “A pandemic pushed me to do this.”

“I’d always thought crochet was ugly. I never thought about it looking cute.” —Delsy Gouw

No.5

FATIMA VALI

MPS GLOBAL FASHION MANAGEMENT ’19

When the lockdown squashed her job search, Fatima Vali’s confidence plummeted. But her love for denim brought it back. Vali graduated in December 2019, eager to start a new career. But as the coronavirus swept across New York City, her job interviews disappeared. Feeling stuck, Vali joined her brother’s volunteer efforts to find masks for health care workers near their Long Island home. One day, he suggested she use her degree to produce them herself. “That’s when the New Denim Project hit me,” Vali says. For her capstone project the previous fall, Vali had worked with a Guatemalabased textile mill with an upcycling ethos: They gathered garment waste and grinded the scraps into fabric, creating something new. Vali realized making sustainable masks from her favorite textile could be her own salvage project for an upended year. Naming the company Soulitude—with the motto “Embrace Your Journey”—helped Vali stay positive. “It was about holding your head up and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,” she says. The months leading up to Soulitude’s November launch served as a crash course in entrepreneurship, making the first rush of orders all the more exhilarating. “I closed my eyes,” she says. “I just wanted to take it all in. This was happening after all my hard work, and it just felt so good.” Confidence restored, Vali plans to launch a new product—denim travel duffel bags—this summer. “I’m really excited for what comes next.” 26 Summer 2021

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alumni notables

R E A DY, S E T, G O

In the Oscar-nominated film Minari, a family of working-class Korean immigrants moves to rural Arkansas. The props that convey the Yi family’s hardscrabble life were researched and sourced by Stacy Suvino. Working alongside a production designer and set decorator, Suvino, the film’s buyer and set dresser, scoured stores near the filming location in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in addition to Facebook Marketplace. Though Minari is set in 1983, she shopped for items from the ’70s because the Yi family couldn’t afford new decor. Each character had a color story; props support mood as well. The “haunted” dresser was found at River City Trading Post, a local antique shop. Suvino was convinced the Yi family needed a small oscillating electric fan, but it was hard to find. An owner of the Trading Post eventually offered one from their personal collection. Also difficult to procure was a classic ’70s couch with blocky lines and bold, rust-hued polyester fabric; the style is trending again, making prime specimens hard to come by. A store run by the H.O.W. Foundation, which helps men struggling with alcohol or drug addiction, proved to be a trove for props: “We 28 Summer 2021

hit that place every week,” Suvino says, happy the purchases benefited a good cause. Suvino already had serious goals when she arrived as a student at FIT. “My first day in class, I said I wanted to work at Bergdorf Goodman. A year later, I had an internship there.” Legendary fashion director Linda Fargo and window dresser David Hoey supplemented the formal education Suvino was receiving from Associate Professor Anne Kong and other faculty members. Eventually, Suvino got hired full time in Bergdorf’s home department, though she still worked on windows, her favorite assignment: “That’s where the theater lies.” After a couple of years, having reached her goals with Bergdorf’s, Suvino remembered a luxury retail store, Miss Jackson’s, from her childhood in Tulsa. She cold called and asked whether anyone was doing their displays; six months later, she had the job. Miss Jackson’s had a reputation as “a rich little old lady store” (and a smallish display budget), but they wanted to broaden their audience. Among other projects, Suvino recreated the office of actor and Tulsa native Will Rogers in Miss Jackson’s 10-foot-tall windows, a research-heavy assignment. “History is my niche,”

Melissa Lukenbaugh, Courtesy of A24

With Oscar-nominated Minari, Stacy Suvino, Visual Presentation and Exhibition Design ’08, continues to realize her Hollywood dream

Scenes from Minari include furniture that Suvino sourced.

phone rang. Someone was fired, and they wanted Suvino to step in. She worked on the show for over three months, staying late every night so she could learn how the production worked. Today, Suvino lives in Atlanta, a new hub for film production, and she’s racking up credits: She’s worked on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and a new show for F/X, Reservation Dogs. She has an agent for commercials and editorial, but she hopes to work as a production designer for Steven Spielberg. In the meantime, she’s proud of her contributions to Minari. “It’s a version of the American Dream,” she says, “and I think people are looking for hope right now.” —Alex Joseph

Maria Cantú, Fashion Merchandising Management ’14, has found a sustainable solution for castoff couture

T R I C K L E- D O W N FA S H I O N Kristina Kiss, Accessories Design ’09, helped construct Lady Gaga’s avant-garde Chromatica look

At FIT, Kristina Kiss spent her days striving for top marks and her nights debuting her designs at Lower East Side dive bars. That’s where she first met Lady Gaga, whose fearless style inspired her. “When I was younger, I was a real hothead. I got crazy stressed and wanted to punch things and throw stuff,” admits Kiss, a small-town principal’s daughter. “Fashion became an outlet.” After graduating, Kiss designed footwear for Calvin Klein, but her passion was establishing her brand, SSIK Designs. “I was a little punk who wore and sold ripped-up tees with spikes, heavy chains, and splattered paint everywhere,” she says. “NYC’s graffiti art influenced me a lot.” Searching for a new medium, she seized upon the unique drippedKiss in a drip bodice. silicone technique that became her trademark look. “I tried dripping paint or wax on a mannequin to create gold shoulders,” Kiss says, “until this special FX makeup artist gave me a quick 101 on silicone. It was exactly what I wanted! Drip collars became my first bestseller.” Transferring the technique to various garments with stunning results, Kiss realized she could carve her own path. Through monthly classes, she mastered adhesives, epoxies, mold making, pigments, glitter, and above all, patience. After Kiss’s “black drippy mermaid” look helped fellow FIT alum Aquaria (Giovanni Palandrani) win Season 10 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Lady Gaga’s stylists reached out. By 2018, Gaga was well established as a pop provocateur and had vacillated from looks like the infamous meat dress to the luxe glamour of

designers Alexander McQueen, Yves Saint Laurent, and Marc Jacobs. But for her sixth album, Chromatica, Gaga was ready to return to the pastiche of avant-garde and cyberpunk of her early days. Videos for the album featured “Kindness Punks” clad in candy-colored embellishments, fighting for kindness and love in a post-apocalyptic landscape. Kiss was among designers reviving Gaga’s signature sartorial weirdness. “I wanted something with shock value,” Kiss says, “a combination of scary and sexy.” SSIK Designs collaborated with Studio Formichetti’s Marta del Río, constructing pieces including the pink/purple silicone bodice seen in the Rain on Me video and the flesh suture stitch bodysuit Gaga wore in the Chromatica album art. “They’d ordered custom batches for possible use, but I didn’t believe it was real until my Instagram blew up,” Kiss says. “I got daily orders from Gaga’s incredibly loyal fans,” allowing experimentation with crazier designs and techniques. Noted costume designer Patricia Field selected Kiss for her boutique of small-batch designs, and the apparel flew off the showroom floor. Bust magazine featured Billy Porter wearing a collared blazer hung with crystalline silicone. Kiss’s work graced red carpets and the vestiaries of Neil Patrick Harris, Debbie Harry, and downtown glitterati Amanda Lepore and Susanne Bartsch. She received costume commissions for the Hugh Jackman film The Greatest Showman and the TV series Gotham. Kiss spent the pandemic mastering the creation of silicone lips, skulls, and spiked teeth. She forwards new ideas to Gaga’s team, grateful for the exposure. “It put me on the map,” Kiss says. “I discovered I don’t want to grow up—I can be this fucking weirdo for a living.” —Winnie McCroy

Mariana Cantú attended her first fashion shoot as an intern at Italian Vogue in 2014. She immediately fell in love with the energy on set and the exquisite clothes on the models. So, she was shocked to hear that many of the gorgeous gowns and suits created especially for these magazine spreads would never again see the light of day. “It was just devastating to see that a lot of these pieces were burned or just thrown away,” Cantú says. “These are pieces that are worth like $4,000. I thought, ‘People would die [to own] these pieces.’” Cantú now runs her own photo production company, MC Colectiva, which coordinates shoots for Vogue Mexico, GQ Russia, L’Officiel Paris, and more. She aims to save these one-of-a-kind garments with her new project, Issue Number One, launching in November. This invitation-only website will sell unique archival designs from luxury brands like Gucci and Valentino that would have been relegated to storage or the trash bin. “These aren’t samples, but pieces that were never sent to production, which are actually the most amazing pieces,” Cantú says. “They were used for red carpet events or editorial purposes.”

Courtesy of Mariana Cantú

Suvino with Franklin, a friendly prop.

Second Life

Mike Sullivan

Tony Li

Melissa Lukenbaugh, Courtesy of A24

Suvino says. The fashion industry started to notice her work, and Nike hired her for editorial ads. But the 2011 movie Water for Elephants changed her career ambitions. She cried to see how artfully the noted production designer Jack Fisk recreated the circus world of the 1930s, and soon after, she became determined to work in film. Aspiring Hollywood set designers, take heed: Suvino’s story of breaking in exemplifies persistence, bravery, and making the most of a coincidence. It just so happened that the third season of HBO’s show True Detective was filming in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where Suvino’s parents live, and they knew the owners of the warehouse where the movie was being shot. Suvino’s dad sent her a photo of the front door of the warehouse, which had a sign with a cell phone number on it. “Call that number,” he told her. It turned out to be the show’s production manager. He told her they already had a crew. Undaunted, Suvino went to Fayetteville for the weekend and visited the site, résumé in hand. When a secretary called in the production designer to show him her CV, he said, “You’re the one with the dad!” She told him, “I really want to be here.” The set designer was crewed up for the duration, he said; however, the team admired her fortitude and encouraged her to call again. Every week for four months, she did. Each time, they told her no. Suvino gave up and packed her car to head home. Thirty minutes outside Fayetteville, her

Cantú believed she could preserve—or breathe new life into—these garments by selling them, but she knew there would be obstacles. “These brands are very, very picky about their exclusivity and who actually buys it,” she says. That’s why she’s made Issue Number One members-only, for an exclusive cadre of VIPs. (Early members include Sally Morrison, director of public relations for De Beers, and Sarah Easley, founder of MaisonMarché.) Every few weeks, members will receive an email announcing a selection of items from a new brand—and the site will feature garments from only one brand at a time. “We want to treat these as precious limited pieces, exclusive and rare to find,” Cantú says. Most will range between 70 and 90 percent off the projected retail price. (Membership is currently free.) Cantú cares not only about saving beautiful fashion, but also about saving the environment. “The luxury industry has no idea how to be sustainable,” she says. “I saw a niche where there was a problem, and I wanted a solution for it.” —Raquel Laneri

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alumni notables

what inspires you?

TI C K LE D B LU E Chase Bluestone (Nate Restrepo), Illustration ’19, illustrated a children’s book promoting PPE

SM A RT FA BR IC Vanessa Sanchez, Fashion Design, made the Forbes 30 Under 30 for her work in robotic textiles At Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering in Boston, Vanessa Sanchez developed robotic textiles that could revolutionize myriad industries. For her research, she was named to the prestigious Forbes 30 Under 30 list, in the Science category. Robotic textiles can change size, shape, and temperature in response to stimuli. For example, clothing could shrink or expand to help people with limited mobility get dressed, vibrate selectively to help wearers navigate their city, or vary their coverage in response to fluctuating body temperatures. “These fabrics can ‘understand’ something about the environment and their interactions with a person and respond accordingly,” she says.

Sensors made of silicone and fabric can twist and stretch with the body.

The field of wearable robotics began to flourish in the 2000s, but early devices were rigid and uncomfortable. Fabric-based devices were introduced in the 2010s, but true robotic textiles, which can sense and respond to their environment without the need for stiff components, have emerged only recently. 30 Summer 2021

At the Wyss Institute, a Boston research consortium drawing on expertise from Harvard, MIT, and other nearby institutions, Sanchez helped create a soft, flexible sensor that can be sewn into clothing unobtrusively and hug the body, providing greater comfort and more accurate movement detection. She also helped develop a textile with inflatable compartments that can apply therapeutic pressure to muscles to prevent bed sores or deep vein thrombosis. The pouches contain a fluid that turns to gas when pressure sensors are activated, inflating the textile without a bulky and noisy pneumatic system. A decade ago, Sanchez enrolled at FIT to learn how clothing was constructed, but her questions extended beyond the scope of her coursework. At that time, FIT’s textile offerings were not as science-oriented as they are today. “I kept wanting to know why we were doing things in certain ways and delving deeper on my own. I also had challenges with my own clothing. I had a jacket that was supposed to be waterproof, but I hiked in a typhoon and got soaked. I wanted to know why that failure happened.” She transferred to an undergraduate fiber science program at Cornell and then brought her apparel design skills to robotics teams at the Wyss Institute. Now she is a Ph.D. candidate at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Sanchez isn’t sure how she was nominated for the Forbes honor. “I was pretty surprised but happily so—excited that people find the work I’m doing as cool as I do.” —Jonathan Vatner

Kennedy took inspiration from the decadent fabrics and interiors of Netflix’s Bridgerton.

BRIDGERTON, TAKE ME AWAY Sara McCarthy Kennedy, Textile/Surface Design ’03

Courtesy of Netflix

Vanessa Sanchez develops textiles that can sense and respond to stimuli.

“I’ve always wanted to make people feel something—and maybe change someone’s life for the better,” says Chase Bluestone, a freelance illustrator and comic artist. With a recent book project for the publishing startup Ladderworks, he has done just that. Ladderworks collaborates with nonprofits to produce children’s books with social impact. For this book, Tickle Trouble, Ladderworks partnered with The First Wave, a group of Wharton Business School students who built a supply chain to bring hundreds of thousands of masks to dozens of hospitals in the U.S. at the start of the pandemic, when PPE was scarce. The founders wanted young children (kindergarten through third grade) to understand the need for wearing masks without delving into the painful reality of COVID-19. To that end, the coronavirus isn’t mentioned in the story. Instead, a mischievous flower is tickling the little garden plants called goos, and turning them blue. Gumbrellas, produced by a faraway tree, can shield the frightened goos against the flower. The book’s hero embarks on a journey to collect lots of gumbrellas and bring them to the garden. Switch out the flower for the virus and the gumbrellas for masks, and you’ve got The First Wave’s story. To illustrate Tickle Trouble, Bluestone thought back to what made him happy as a kid and sketched out round, bouncy shapes in primary colors with simple, expressive faces. “We wanted something bright and friendly, especially because it’s such a dismal topic,” Bluestone says. “We really needed to sugarcoat it.” Bluestone learned to consider the composition of the whole book when creating individual spreads from Adjunct Assistant Professor Eric Velasquez, in his book illustration class. Bluestone changed up the camera angles, zoomed in for emotional impact, and peppered in spot illustrations for variation. The Ladderworks team was thrilled with Bluestone’s work. “What I love about Chase’s illustrations is the wholesome warmth that the characters exude, which inspires the reader’s affection,” says Soudamini Shankar, managing editor. Tickle Trouble is available for purchase on Ladderworks’ website. Bluestone is grateful to have worked on such a fun project during a year of isolation and uncertainty. “I consider myself very lucky,” he says. “Not everyone gets a book straight out of college like this, and on top of that, it’s for a good cause.” —J.V.

As design director of wovens at P/K Lifestyles, a division of P/Kaufmann, Kennedy creates textiles for licensed products for brands like Kelly Ripa Home, ED Ellen DeGeneres, and Tommy Bahama Home. Our business leading up to 2020 was shrinking. People weren’t spending as much money on their homes. When COVID hit, people started nesting, and all of a sudden there was this insatiable appetite for fabric. Every segment of home had an incredible year. Jo-Ann Fabrics couldn’t keep our lines in stock. On the other hand, the design process became more insular. Pre-COVID, I’d be traveling, going to museums, art shows, and trade shows. With the shutdown, I was a bit paralyzed—my eye wasn’t getting the stimulation it needs. There was so much anxiety and fear, it felt frivolous and insignificant to be worrying about design. That being said, I still had to do my job. I was watching Netflix and Amazon like everyone else, devouring series like Bridgerton and The Crown, and getting

inspiration from the Regency era. It was a time of opulence and decadence: bouquets of flowers, fruit, ribbons, pattern overload. For fall ’21, I did a lot of nostalgic designs based on The Crown. I was inspired by Balmoral, the queen’s Scottish ancestral home, full of timeworn things rooted in the past. I did a tartan plaid that’s very fresh and a design that looks like a distressed rug. I also created playful and fun designs based on Bridgerton. The French had a popular woven construction called a liseré, with yarns running along the warp to create the pattern. Sometimes they’re silky and can feel outdated, but I made it 100% cotton so it has a dry hand. Pre-COVID, homes had gotten simple and zen. People didn’t want a lot of textiles; they wanted a cool rug and white walls and midcentury furniture. Now there’s an explosion of opulence— a bit over the top, but my eye really likes it. As told to Jonathan Vatner

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SIX DEGREES OF HALSTON When the miniseries about Halston, né Roy Halston Frowick, premiered on Netflix in May, the entire FIT community had an Ultrasuede moment. Though Halston did not attend FIT, the show underscored a constellation of his connections to the college: • The Museum at FIT owns the Halston archives and has mounted shows about the designer, most recently in 2015. • FIT’s Special Collections unit owns Halston’s hat design sketches.

• MFIT’s Deputy Director Patricia Mears, MA Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice ’92, published a monograph on Halston. • Special Collections also owns the archives of Eleanor Lambert, Halston’s publicist, who is portrayed in the program. • For the Netflix show, Anita Rundles, Illustration ’13, recreated artwork originally by Joe Eula, Halston’s illustrator. • CFDA-award-winning alum Robert Rodriguez, Fashion Design, was appointed creative director for the Halston company last year.

• Raissa Bretaña MA ’19, who teaches costume design and fashion history at FIT, conducted a virtual interview in May with the show’s production designer and Jeriana San Juan, Fashion Design ’04, who was the costume designer for The Plot Against America. San Juan said Ewan MacGregor, who portrayed Halston, was shocked to discover that her historically accurate pants had no pockets: No wonder, he told her, Halston’s hands were always in the air, gesturing. See a recording of the virtual interview at news.fitnyc.edu.