Hue Spring 2022

VOLUME 15 | NUMBER 1 | SPRING 2022

The Magazine of the Fashion Institute of Technology

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On the Cover This issue includes a special section on the Social Justice Center at FIT, a groundbreaking new initiative to create more opportunities for people of color at the college and beyond. Learn about the origins of the SJC on page 4, hear from the FIT community about diversity within the college on page 6, read about alumni efforts toward racial equity on page 11, and catch up with the career of noted Black designer Byron Lars on page 18. On the cover, the SJC logo appears in a colorful context, giving it both emphasis and presence.

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

Assistant Vice President for Communications Carol Leven

Contributors

Editorial Director Linda Angrilli

Chief Storyteller

Victor Llorente, Photography and Related Media ’19 (“Faces of Change”), is a portrait and documentary photographer born in Madrid and based in Queens. He freelances for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, New York, and The New Yorker. He was named to The 30: New and Emerging Photographers to Watch in 2020. Llorente took this self-portrait after shooting the photo portfolio for this issue.

Lily Qian (“An Inclusive FIT: Voices from the Community”) is a New York City–based illustrator, designer, and educator with a passion for both traditional analog and digital techniques. She takes inspiration from experimenting, exploring accidents that occur when mixing different materials and textured backgrounds.

Clients include Apple, Teen Vogue, Christian Dior Couture, Louis Vuitton, and Tiffany & Co. She teaches Illustration at FIT.

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 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

Facebook.com/FashionInstituteofTechnology Instagram.com/FITNYC Twitter.com/FIT

Printed by Grand Meridian Printing on Rolland Enviro Print This paper is: Ancient Forest Friendly Made with 100 percent postconsumer-waste fiber Processed Chlorine Free Produced using biogas energy

Tracey MarLené

media accounts:

Darnell-Jamal Lisby, Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice MA ’18, Art History and Museum Professions ’16, Fashion Merchandising Management ’14, (“It’s [Always] His Time”), is a fashion historian, broadcaster, and assistant curator of the Cleveland Museum of Art, focused on conceptualizing fashion exhibition programs for the institution. He has written for Teen Vogue, Vice, and the Fashion and Race Database.

Tracey MarLené

Instagram. Use #FITAlumni when posting.

The Harlem-born Salimah Ali, Photography ’77 (“It’s [Always] His Time”), has been published in Black Enterprise, Essence, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, among many other magazines and books. Her work has shown in numerous galleries and museum exhibitions, including The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Schimmel Center for the Arts, and is in the permanent collection of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. She won the first Shahin Shahablou photography award and is a member of Kamoinge, Inc., the historic collective of African American photographers.

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Features Special section: Social Justice 4

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Reaching Toward Equity President Brown on the founding and mission of the new Social Justice Center An Inclusive FIT: Voices from the Community Faculty, students, and staff describe their vision for diversity, equity, and social justice

Salimah Ali ’77

11 Faces of Change Six successful Black alumni help others make their way in the industry

Departments 22 Bright Lights, Big City Addicted to HBO Max? You can thank SVP Raina Falcon ’05 24 A Cut Above Andrea Pitter ’11 won Amazon’s Making the Cut. Now she’s making it big

27 Retail Spotlight 28 Alumni Notables 31 What Inspires You?

Above: Fashion Design alum Byron Lars has skillfully surfed the waves of fashion for 30 years. Last year he told Vogue that artful, idiosyncratic touches are the essential ingredient of style. “I feel like that is really the way to do it,” he said, “to dress into the joy.” See story on page 18.

18 It’s (Always) His Time The enduring career of alum designer Byron Lars

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President Joyce F. Brown opens up about how and why she created the Social Justice Center at FIT

By Jonathan Vatner

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Joe Carrotta ’17

Reaching Toward Equity

FIT launched an unprecedented initiative in December to help diversify the creative industries. Through a comprehensive, multipronged approach, the Social Justice Center at FIT (SJC) is designed to provide opportunity and accelerate social equity for people of color who might otherwise be left behind.

With robust funding and a growing network of industry partners, the SJC, conceived by President Joyce F. Brown, promises significant and lasting change. But the idea emerged from a low moment for the college. At the Fashion Design MFA runway show in February 2020, one designer’s models were outfitted with racially offensive accessories. In the fallout, Black students took to social media to vent about their experiences with racism at FIT and their frustration that the faculty and student body were not more diverse.

In response, President Brown held a series of town halls for the FIT community, where students spoke frankly and demanded change. As the college’s first Black and first female president—and the longest-serving—Dr. Brown has worked to make FIT a place of safety, community, and opportunity for students of color. These town halls made it clear this work was not finished.

“It was very, very troubling for me,” she says. “I never again want to sit through sessions with students where they tell me those kinds of things. There had to be something we could do.”

No one knew that, after George Floyd’s murder in May, a racial reckoning would sweep the nation with an urgency not seen since the civil rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s. Dr. Brown observed institutions across America

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paying lip service and throwing money at the problem. She knew that, as a college with close ties to industry, FIT could do better.

“It occurred to me that we were in a very different place than those who simply wanted to do something—and I felt very privileged to be in a position to make a difference,” she says. “That was my motivation: to create a different environment for our students, a different kind of pathway for our graduates, and a different kind of outcome for people of color in the industries we serve.”

The hallmarks of President Brown’s leadership style have always been partnership and consensus-building, and in designing such an ambitious enterprise, she relied on these skills.

She assembled a group of faculty members and administrators who met to analyze the problem and brainstorm solutions. Why didn’t FIT enroll more Black students? Why couldn’t companies retain BIPOC high achievers? Why was it so rare to see a person of color in the C-suite or on boards of directors?

Improving FIT’s diversity will be a challenge, but fixing these problems in industry will require a broader culture shift, Dr. Brown says. “What happens to our graduates of color? Where do they go? Are they stuck in entry-level jobs?

Do they get coveted assignments? Does their talent get recognized? Do they have a voice in the progress of the company? It would be useless to increase the number of students of color if the same things were going to happen to them.”

The Social Justice Center at FIT launched Dec. 8, 2021, with almost $4 million pledged by founding partners PVH Corp., Capri Holdings Limited, and Tapestry Inc., as well as G-III Apparel Group, which made the establishing gift for a scholarship fund for BIPOC students.

SJC programming will address each of the identified challenges separately. Expanded precollege outreach will expose more BIPOC middle school and high school students to the creative industries, and ultimately diversify the pool of applicants to FIT. The college is already providing more scholarship funds to qualifying students, and that amount will grow. A speaker series will feature BIPOC executives sharing their stories with students. A Fellows Program

will provide mentorship and paid internships to students of color while at FIT, and several companies have pledged to help BIPOC interns get jobs and to nurture these employees in order to retain them.

Dr. Brown believes the impact of this approach is clear. “I don’t want people to think that this is about doing a favor for some poor Black children.

This is about opening the vistas of career possibility and success to talented young people and creating a pipeline and an industry that we can all be proud of.”

She adds, “There’s a mix of heartstrings and the bottom line. And that’s good. All of these activities do redound to the bottom line, and they also speak to a society with a newly raised social consciousness.”

She named alumnus Jeffrey Tweedy, brand adviser (and former president and CEO) of Sean John as adviser to the SJC. As an industry veteran committed to working with emerging designers, his primary goal is to recruit more industry partners. (See sidebar at right.) A search for a permanent executive director has begun.

The center’s advisory council comprises 16 industry leaders in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Among them are several Black trailblazers, including Sheryl Adkins-Green, chief marketing officer of Mary Kay; Brandice Daniel ’12, CEO and founder of Harlem’s Fashion Row; and model and activist Bethann Hardison, also an FIT alumna. They will provide counsel and help measure progress toward achieving equity in the creative industries.

Dr. Brown emphasizes that success will be measured quantitatively. “The only time people think it’s sufficient to say that they’re doing better without any real metric is in the area of diversity, equity, and inclusion,” she says. “But we will measure it with numbers: how much we increase the diversity of our student body, how many internship and job placements we have, and how many mentoring relationships we develop. This is an action-oriented, goal-directed, measurable program. If we do it right, we will be in a position to touch a lot of lives.” 

Shareif

Three Questions for Jeffrey Tweedy

With the Social Justice Center at FIT, President Joyce F. Brown and Jeffrey Tweedy are working together to boost the careers of BIPOC talent.

“We have an incredible opportunity to transform young lives,” Dr. Brown says. “We have an incredible opportunity to make a difference.”

Getting to know the former president and CEO of Sean John, Menswear Design and Marketing alumnus, and adviser to the Social Justice Center at FIT

Throughout your career, you have helped people of color succeed through your work with the Black Retail Action Group, Figure Skating of Harlem, and the Piney Woods School. What drives you to give back?

As I was going through the ranks in my career, from Ralph Lauren to Hugo Boss to Willi Smith, there were very few people of color in these organizations, and none at the executive or management level. I looked at it as, “How can I help change this?”

How have you experienced racism in your career?

Let’s not call it racism—let’s call it not being accepted right away in the industry. At some of the bigger companies I’ve worked at, when I met other professionals, it was like, “How did this Black guy get to this level to be in front of me?

Who does he think he is? There must be a mistake here.” I looked at that as an opportunity to get to know the people I was selling the brand to, or the accounts or manufacturers I worked with. I let them know I shared the same interests and passions and compassion that they do. I helped them understand that I understand this business and I deserve to be there.

How would you describe your role with the Social Justice Center?

I’m utilizing my relationships with companies like Amazon, LVMH, Chanel, Southwest Airlines, and Coca-Cola, and sharing with them what we want to accomplish with the Social Justice Center.

We’re not just asking for a financial commitment.

We want our partners to be brand champions, to make sure their associates and customers know about us. We want them to advocate for change and inclusivity in their workplace and the whole industry. Each can build infrastructure in their organization for these students, so that employees are not jumping from company to company but being developed within those companies.

And so that students are hired at the companies where they intern. We love the money, but to reach our goals, our partners need to commit to our mission.

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Voices AN I NCLUSIVE FIT:

From the Community Faculty, staff, and students across the college discuss their vision for an inclusive FIT— and how we can get there

Our community is engaging in necessary conversations—and actions—to ensure FIT’s leadership in the fight for social justice and equity for people of color. Hue asked 12 faculty members, students, and administrators about what we are doing—and should do—to address these urgent issues on campus and beyond.

Most agreed that FIT needs to recruit more students and faculty of color, infuse the curriculum and approach to teaching with diverse perspectives, provide resources to support BIPOC students, and help make the creative industries welcoming to all. They see the new Social Justice Center at FIT (SJC) as an important development toward true diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Vernon Goodman-Keating, assistant director of Admissions and Strategic Recruitment, said, “As a person of color who has battled many of the issues that the SJC is looking to remedy throughout my career, I am proud to be a part of an institution that has made this call to action a reality.”

He believes the establishment of the SJC helps FIT stand out Illustrations by Lily Qian, adjunct instructor 6

from other institutions and recruit BIPOC students, since it shows that the college is committed to their success.

Here are brief excerpts from these conversations.

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Ron Milon, PhD Chief Diversity Officer

Across the board, higher education is struggling with diversity in their faculty makeup and student enrollment. We’re not the only school dealing with this. But the solutions most institutions come up with are Band-Aids. We have to be proactive, not reactive. For example, we don’t say we’re hiring; we’re recruiting. How can we make job descriptions more inclusive?

Where can we put job postings so that diverse candidates are more likely to see them? If you continue to cast the fishing net the same way, you’re going to get the same fish.

When art and design students apply, you look at their portfolio. What about the possible superstars who didn’t have the help they needed on theirs? We are thinking about ways to go into high schools to work with students, to get them ready for FIT. After the events of 2020, we asked ourselves how we could build a more inclusive culture within FIT. One thing we did was transform the President’s Diversity Council, which had served in an advisory role, just organizing programming and distributing grants. A lot of areas of the college were not represented in the Diversity Council: In order for DEI to be in our DNA, everyone has to take part. We created a Diversity Collective of 15 units that represent every academic and administrative area of the college.

Each unit has two chairs who work on initiatives like curriculum changes, hiring practices, programming, and policies. We talk about things like student pronouns and resources for faculty to create an inclusive learning environment. With this collective, we’re constantly putting our feet to the fire to get things done.

Mark-Evan Blackman ’84 Assistant Professor, Fashion Design–Menswear

We have a moral obligation to our students.

If they’re talented and unique, they should be in the game. Many years ago, when I first took over as chair of Menswear, I could not place a single student at a certain internationally known fashion house, even though I had so many polished kids. Finally, the firm took one, and then the door was open. Today, if we pulled all the Menswear grads out of that company, it would collapse. Preparing students for the realities of the industry—it’s not just a Black issue, and it’s not a one-time conversation.

There are hundreds of learning opportunities for students, teachable moments every day. If I ever used the wrong fork, I want someone to correct me, and do it gently. In my class, every teachable moment is honored. I say hi to all my students, and I know them all by name and I respect them. I’ve noticed many faculty don’t do that. If the faculty want to effect positive change, we have to model the behavior and show empathy for our students.

impact on the environment and people.

I listened to women of color beg the Western fashion industry to change, and I made it my mission to fight the industry’s exploitation of BIPOC—this is where sustainability and diversity intertwine. I founded a Clinton Global Initiative University project called Waste X Change, a platform that works to uplift sustainability in the fashion industry.

We focus on everything from environmental racism to transparency.

I’m a diversity, equity, and inclusion intern at Prada. I get to shape instrumental partnerships, engagement strategies, and workplace culture to create an industry where people of all backgrounds have the opportunity to share their talent. It’s been an amazing experience, and they really value my perspective.

Not only is championing DEI the right thing to do, but it just makes good business sense in terms of employee retention, brand value, and profitability. Finally, the industry is waking up.

Leaders are saying that if you aren’t advocating for diversity, you’re not innovative. That’s been giving me hope.

Elena Romero

Assistant Professor, Advertising and Marketing Communications

Namra Khan

Fashion Business Management ’22 I’m a first-generation American, a Pakistani Muslim woman, so my interest in diversity came naturally—but I never saw myself working in DEI until I explored the topic of sustainability.

Everything changed when I watched The True Cost, a documentary about fast fashion’s

With the Social Justice Center, FIT’s task is twofold—looking outward to take a lead in the conversation with the industry, and looking inward. Can we do a better job here in terms of being student-centered? It’s a big challenge, with no one-size-fits-all solution. My students did a class project about FIT’s cafeteria, and they discovered the food didn’t address the vast food needs; there aren’t enough gluten-free, vegan, halal, or kosher options. The best way to be sure we’re on target with students is to ask them what they need. What will make them feel comfortable at the college? Empowered?

We should reexamine the FIT curriculum across all departments. Are we telling that broader narrative? When we teach about fashion designers, are they mostly white, thin, and cisgendered?

It matters. When you teach journalism like I do, are you thinking of news in a patriarchal way? hue.fitnyc.edu

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You need to get out of your comfort zone as a journalist if you want to report a story accurately. To reach certain communities, for example, you might need to work with a translator.

With diversity, equity, and inclusion, at the core we’re saying we show empathy and love. That’s not about hugging the students—it’s about finding out who they are. We’re already doing some of this work, but we can do it better, and be intentional.

Lonnie Brown

Advertising and Marketing Communications ’23

C.J. Yeh

Professor, Advertising and Digital Design As an Asian immigrant, the biggest DEI issue for me is stereotyping. People expect you to be quiet and obedient; sometimes they’re surprised that I speak up. When I started teaching, Asian students told me it meant a lot to them to see me being successful—it gave them hope and confidence. I was happy about that, but also sad because their experience had told them an Asian wasn’t supposed to be there.

Students need to see people of different races and cultural backgrounds in positions of authority. True equity will be when there’s no surprise at that. Still, I believe FIT is doing better than other schools where I’ve taught. I see people who are comfortable being themselves, expressing themselves.

Professor Christie Shin and I created a Design for Social Impact certificate program.

We tell students, “Use your creative superpower to change lives in some way.” Experts come and talk about how to create a more inclusive environment. My father has Alzheimer’s and it’s heartbreaking when patients can’t recognize family members, so there were tears in my eyes when a student created an app that uses vibration to connect Alzheimer’s patients to their caregivers. The program’s last lesson is to stop thinking, What should I do? Just do it.

Even a small thing can make a difference— removing the label from a garment, using environmentally friendly ink, making sure there are captions in your app. Big things are made of small parts.

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Equity and justice at FIT means giving students of color platforms to voice the changes they want to see and bring their experiences to light.

The biggest challenge is that when students of color feel they need to speak out, often it’s because the cup is overflowing and we can’t take it anymore. When we do get those opportunities, there’s a passion behind it that I feel is seen as anger. Providing people of color who can talk to us, give counsel, and move our complaints and demands upward would be amazing. And the Social Justice Center is a good start.

There are also a bunch of clubs at FIT centered around people of color, like the Black Student Union, the Asian Student Network, and Spotlight, a collective that aims to highlight BIPOC and LGBTQ+ students. I’m the creative director of Spotlight, and I feel like it’s my child.

I’m focusing on providing a link between firstyears, older students, and alumni. There’s a mentorship program in the works to give people a more solid idea of where their majors and careers could lead.

they can afford a top-tier education. Over the last 10 years, we have made huge improvements to our enrollment strategy, but there are limits to how many meaningful interactions we can have with prospective students. More resources would help us widen the search. BIPOC students also need to be able to talk to current students to distinguish what’s true from what they see on social media about FIT. To feel welcome and secure on campus, students of color need to be introduced as early as possible to the structures that ensure diversity at FIT, including the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and the Title IX office. Admissions has begun doing that in our Open House and Admitted Students Day programs.

In the admission process we encounter so many students who hope to find their tribe here.

When they do, different parts of their identity are awakened and affirmed in ways that may not have been possible in their previous environment. It is a beautiful thing to take part in, and one of my favorite parts of doing this type of work. I would love a campus resource that allows faculty, staff, and students to explore how we can best support each other through these discoveries.

Diversity is not just about BIPOC students.

For instance, we’re collaborating with Media and Event Technology Services to allow hearingimpaired applicants to fully participate in virtual information sessions. True equity means also serving students who don’t always bubble up to the surface of DEI conversations.

Shawn Grain Carter, MA ’09 Associate Professor, Fashion Business Management

Vernon Goodman-Keating

Associate Professor and Assistant Director of Admissions and Strategic Recruitment One of our biggest challenges is to reach different communities of BIPOC students. Some forgo college because of costs, and don’t understand that FIT is publicly funded. They need to know

In my 21 years of being here, the new African American and Africana Studies minor is the greatest thing I could have contributed to this college. I’ve thought this curriculum was necessary for years. When I did my master’s, I was told you can’t do your thesis on Black designers because there are not enough of them. Evidently, nobody thought Black people have contributed to this industry. That’s when it crystallized for me. But we never had enough courses to make

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a minor—a lot of them were electives that ran once and you never saw again.

In the spring of 2020, the students spoke up. They wanted more faculty of color. They wanted more courses about our contributions to the industry. I proposed the minor, and Yasemin Jones in Academic Affairs helped to fast-track it.

In my classes I teach the story of Elizabeth Keckley, a former slave who designed Mrs. Lincoln’s dresses. We have never taught that at FIT. Ann Lowe designed Jackie Kennedy’s wedding dress. She was not just a seamstress: She was designing; she had her own business; she was an entrepreneur. Patrick Kelly was the first American designer to be admitted to the Chambre Syndicale du Prêt-à-Porter, which governs the French ready-to-wear industry. He happened to be a Black man from Mississippi.

Students need to know the contributions of Black people, not just in design but also fabric construction, business, modeling, and brand development. Most people don’t realize that Michael Kors got his start in department stores because of a Black buyer named June Horne at Saks Fifth Avenue. A Black buyer at Bloomingdale’s named Nan Puryear is the one who made Calvin Klein underwear a best seller.

Students also learn about Black artists and writers in the Harlem Renaissance—Langston Hughes and his influence on hip-hop. And jazz, the original art form we’ve donated to the rest of the world.

“ Respect and disrespect replicate, and disrespect replicates faster.”

— Tanya Melendez-Escalante

workers, think about that? We’re all part of one community. When a security guard gets berated in the museum because they ask a visitor to take off their backpack, that’s a member of our team who is suffering. In general, the museum field has a long way to go in terms of diversity. I’ve been at MFIT for 13 years, and the inclusiveness conversations started a long time ago. The museum made an investment in mannequins with different shades. It was complicated and expensive: Could we retrofit what we already had? What garments go with which mannequins? But there was a strong institutional commitment to doing things differently. For the speaker series I curate, Fashion Culture, I write DEI reports. I love reports! The series needs to include a multitude of approaches to fashion— culture, business, and identity. I don’t want to only feed people one point of view; that’s boring, and it’s important that we include many perspectives.

Amy Lemmon, PhD Professor and Chair, English and Communication Studies

Tanya MelendezEscalante, MA ’04

Senior Curator of Education and Public Programs, The Museum at FIT We need to create a respectful community for everyone. Respect and disrespect replicate, and disrespect replicates faster. We focus on teaching and learning, but we forget about people who aren’t in a classroom environment.

We need to make sure everyone at FIT, including staff members, public safety officers, and maintenance staff, are treated equitably. If they’re not, what do our first-generation college students, whose parents might be blue-collar

Recently I found a syllabus left on the photocopier in my office, and the faculty member had included a diversity statement that said: “You are welcome in this class.” That’s the bottom line, right?

The poetry world and the publishing world have already had a reckoning with diversity and inclusion. Writers of color, women and LGBTQIA+ writers, disabled writers are finally being foregrounded in the current literary climate. This makes it easier for me to provide different perspectives; I can point students to the work of diverse writers, and bring them to campus as guest speakers.

I have brought speakers such as Claudia Rankine, Ocean Vuong, and Jericho Brown to FIT. It’s important for students to see that we’re connecting them with significant creators in the culture. And they need to be encouraged to bring their personal lives, their culture, their identity, their family, their interests into what they’re writing. hue.fitnyc.edu

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My department co-sponsored a faculty workshop by Felicia Rose Chavez, author of Anti-Racist Writing Workshop, which offered strategies to give writers of color a voice. She gave examples from her own experience in graduate school of feeling like her work was ignored because she was writing from her working-class Chicana identity. In the traditional workshop model, everyone critiques the work while the writer stays silent; the work is supposed to speak for itself. In Chavez’s model, students provide the context for their work as they share, and they have more fruitful interactions. It’s about listening to the students and giving them a space to articulate where they’re coming from.

Eric K. Daniels Professor, Interior Design True equity and inclusion at FIT would mean everyone is valued for what they bring to the table—their story. Not just students, but faculty too. I’m an architect. I went to Pratt in 1980.

One reason I got in was a lawsuit: For the first time, the architecture school accepted 12 African American students; they only had one or two before then. Though FIT has a mandate as a state school, the Interior Design Department remains homogeneous, maybe only three Black and Latinx students in 20. Exposure to the design field has to start in elementary school; by high school, everyone’s made up their mind. Throughout the country, art programs are nonexistent in grade schools, especially in urban and rural areas. I have given presentations that introduce urban junior high school students to architecture and interior design. At FIT, I’m always trying to get my students to be socially responsible, and engage local communities in the design processes that affect their environments. I teach a service learning studio course, where they design spaces such as a drama room, science room, library, or outdoor garden for K through 6th graders, with a real client—New York City public schools.

The Social Justice Center is such a great mountain of an idea, and although I love

scholarships, it really comes down to policy.

I have a student who has 10 siblings, and she’s responsible for three of them. For true equity, you need to address childcare, homecare, affordable housing, food insecurity, and access to education. The SJC needs someone who can think like an architect—holistically.

“ True equity and inclusion at FIT would mean everyone is valued for what they bring to the table— their story.”

— Eric K. Daniels

Brooke Carlson, ScD

Interim Dean, School of Graduate Studies; Associate Professor, Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing and Management I believe in allyship. That means the “in group” needs to emphasize social justice, inclusion, and human rights, and purposefully advance underserved or marginalized groups. That works to our mutual benefit. How can you serve the national and global consumer if your organization doesn’t mirror those populations?

We need to provide formalized mentorship for students with alumni in the industry. And organizations need to actively recruit for internships and entry-level positions, and then have a plan to ensure that these diverse individuals can succeed and integrate into the organizations. Our industries have to be more representative in all types of positions, at every level up to the top. That means corporate culture needs to change and be open to new voices and new ways of thinking.

We must educate underserved young people about the varied career paths offered in the creative and business industries. There are so many layers to the industries that serve fashion brands—supply chain and operations, sales, advertising, strategic marketing, social media. Students also need to know our programs go beyond the “F” in FIT. Our biggest challenge is the magnitude of the need for social justice, and that’s why the Social Justice Center is so important. These efforts must be sustained and embedded in everything we do.

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Change

Faces of

PORTRAITS OF SIX ALUMNI ENTREPRENEURS COMMITTED TO MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN EQUITY AND INCLUSION

The Social Justice Center at FIT represents an ambitious step toward greater equity in the creative industries.

But it’s far from the first. Many alumni have taken strides toward visibility, representation, and economic parity for designers and entrepreneurs of color.

Jillian Mercado ’10, a star of Showtime’s The L Word who has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair, has made advocacy for people with disabilities an integral part of her career. In 2020, she founded Black Disabled Creatives, a platform promoting this underrepresented group. Fashion designer Victor Glemaud ’98 created IN THE BLK, a global network of Black designers and creatives. And in 2007, Brandice Daniel ’12, who is on the advisory council of the Social Justice Center at FIT, founded Harlem’s Fashion Row, which promotes emerging designers of color. There are many more examples.

Photographer Victor Llorente created indelible portraits of six alumni who have launched initiatives to lift others in their industry. Llorente’s images, intense and surprising, regularly appear in the pages of New York magazine, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and more. Through his lens, the personality and power of these alumni shine bright.

Photos by Victor Llorente ’19 Text by Jonathan Vatner

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Kamille Glenn Interior Design ’13 Founder, dsgnrswrkshp

Most of the alumni were photographed in a garment and/or accessory by a designer of color. Glenn wears a skirt by Bobby Day, shoes by Blackstock and Weber (founded by Chris Echevarria ’12), a metal object by FBF Metal Atelier, and nails by Tru Violet.

Hair and makeup for all alumni by Dre Brown

Kamille Glenn was one of only two Black Interior Design students out of 60 in her graduating class at FIT. When she joined the team at the renowned architecture and design firm Rockwell Group, she noticed that the ratio had not improved. “It was my dream job,” she recalls. And yet, “I could go through the whole design process and not work with one Black person.”

She came across a notebook she’d kept at FIT in which she laid out plans to start a designer collective; in 2019, she decided its time had come.

She’d attended meetups for Black creatives but realized the term was too broad; creatives in marketing, for example, couldn’t relate to her life making things in the studio. Glenn founded dsgnrswrkshp to bring together interior and industrial designers, architects, anyone whose job was to design and build things.

“We want to create a lifestyle and social platform,” she says, “to be a support system on multiple fronts.”

The pandemic quashed a planned launch event, and the emotional toll of George Floyd’s murder, exacerbated by the isolation of working from home, drove Glenn into a lasting gloom. So she hosted a series of online “linkups,” first on Slack and then in person, to talk about participants’ experiences and to address self-care in life and at work. Most of the events have been exclusively for Black makers, but one centered on visibility in design included allies of other races—and drew 140 attendees, three to four times the usual crowd.

In 2020, Glenn left Rockwell Group to focus full time on dsgnrswrkshp. Their first in-person event took place in Prospect Park last July; more are planned for 2022. The community now connects 5,000 people, via social media and an email list.

Glenn plans to roll out membership packages this year. She hopes to someday establish a physical space as well.

Ultimately, she wants her efforts not only to provide community and support for active designers but also to make the profession more visible to young people thinking about career options.

“I didn’t know until I was 16 years old what an interior designer was,” Glenn says. “We need to bring awareness to the Black community that designers exist so we can have more representation in our schools.”

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Malene Barnett Textile/Surface Design ’96, Illustration ’94 Founder, Black Artists and Designers Guild Malene Barnett has long been frustrated that Black designers do not receive the same level of recognition as their white counterparts—even as appropriation from Black culture is rampant. In 2018, she decided to do something about it.

“I thought back to my days at FIT, when I was the only Black female in the class,” says the multidisciplinary artist, known for her mold-breaking rug designs. “I didn’t want another generation to deal with what I dealt with.”

Calling on her contacts in the home industry, she compiled a public directory of about 100 Black creatives in six disciplines: architecture, interior design, furniture, textiles, fine art, and ceramics.

The Black Artists and Designers Guild (BADG) is not just a resource for anyone looking to hire diverse creatives; the group also collaborates on projects that generate opportunities and increase visibility.

For example, the guild partners with brands to “celebrate the multiplicities of Black joy,” Barnett says. She and four fellow BADG members curated a licensed collection for boutique textile brand S. Harris–Fabricut that includes fabrics, wallcoverings, and trims inspired by global artisanal traditions.

Another collection is forthcoming from Pottery Barn.

To increase opportunities for Black participation in designer showhouses, which help home designers establish their reputation, BADG created its own.

Obsidian is a virtual concept house by 23 guild members asked to reimagine space in the era of COVID. The renderings include an indoor garden, a separate apartment for quarantining, and a legacy wall that would allow inhabitants to archive their history, “from medical records to photographs to recipes.” The next rendition, planned for 2023, will include physical and virtual elements.

The guild also aims to educate. Because the media has largely ignored Black designers, “there is a lack of archival information about the work we do,” Barnett says. In 2021, the guild funded the Creative Futures Grant, four $5,000 scholarships given to two undergraduates and two graduate students in one of the guild’s six disciplines at any U.S. college or university. The awards come with mentorship and other opportunities. Soon, BADG will honor visionaries with a decade or more of active studio practice.

Barnett wears a dress by Sarayaa Fashion.

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Shannon Maldonado Fashion Design ’05 Owner, YOWIE

Antoine Gregory Fabric Styling ’17, Fashion Merchandising Management ’13 Brand Director, Theophilio Founder and Editorial Director, Black Fashion Fair

Among the eclectic gifts stocked in her Philadelphia boutique, Shannon Maldonado focuses on products made by Black artists and designers. A locally blended room spray by scent and skincare specialist Redoux, turmeric latte powder by superfood company Golde, and a limited-edition still-life print by illustrator Darien Birks, to name a few.

The diversity on Maldonado’s shelves is impressive, and she believes anyone can do it. “It’s about taking the time to ask around and do detective work.

Most ceramicists don’t say, ‘I’m a Black person’ on their website.”

Maldonado even goes a step further, mentoring emerging designers she works with, giving them the skills to increase profits and grow their businesses— skills she has learned in the five years she has owned YOWIE and a previous decade of experience in the

fashion industry. Some of her suppliers, like local ceramicist Malcolm McDowell, have never sold their wares wholesale. She taught him what a line sheet was, suggested a higher price for his products, and cut him some slack when his first order came in late.

Other challenges Black creators and entrepreneurs often face, Maldonado says, are access to capital, education, and prime leases for retail space.

Some don’t know anyone else in a creative field.

To foster connections among her neighbors and build goodwill, she hosts events, held online since the pandemic began. Examples include a zine-making workshop, a lecture by a curator from a local art museum, and a panel of artists of color. “We wanted to remind people that YOWIE isn’t just here to sell you things,” Maldonado says. “We’re really here to be a community member.”

“The fashion space is so white, but Black culture influences so much of what’s popular,” says Antoine Gregory, a stylist and consultant who oversees branding for the CFDA award–winning label Theophilio. Black Fashion Fair is a multipronged effort to help rectify this disparity.

The organization traces its roots to 2016, when Gregory started a Twitter thread called “Black Designers You Should Know.” Each tweet linked to a different designer’s shoppable website. The thread was retweeted more than 1,400 times.

When he looked back two years later, he realized that some of those designers had gone out of business. He felt galvanized to do more.

“You would see a brand that was popular at Fashion Week, like Hood By Air. Two years later, it’s not on the calendar.” He wondered, “How do we not only bring visibility to Black designers but help them sustain their businesses?” Though Hood by Air, founded by fellow FIT alum Shayne Oliver, relaunched in 2019, many others have not.

The Black Fashion Fair website contains a range of features that support the Black design community.

An A-to-Z library catalogs designers working now as well as those who made history. A shopping page sells garments, accessories, and jewelry from selected designers. Articles display standout looks in dynamic photographs. The site also includes a web form for teenagers to apply to a free Fashion Fundamentals class at the Brooklyn Sewing Academy, an organization that teaches garment construction skills to individuals and small groups. Black Fashion Fair funds the course to help young Black creatives prepare for a college like FIT. Gregory believes the web is essential for discovering Black talent—it’s rare for brick-and-mortar stores to carry their work—but the organization isn’t just online. In 2021, Black Fashion Fair and Theophilio hosted a Juneteenth “family reunion” bash, a starstudded intimate dinner, and a book signing with author, director, and photographer Joshua Renfroe.

A Black Fashion Fair book came out in February.

Gregory wears a down jacket

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Lauren Maillian International Trade and Marketing ’07 Marketer, Investor, and Entrepreneur CEO of digitalundivided Lauren Maillian has an audacious goal: to double the valuation of businesses led by Black and Latina women by the end of 2023. How does Wall Street change the way it values a business? Through advocacy, she says. Like convincing influential investors to bet on these companies, thereby raising their profile. Persuading banks to lend to these women without predatory—and discriminatory— terms. Proving through research and data that minority women–led companies can be successful and profitable.

According to research by digitalundivided, a nonprofit that supports economic growth in minority communities, businesses run by women of color have a significantly lower fail rate (27%) than businesses in general (40%). But finding funding is an uphill battle because the business world is still very much a white man’s game, and female Black and Latina founders are usually not connected to influential investors through family or friends.

“Most women of color in business ride nobody’s coattails because there are no coattails to ride!” she says.

In partnership with Cosmopolitan magazine, digitalundivided launched The New C-Suite, a list of 10 successful businesses created by 12 women of color (two of the companies had cofounders) to demonstrate that BIPOC women can lead in the innovation and technology sectors. The list, which debuted in Cosmo’s October 2021 issue, immediately generated an uptick in sales and investor interest.

Maillian also invests her own money in diverse businesses, and she is breaking barriers in the finance world herself. She joined an all-women special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that raised $230 million to take a digitally disruptive consumer company public. It’s only the second allwomen SPAC in history, and Maillian is the youngest woman to join one. “It’s been very much a nonminority man’s way of taking companies public for a very long time—but you haven’t seen women do it.

Until now.”

Maillian wears an outfit by Aisha McShaw.

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Patti Carpenter Fashion Illustration ’76, Fashion Design ’75 Principal and Global Trend Ambassador, carpenter + company/Trendscope Co-founder, The Kaleidoscope Project During the nationwide reckoning after George Floyd’s murder, Patti Carpenter got a phone call from white interior designer Amy Lynn, who was looking for a way to take meaningful action toward racial justice.

Carpenter, who has made a career of bringing the work of artisans of color in developing countries to the U.S. market, was eager to help.

Carpenter and Lynn set up a designer showhouse, featuring only BIPOC designers, to help diversify a predominantly white tradition. They teamed up with the new owner of the Cornell Inn, a Revolutionary War–era estate in Lenox, Massachusetts. The inn’s rooms and common areas were reconceived by 23 designers of color, beautifying the property for guests and giving these underappreciated talents a platform on which to shine. They called it The Kaleidoscope Project.

“Our goal was to center the voices of the diverse community within our industry, to broaden the narrative of what is design, what is style, what is good taste,” Carpenter says. “With more voices at the table, we are all made better.”

Construction took place over a whirlwind four months in early 2021. The opening drew media from across the country, resulting in more than 40 articles in top publications. The designers were invited to speak at major industry trade shows in Dallas; Las Vegas; and High Point, North Carolina, a major home furnishings center.

For Carpenter, the Cornell Inn was only the beginning. “This is not just a moment,” she says. “We want to make diversity the norm, so that we don’t have to say he or she is a Black or brown designer— they’re just a fabulous designer.”

Carpenter’s alpaca scarf was handwoven on a pedal loom by an indigenous artisan in Bolivia.

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It’s (Always) His Time Fashion designer Byron Lars is back.

Actually, he never left

By Alex Joseph, MA ’15, with contributions from Darnell-Jamal Lisby, MA ’18 Portrait by Salimah Ali ’77

M

oments into conversation, Byron Lars, the Oakland-born, San Francisco-raised designer, breaks into his signature smile, brimming with abundant warmth. He rarely seems more than a heartbeat away from a chuckle. Maybe it’s his inner Californian, but whatever the source, his infectious good mood makes you wonder. The vicissitudes of fashion have certainly affected his 30-year career. Still, when The New York Times ran a profile in 2020 titled, “Byron Lars Is Still Here,” some were puzzled. Perhaps somewhat out of sight in recent years, he was never out of the game: Michelle Obama wore Lars for the official First Family portrait, among other occasions. His Carissima dress— a lacy black sheath designed for Anthropologie—has sold 60,000 units and counting. Did we really need that reminder from the Times?

Well, yes. Though he creates styles that A-listers like Taylor Swift and Natalie Portman love, Lars has often flown under the radar. He and his business partner, Sheila Gray, Fashion Design ’04, renamed the line In Earnest last year (Earnest is his father’s middle name). Designed in their Harlem workspace, the garments are made in China, tweaked via WeChat, and sold at a bridge or higher price point in 300 specialty boutiques in the U.S., the Dominican Republic, the United Kingdom, and online.

The clothes, like Lars, are exuberant—“twisted takes on American classics” is his phrase. Dresses employ densely patterned fabrics, and layer over funky pants; tracksuits are re-envisioned as elegant separates, dressy but not fussy.

With stretch materials and occasional boning and other supports, these are clothes women love, whether they see the designer as a celebrity or not. “A lot of women don’t think they can wear these clothes, but they absolutely can,” he says. “[The styles] are very forgiving, even though they’re body conscious.”

Angela Bassett, presenting Lars with the 2014 Pratt Fashion Visionary Award, said, “They’re clothes that make you say, ‘I’m feeling myself.’”

Lars, photographed in his Harlem studio, wears a T-shirt with playfully reversed text.

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The Museum at FIT

Below: “My Black experience does, of course, influence my work,” Lars told Women’s Wear Daily, “but it doesn’t entirely define it.”

These recent styles from the In Earnest line call to mind West African textile traditions. In 1994, Lars created a noted Afrofuturistic collection. “Maybe it’s some sort of ancestral expression.

I believe that the great thing about creating is allowing things to go where they need to go,” he says. He’s not advancing a political agenda with his work, however. As he told Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of The Museum at FIT, “At the end of the day, my customer doesn’t care if I’m Black, white, blue, purple, or psychedelic.

The product has to speak to her; it has to perform for her; it has to be the right price for her; and that’s pretty much it.”

Above left: “I love the joyful components of clothes.” Lars’ witty take on a man’s Oxford shirt from 1991 has inspired many imitators.

Today, he is sanguine about being copied. “So many people can’t afford it until it’s knocked off,” he says.

Mariana Leung

He made his first dress for a high school friend for prom in 1980—black, lacy, with a scooped back and an enormous silk bow for a bustle. Seeing her overjoyed and celebrating proved to be a watershed, and humbling, moment for the young designer. No outfit stands alone, he realized. “It’s not about a dress; it’s about a dress and an experience. We can’t lose sight of the practical side of design.”

When he was looking for a college to hone his talent, one place rose to the top: FIT. “The designers and creatives that stuck out to me were Calvin Klein [’63], Norma Kamali [’65], and Antonio Lopez [’62]. I thought, people that come from this school go on to do great things, and I want some of that.”

As an FIT student in the late ’80s, he visited Europe for fashion competitions (several of which he won), hoping to land a gig with Karl Lagerfeld or Christian Lacroix. No dice. Back in New York, he began circulating among various Garment Center fashion houses as an assistant designer. He developed a passion for patternmaking, but couldn’t find a home. “I got good jobs that taught me a lot and helped me start my own business, but I never got that magic job,” he says. Instead, in 1991, he made his own.

With samples of his first line, a collection of baseball jacket-inspired dresses made of duchesse satin, Lars set out to find a retailer. One of his first stops was the legendary Henri Bendel, in part because the store helped launch the career of fellow Black alum Stephen Burrows ’66. There was a recession on, and with a limited budget, Lars could only create small batches of garments. He hoped the economics would work in his favor. “They always told us in school to not start a business unless you can finance it. But I thought, in the middle of a recession,

Keith Major

Above right: This clever design gives the illusion of a union suit suspended from the body by clothespins, but it is actually attached to a structured bodice underneath. “I was a bit obsessed with trompe l’oeil suspension in the late ’80s,” Lars says.

Lars met Sheila Gray ’04 in 2006, when she was an intern for Lars’ friend and fellow designer Tracy Reese. Lars needed a temp to help with pattern sourcing for two weeks.

“It’s now been the longest two weeks in the history of the world,” Gray says with a laugh.

As Lars’ business partner, she handles sourcing, PR, and even some design. She shares his upbeat, optimistic vibe. “If you’re around Byron Lars every day, it’s going to rub off on you,” she says.

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Right: To create styles like this In Earnest look from fall/winter ’21, Lars and Gray start with fabric. “We source everywhere.

A lot of the fabric we have, we made ourselves. We might find some tremendous textural fabric, and then we print on it. Or we might take chiffon, cut it into a million strips, and then knit it, ruffle it up, or appliqué it to itself to make it look like fur.”

This look, with its riot of pattern, shape, and color, reflects effective strategy for selling online, where subtle textures and details can be lost. “Given the chance of a brickand-mortar experience where the customer can touch and feel, I would have a lot more simple black dresses.”

how big could the orders be?” Bendel’s wanted the styles, so Lars got to work.

“Using what I learned in my courses at FIT, I graded the patterns and I took them to a cutting room.” The garments were made in a factory that produced designs for a firm he had worked for, and he hand-delivered them to Bendel’s.

They were featured in the store’s Fifth Avenue windows.

Lars took the samples around to publications including Harper’s Bazaar.

There, he met an editor who introduced him to business consultant Mary Ann Wheaton. She knew how to launch fashion lines, having worked with Lagerfeld and noted Black designer Patrick Kelly, the first American ready-to-wear designer to be admitted to the Chambre Syndicale, the governing body of the French fashion industry. Wheaton lined up some important financing. Luxe retailer Bergdorf Goodman offered support as well. “Our first order with them, they paid 50% up front to finance the production,” Lars says. After that, his rise was meteoric. Women’s Wear Daily gave him its Rookie of the Year award, and for years he made headlines in the fashion press; then, in the mid-’90s, an important investor bailed. A designer needs backers, he realized: “No one does anything of any value alone.”

In recent years, thanks to Michelle Obama, the Anthropologie outfit, and his Barbie collaboration (see above), Lars has maintained a certain level of visibility. He never quite scaled the heights of some other ’90s designers like Marc Jacobs or FIT alum Michael Kors. It’s hard to know whether the key factor was luck, timing ... or race. The industry remains stubbornly white, despite significant achievements by Black designers. Jay Jaxon, Apparel Design ’66, was the first American to helm a Paris-based haute couture house. Burrows outshone Yves Saint Laurent at the celebrated 1973 fashion showdown Battle of

Keith Major

Image courtesy of Byron Lars

Left: Mattel approached Lars to design an outfit for the first collectible Black Barbie in 1997. Called “The Africa Collection,” the collaboration continued for 14 years, 16 dolls total. “I just approached [the assignment] artistically, not as a social statement,” he says. But the project made an impact. “A lot of African American women only knew me from the back of the Barbie box.” And many have thanked him—tearfully, at times—for the inclusive gesture.

Versailles. At the end of the 20th century, hip-hop mogul Sean Combs formed an influential lifestyle brand, Sean John. Still, individual Black designers struggle to make an impact.

In a recent interview with Valerie Steele, director of The Museum at FIT, Lars considered why. In the 1980s, he said, fashion entered a period in which “status and station and pedigree became valued over raw talent … and I don’t think the white fashion world could reconcile that with a Black reality.” When he launched his line, however, that issue was invisible to him: “Honestly, at the time I didn’t even think about my Blackness in relationship to my work and my place in this industry. I’m glad that I was naïve enough not to see the barriers because I don’t know how I would have reacted, or if I would have charged forth with the same joy if I thought I was in a fight.” Of course, he said, when you consider the small number of successful Black designers, the stark difference becomes apparent. He added, “The Black Lives Matter movement has already initiated some change in equity. Will it be lasting? Only time will tell.”

Today, Lars and Gray do the lion’s share of the work themselves. Gray even takes some of the photographs for the firm’s social media accounts, which, Lars says, is a skill in itself. “Your clothes have to speak to the customer in the digital space. Show the quality of the fabric so they can touch it with their eyes.”

Designers no longer just design; they need a full set of new skills to make their presence felt—merchandising, researching fabric, even directing content.

The pair are circumspect about the way fashion has treated them. Fame came, and then retreated. What remains is an earnest effort to dress women in a way their customer finds flattering—and empowering. As for the rest, Lars says, “If you’re not in it for the work, forget about it.”  hue.fitnyc.edu 21

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BRIGHT LIGHTS,

BIG CIT Y Raina Seides Falcon, Advertising and Marketing

Communications ’05, launches content for HBO Max

BY RAQUEL LANERI PORTRAIT BY JOE CARROTTA ’17

Hair and makeup by Liz Olivier for Exclusive Artists using Armani Beauty

R

AINA FALCON arrived at FIT in 2001 as a wide-eyed Texan with Big Apple dreams. She immersed herself completely in her adopted city, attending fashion shows in Manhattan, bartending late night in her Greek neighborhood in Queens, taking the jitney to the Hamptons—and religiously watching Sex and the City.

“It was like the blueprint for my time in New York,” Falcon says of the groundbreaking HBO series about four single women looking for love in the big city.

“It was my show—it was aspirational for me.”

Cut to 20 years later and Falcon is getting ready to unveil the first look of And Just Like That, a 10-episode sequel with original SATC stars Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristin Davis.

“Working on that show now is such a pinch-me moment,” Falcon marvels.

“It’s truly unbelievable.”

As senior vice president of publicity at HBO Max, Falcon handles pretty much every aspect of a new show’s rollout, from publicity photos to talent interviews to screening events. Her team executed a successful editorial campaign to help the Jean Smart comedy Hacks win awards, turned the low-budget documentary Class Action Park into a festival juggernaut, and collaborated with anonymous social-media gossip monger Deuxmoi to create buzz around the dating reality show FBoy Island.

“There are a handful of people that I call in our organization when I want to strategize, troubleshoot or celebrate, and Raina is always at the top of the list,” says Sarah Aubrey, head of original content for HBO Max. “I trust her judgment and taste implicitly, and she has a damn fine sense of humor.”

Falcon grew up in Austin, Texas, in an artistic family. “My parents are hippies—musicians, folk singers,” she explains. “They didn’t care about fashion at all.” Yet Falcon did: In high school, she worked at the trendy teen retailer Wet Seal and devoured Vogue, Jane, and Seventeen magazines. She never met anyone who shared her passion until her stepfather put her on the phone with a cousin who lived in New York and had gone to FIT. “She was telling me about the school, and I was like, ‘I am going there!’” she recalls. “I didn’t apply to any other colleges.”

At FIT, Falcon studied Advertising and Marketing Communications, planning to go into fashion PR and work at a magazine. Her senior year, while flipping through postings in her internship counselor’s office, she saw an opportunity at New Line Cinema’s publicity department. It wasn’t fashion, but Falcon—a self-described “cinephile” who worshipped directors like Stanley Kubrick and Francis Ford Coppola—stopped in her tracks.

“I was just so sure,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is definitely what I want to do. I want to work in film and television.’”

During her internship, she worked with celebrities’ publicists, compiled press-clip reports on New Line’s movies, and attended

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TV stills courtesy of HBO Max

THE HITMAKER

marketing events for films like the Owen Wilson comedy Wedding Crashers and the Jane Fonda comeback-vehicle Monster-in-Law. “I really learned this was for me,” Falcon says. “I was still interested in fashion, but I realized that working in publicity for entertainment, you still get to be part of that world.”

After her internship, New Line hired Falcon as a floater, filling in where needed in various departments. (She bought the book Filmmaking for Dummies and would quickly read the corresponding chapter for each new assignment.) She later worked as a talent publicist for stars such as Ben Kingsley and Rachel Bloom before landing at WarnerMedia in 2017. In May 2020, she oversaw the launch of its new streaming service, HBO Max—in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“In hindsight, it was the coolest, most career-defining moment I’ve had up to this point,” she says. “But at the time, it was so stressful because everybody had to turn on a dime and figure out a way to promote the launch without any of our normal tools.”

Initially, Falcon and her team had planned to preview some of the service’s most prestigious new programming, such as the Anna Kendrick series Love Life, at festivals like Tribeca and South by Southwest to create buzz. Those events—and effectively all in-person gatherings—were canceled. Then several shinier projects slated for HBO Max’s launch stopped mid-production, so the service debuted with fewer new originals than anticipated.

Falcon rapidly changed course. She worked with the events and talent relations team and got the actors to participate, launching virtual events that felt star-studded and special.

“We were kind of the first ones to do that because we had so much to promote at the moment everything shut down,” Falcon says. “So, the press was writing about how we were the innovators. And that was really exciting because we were totally building the plane as it was in the air. I feel really, really proud of what we were able to accomplish under the most adverse conditions.”

Since then, she has worked on press campaigns for hits such as the Gossip Girl reboot and the dark comedy series The Flight Attendant. She refers to her projects as her “babies,” going to table reads and dinners to get to know the filmmakers, actors, and crew for each show. “I’m involved from the second that they decide to put a show in development,” she says. “I’m already thinking about [how to promote] it even before filming.”

Case in point: On Day 1 of shooting And Just Like That this past spring, she coordinated an exclusive promotional photo of the three Sex and the City stars strutting down a Manhattan sidewalk—before the paparazzi could scoop her.

“We literally put the ladies in a van, had them hop out on the street, and had our photographer take the picture,” Falcon recalls. Parker, Davis, and Nixon then selected the photo they liked best, the photo team did some touch-ups, and Falcon’s team released it just minutes before the paparazzi showed up.

The HBO Max photo—of the actresses looking glamorous in their extravagant fashions—flew all over the internet.

“You know, we all care about everything we’re doing so much,” says Falcon, who lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two kids. “It’s so easy to get really stressed out and start feeling an insane amount of pressure. But the shows are gonna come out, and they’re gonna do what they’re gonna do. The truth is, it’s just TV. If you can just relax about it and keep it in perspective, that’s helpful.” 

Since she helped launch HBO Max in 2020, Raina Falcon has engineered slam-dunk publicity campaigns for lots of shows. Here are four that her team knocked out of the park.

A N D J U S T L I K E T H AT Working on the Sex and the City sequel represented a full-circle moment for the publicity whiz, who started her career as a fashion-obsessed youth watching SATC and hoping one day to make it in New York City. Falcon harnessed the media’s nostalgia for the original to build an incredible amount of buzz for And Just Like That. “I’ve never worked on a show like that before where you cannot avoid people talking about it simply because of how iconic that show is and what it means to people,” Falcon says.

C L A S S AC TI O N PAR K This documentary—about an infamous, lawless amusement park in New Jersey—was the streaming service’s first sleeper hit, debuting in the summer of 2020. “At first, it was difficult to get press interested because it was so regional,” Falcon says. “But it was so summery and insane that I just knew people would get into it.” As word of mouth spread, more and more people watched, and Falcon’s team began organizing outdoor screenings and submitting it to small film festivals, where it scooped up prizes and buzz.

New subscribers would sign up for HBO Max and immediately watch Class Action Park, indicating that the documentary had convinced them to try the streaming service. “That’s a big measure of success,” Falcon says.

HACKS This comedy starring Jean Smart as a legendary Las Vegas comic who hires a 25-year-old to help freshen her act was filmed during the pandemic, so Falcon couldn’t go to set and didn’t meet many of the actors until filming had wrapped.

“It was a little bit backward … but when I saw the first few episodes, I thought, ‘This is brilliant.’ Everyone felt that way.”

The team put all their energy into mounting an awards campaign for the show, but they were astonished when it ended up with 15 Emmy nominations and three wins, including one for Smart. “We were all screaming—I was legitimately crying,” Falcon says. “Normally I don’t feel any ownership over awards nominations—it’s lucky and that’s great—but for that one, especially because the whole production and campaign was done during COVID, I couldn’t believe we pulled it off.”

GOSSIP GIRL This reboot of the 2000s favorite, about rich prep-school kids on the Upper East Side, created a frenzy as soon as it was announced.

Its audience displayed so much passion for the project that it did not matter that the show received mixed—and even some horrified— reviews. “One key point of our strategy is that our shows don’t live and die by reviews,” Falcon says. When a New York tabloid ranted about the show’s raciness, the team wore it as a badge of pride. “The more pearl-clutching, the better, I think.”

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L

A CUT ABOVE Andrea Pitter, Fashion Design ’11, winner of Amazon’s million-dollar fashion competition, infuses her designs with happiness

BY RAQUEL LANERI

ate in the second season of the Amazon fashion-design competition series Making the Cut, the three finalists had to design a pop-up concept store for their brand—and create eight new looks to put inside it.

The idea of constructing eight new outfits in a matter of days would send most designers into a panic. Yet Andrea Pitter barely broke a sweat. She whipped up piece after killer piece at a breakneck pace with astonishing poise, leaving her peers gobsmacked.

“I had no choice!” the Brooklyn-based designer behind Pantora Bridal says when asked how she managed such grace under pressure. “So much of how I was able to maneuver on the show is because I’ve had the experience of not having enough,” Pitter explains. As a Black woman, the daughter of immigrants with no connections to the fashion industry, “I’ve had to be really resourceful.”

Pitter initially had no interest in being on a reality show, but after receiving three emails from three separate people urging her to apply to Amazon’s fashion competition, Making the Cut, she decided to look into it. She was impressed that the show focused on established independent designers, and that it came with the chance of a $1 million prize along with feedback from host Heidi Klum and fashion mentor Tim Gunn, who both left Project Runway to develop the Amazon show.

“I was like, ‘The worst that can happen is that you might win,’” she recalls with a laugh.

In August, Pitter indeed won season 2 of Making the Cut, earning her the $1 million, a mentorship, and an exclusive Pantora ready-towear line through Amazon Fashion. From the first challenge to her triumphant final collection, Pitter consistently sent out exuberant clothes that celebrated women of all sizes: a camel bathrobe coat with tons of swagger, a sexy denim skirt with cutouts and a matching bubble jacket, a sizzling geometric-print one-piece swimsuit. The judges were particularly wowed by her bridal look, a

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All photos courtesy of Amazon Studios except wedding gown courtesy of Pantora Bridal.

Clockwise from left: Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn, the stars of Making the Cut, celebrate Pitter’s Season 2 win; Pitter’s feathered wedding attire for episode 3, a collaboration with Ally Ferguson, caused a stir among the judges; she created swimsuits with a stunning print for a resort wear challenge in episode 2.

feathery halter top paired with a full white ball skirt, cast off on the runway to reveal a feathered jumpsuit.

“I want to create clothing that people find joy in but also aren’t intimidated by,” Pitter says.

“I remember growing up and having our dress-up clothes, and I was like, ‘Why are we waiting for something special to happen to get dressed?’ I want to feel like waking up is enough to celebrate.”

P

itter grew up in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, the daughter of Jamaican immigrants. She designed her first garment when she was 8 years old: a vest made out of a paper butcher’s bag that she wore to a science fair. By eighth grade, she had a business, selling backpacks she made out of bandannas to her classmates. “I would sew them together and run drawstrings through them,” she

recalls. “And I would take custom orders, so you could get them reversible.”

She came up with her brand name, Pantora— a mashup of her first, middle and last names— when applying to the High School of Fashion Industries in Manhattan. When it came to college, she set her sights on FIT. “I didn’t see myself going anywhere else,” she says.

At FIT, Pitter fell in love with bridal wear.

“I was intrigued by the construction techniques and by being a part of people’s stories,” says Pitter, always a technical whiz. She also remembers running into the late Ethiopian-American designer Amsale Aberra ’82, a trustee at the college who would later become an inspiration and model for Pitter’s own career. (Aberra died in 2018.) “She was at the forefront of fashion as one of the very few Black bridal designers,” Pitter says.

Pitter received her first wedding dress commission as a sophomore, unofficially launching Pantora Bridal, and in 2013, at age 23, she opened her Brooklyn showroom with a $4,000 loan and $4,000 from her savings.

She wanted to create a “safe space” for her brides, particularly for brides of color.

“You don’t often see Black brides in publications, and you don’t necessarily see curvy brides in publications,” she says. That lack of representation led to larger issues, such as darker-skinned brides not being able to find linings that matched their complexions, or being told that their hips were too big for certain styles.

In 2016, Pitter debuted Forgotten Skin Tones, a range of illusion mesh and linings that caters to women with different complexions. She also adapted the size chart based on data collected from a range of body types. “I was really seeking to solve the hue.fitnyc.edu 25

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Cut but Undeterred Fifth-place Raf Swiader, Fashion Design ’03, reflects on the show

P

Top: Pitter’s exuberant designs celebrate women of all sizes and skin tones. Above: The Mina gown from the Pantora Bridal 2021 Journey collection.

itter never wanted to abandon bridal, but in recent years she decided to spread her wings.

“I don’t think that bridal designers are regarded in the fashion industry in the same way other designers are … I don’t know that they get the respect that other designers receive,” she says. “But also, I wanted to maybe operate a bit differently, where I didn’t have to go in so solutionoriented and was able to do things that make me happy and that I could really share with the world.”

On top of that, after creating so many white dresses, “I wanted to be able to operate in color.”

Her ready-to-wear collection—the result of her reality-show win—certainly takes advantage of her new freedom: sequin disco-flavored tigerprint jumpsuits, bright yellow houndstooth pantsuits, an oversized camo blanket coat. Pitter has used the prize money to help launch this new line— available on the Pantora website and Amazon— and open two new stores in Los Angeles: a readyto-wear shop in October and a bridal boutique in December.

That expansion is fundamental to Pitter’s mission: to create clothes that celebrate the wearer, no matter her age, size, skin tone, or abilities. Now, with the prize money and her Amazon partnership, she can spread that joy to even more people, every day of the year.

“It’s celebratory staples,” Pitter says of her aesthetic. “I really want [women] to feel like every day is worth getting dressed for.” 

Courtesy of Raf Swiader

problems that I knew Black brides would face,” she explains. “Wedding dress shopping is supposed to be the happiest time of [a client’s] life, and I wanted to figure out how to make [the process] feel more intimate, like we created this for you specifically.”

Andrea Pitter wasn’t the only FIT grad to make a splash on Making the Cut. Raf Swiader charmed viewers the instant he appeared on screen, wearing a muscle T-shirt, a pearl-drop earring, and an irrepressible smile.

Yet the designer behind the “gender optional” label R.Swiader admits he was terrified.

“I’ll never forget walking into the studio and realizing everyone showed up with patterns and suitcases full of stuff and tools,” Swiader says. “I just brought my little briefcase, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is serious! I should have prepared more!’”

Swiader grew up in Poland but moved to New York City when he was 16 to pursue a career in fashion. After graduating from FIT, he worked for the women’s wear designer Olga Kapustina and menswear designer John Varvatos before starting his own line in 2015—inspired by a 17th century worker’s shirt he found while honeymooning in Paris.

“I basically wore that thing the entire trip,” he recalls. “I decided to do a collection based off that shirt. And that was the beginning [of R.Swiader].”

That easy, loose, romantic but practical spirit imbued the clothes he designed on Making the Cut, including a striped sarong, a cloudlike tulle and denim gown, and all manner of slouchy culottes. His clothes, along with his sunny personality and moving backstory about growing up gay in conservative Poland, made him a fan favorite.

“I’ve had people recognize me on the street,” Swiader says, adding that sales on his website have increased since the series aired. Though he didn’t win, the shy designer is happy that his husband convinced him to go on the show. “It just gave me more inspiration when I came back to push my designs and brand further, and carry on,” he says.

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retail spotlight

SOUTHERN CHARM IN THE HEART OF HARLEM

Store photos courtesy of The Dominici Collective. Jacket photos courtesy of AlphaStyle and Harri Penny

A streetwise boutique and gallery, created by Dominique Banks, Fashion Business Management ’19, radiates uptown style

JUST AROUND THE CORNER from Harlem’s legendary Apollo Theater, Dominique Banks opened The Dominici Collective, a retail store/ art gallery/barbershop that caters to the neighborhood this Chattanooga, Tennessee, native now calls home.

“Harlem is a creative nucleus for New York’s Black community, and this has all those elements combined in one space,” Banks says. He designed the 1,400-square-foot boutique in organic colors with homey accent pieces, naming it after himself with a nod to his favorite brand, Gucci.

The Dominici Collective showcases only the ne plus ultra of urban streetwear. Custom-made racks feature men’s fashions from international designers Leandro Lopes of Portugal, Limitato from Sweden, Korean-based Tee Library, L.A.’s Hiro Clark, Daniel Patrick of Australia, and popular AlphaStyle patchwork items by Hong Kong creative Ivan Chan. Hemincuff vegan handbags and Krio skincare products complete the carefully curated collection.

Walls pop with neo-expressionist art by Khalid Sabree, Basquiat-influenced canvases that complement the vividly colored streetwear.

In the middle of the gallery space sits a vintage barber chair, where a Senegalese barber executes expert cuts, fades, and special designs. “There’s nothing like getting a fresh line-up on Saturday before going out,” Banks says. “Then you grab an outfit here and hit the streets.”

During Fashion Week, Banks welcomed clients with his trademark Southern hospitality, presenting new fashions from L.A. brand Harri Penny, a DJ pumping Afrobeats, even a contortionist. “We had a Black-ass good time celebrating diversity, fashion, and love,” Banks says. “It was important for me to bring this experience

here—not that it’s exclusively for Black residents of Harlem—to thank a community that’s been very welcoming.”

With skills gleaned from his former career in IT, Banks uses Instagram to drive business, but he is invested in the power of brick and mortar.

“My goal is to open stores in Brooklyn and on the West Coast via small expansions over time.

I want to share The Dominici Collective vision with more than just Harlem.” —WINNIE McCROY

BEST SELLERS

AlphaStyle Tobio Kimono Jacket (top) Harri Penny White Denim Printed Overshirt (above)

Banks in his Harlem boutique, which features forward streetwear, an art gallery, and a vintage barbershop chair.

Lightweight jackets can be worn on their own or layered under a warmer coat during chilly New York City winters. The patchwork AlphaStyle kimono features a tie front, and the Harri Penny overshirt is handcrafted

by African American designer Blair Kershaw. Made from premium denim left over from the bottoms, it was never intended to be part of the collection—but now it’s everyone’s favorite. hue.fitnyc.edu 27

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alumni notables

TREND TR ACKER

Franklin at Mizner Park Amphitheater in Boca Raton, Fla. When Bonavitacola was designing the gown, she told him, “I don’t think you’re ever going to top this one.”

DR E S SI NG A R E T H A Kenny Bonavitacola, Fashion Design ’75, designed for the Queen of Soul

Aretha Franklin liked to perform in white, black, or aqua outfits; occasionally, she would wear pink. She had a thing for jackets lined with turkey or ostrich feathers. With her detailed knowledge of couture, she could spot the difference between French and Chinese silk. And there was one thing her designer couldn’t get wrong: He could never make anything too magnificent. “No matter how many feathers I put on, she would never say, ‘That’s too much,’” says Kenny Bonavitacola, who made some 35 looks for Franklin from 2001 until her death in 2018. She told Bonavitacola she wanted styles that matched her talent. “If you got it, flaunt it, darling, and I’ve got it.”

Growing up, Bonavitacola expected to inherit his family’s sandwich shop in South Philadelphia. But in high school, he and close friend Bil Donovan ’78 hatched another plan. Bonavitacola applied to FIT behind his parents’ back, and in a few years, he had a degree and a position with designer Giorgio Sant’Angelo.

(Donovan followed him to FIT, and is now a noted fashion illustrator and professor at the college.) Bonavitacola left to start his own line, dressing Diana Ross, actor Beverly

D’Angelo, and the Studio 54 crowd, in what his friend Ralph Rucci, Fashion Design ’80, described as “disco couture.” In the ’90s, Bonavitacola’s business manager met Franklin, who asked, “Do you know a designer who will collaborate? I know what I want.”

When they met, the singer asked Bonavitacola, “Have you seen Imitation of Life with Lana Turner?” He replied, “Miss Franklin, I was reared on that film.” Franklin wanted a short opera coat like the one Turner wore, and Bonavitacola knew it well. In fact, he knew all Franklin’s references—fabled Hollywood designers Orry-Kelly

Bonavitacola originally created the gown for a concert at L.A.’s Greek Theater in 2004.

and Jean Louis; the cape Bette Davis sported in Now, Voyager.

He reinterpreted the outfit Marilyn Monroe wore to sing “Happy Birthday” to President Kennedy for Franklin’s frame. Each dress had a corset, and those corsets had a special consideration: “I had to make sure she could sing and not be restricted,” he says.

Sometimes he submitted sketches; other times, she sketched what she wanted herself. If she liked the result, she said, “You nailed it.”

If not: “Kenny, that’s not what we talked about.” But anyone hoping for gossipy horror stories of diva behavior will be disappointed.

“I don’t have any,” he says. “She was the most gracious person.”

Bonavitacola thinks Franklin would be pleased by the selection of Jennifer Hudson to portray her in the recent Franklin biopic Respect.

Not long after the actor was voted off American Idol in 2004, Bonavitacola ran into her on the way to fit Franklin. He introduced himself and praised her talent. When he told Franklin about the encounter, the Queen of Soul replied, “What a travesty [that she got voted off].

That girl can sing.”

—Alex Joseph MA ’15

Saana Baker was devastated after the career aptitude test she took in high school suggested she become a mortician. So, when she was doodling in the back of French class and a classmate remarked that she should print the spontaneous design on a T-shirt, Baker began formulating plans for a more cheerful profession. “Someone had to create the patterns on Hallmark wrapping paper, on the insides of envelopes, on curtains,” she recalls. “How could I come up with patterns for a living?”

As an FIT student, Baker fell in love with weaving and embarked on a career at such brands as Doblin Fabric and F. Schumacher & Co. She worked with Los Angeles designer Barbara Barry for 16 years, and now, as a consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area where she was raised, she collaborates with the likes of Jiun Ho, David Phoenix, and McGuire Furniture, flexing her “textile design muscle,” as she puts it.

While conceiving upholstery, wallpaper, bedding, and rug designs for her clients, Baker grew frustrated by a dearth of home textiles magazines. This led her to launch The Textile Eye in 2019, a subscription-based, comprehensive quarterly report of what struck her at trade shows including Maison & Objet and Salone del Mobile. “I wanted to share what I was seeing in an inspiring and uplifting way with people who were also trapped behind computers,” she says.

Karl Petzke

MPI04/MediaPunch/IPX

Saana Baker, Textile/Surface Design, spotlights what’s new in the industry

Baker continues to produce The Textile Eye, which she describes as “a cross between a trend service and a coffee table book,” in digital and print formats.

Recently, the publication evolved. When industry trade shows came to a standstill during the pandemic, it allowed Baker to push beyond just exhibition hall finds. Now, through interviews and photographs, The Textile Eye spotlights designers, artisans, and new collections that capture Baker’s reverence for high-quality craftsmanship.

“Creative burnout is real for me,” she explains, “but seeing gorgeous products, the level of intricate details, the colors, it always lifts the spirit.” —Alia Akkam

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alumni notables

Hotel California

@georgeevanphoto

Salvatore Napoli, Illustration ’04, created a lifestyle brand that evokes luxury hospitality

Napoli’s showroom features his pillows and signature robes.

H O M E I S W H ER E THE ART IS Joan Basso Pensack, Apparel Design ’51, is still going strong Most nonagenarians stopped working long ago.

Not Joni Pensack. At 90, the former fashion designer now sells her illustrations.

Quarantining with her son and daughter-inlaw in Charleston, South Carolina, during the first months of the pandemic, Pensack was feeling cooped up and restless. On walks, she sketched interesting buildings—the coffee shop, the library, and lots of houses. When she returned home to Florida, her friends saw her new portfolio and hired her to draw their homes.

She takes many photographs, then sketches impressionistically in pencil and highlights in ink. Sometimes she adds colored pencil or watercolor.

“I always wanted to be an architect,” Pensack says. “In high school I applied for a mechanical drawing class, but it was considered a boys’ class, so they wouldn’t let me take it.”

Her talent took her in a different direction.

Though she had no fashion design experience, her adviser helped her get a scholarship to FIT. An internship with Coty Award–winning children’s wear designer Helen Lee at Youngland Dresses launched her in the industry.

Within a few years, she had designed girls’ and women’s apparel for Sacony (not to be confused

with the running-shoe company), Chubbettes, Ketti Madison, Suzy Brooks, and Gail Berk.

“Switching around was the only way to get ahead,” Pensack says. “Nobody really checked your resume.”

When her children were young, she and her husband opened a clothing store in Highland Park, New Jersey, called The Spot for Children.

She loved decorating the windows but disliked working on the weekends. So, after her third child was born, she went back into the studio, designing for Kute Kiddies Coats. After setting up a snowsuit division for Gelmart and designing highend apparel for boys at Casual Time, she retired in 1985 as design director at Quiltex, where she had been creating licensed collections featuring Beatrix Potter characters and Paddington Bear.

Nowadays, she takes commissions to draw homes, illustrations that homeowners print on Christmas cards or change-of-address announcements. Real estate brokers give them as client gifts. Her illustrations were also selected for a juried art show at her country club. And she has no plans to stop.

“I managed to put a lot into life,” Pensack says.

“My kids say they’ve heard of Grandma Moses— now there’s Grandma Joni.” —Jonathan Vatner

Sal Napoli is obsessed with boutique hotels. He loves everything from the meticulous curation of art to the scent in the lobby. “Who doesn’t want to live in a hotel?” he says. “You have your bed made every day, and you get room service.”

By day, he is the director of U.S. Windows and West Coast Visual Merchandising at Ferragamo, adapting designs from the brand’s headquarters in Italy. In his spare time, he creates moody, luxe home accessories for his brand ArtAche Hotel.

The brand began when he couldn’t find a quality tissue box cover for his home. Napoli decided to create one, clad in leather and emblazoned with a skull motif—and realized he could bring the aura of hotel hospitality to others.

With his savings and a small loan from his father, he produced small runs of home accessories: pillows, trays, and “bandanakins”—bandannas that double as napkins.

The breakthrough came when he encountered colorful kantha blankets from India, made from recycled cotton saris with intricate block prints. Working with a patternmaker and designer in New York, Napoli made them into comfy, reversible robes. They were an instant hit; strangers would buy them off his back. “It’s like you’re wearing a piece of art,” he says. “You can wear it out to dinner.”

From there, ArtAche Hotel blossomed. Napoli blended two candle scents with help from Stone Candles of Santa Monica, California: Afterparty, a smoky blend of patchouli, sandalwood, and tobacco; and Social Light, a verdant mix of jasmine, white rose, tobacco, and petrichor—the earthy smell after rainfall. He rented a three-car garage in Venice, California, and built it out as a studio and immersive indoor/outdoor showroom.

Ultimately, Napoli hopes to launch experiential boutique hotels around the world, with “a membership vibe—to feel like you’re part of something different.”

—Jonathan Vatner

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alumni notables

I F TH E S H O E FITS

Seitu Oronde

Evan Chisholm, Fashion Merchandising Management ’14, uses consumer insights to help evolve styles at Nike

Gwendolyn Black, right, with a concert attendee and jazz vocalist Rochelle Thompson.

BRUSHSTROK ES A ND GR ACE NOTES Gwendolyn Black, Illustration ’84, has made a life blending art and music

Although the pandemic has put Evan Chisholm’s globetrotting on indefinite hold, it hasn’t stopped him from making sure Nike’s offerings match what people around the world want.

Before COVID-19 hit, Chisholm had been visiting Nike’s partners in various geographic regions. As the global merchandising manager for women’s lifestyle footwear, Chisholm gathers information from consumer and influencer focus groups about their lifestyles and preferences. Then he and Nike’s product team use those insights to develop new product lines. For example, Nike wanted to revisit some key styles from 25 years ago with a retro basketball shoe, and Chisholm discovered that consumers found these looks antiquated. He helped devise a solution.

One bright September day on Governors Island, the 18th Annual Visual Arts and Jazzfest NYC celebrated the complementary rhythms of jazz and visual art. Founded and produced by Gwendolyn Black, the festival is a convergence of the artist’s main passions: making connections between music and painting, building community, and healing others through art.

During the various performances, the audience listened to a range of contemporary jazz styles. Black’s paintings were displayed around the site, portraying musicians such as the legendary Charlie Parker. In her work, the play of shadow, shape, and material mirror the improvisation of jazz. Black thinks of painting and making music in the same terms, as explorations of composition and movement. Over the years, she has moved away from representational art and evolved into using tissue paper to create work based more on color than line.

Black attended the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and then studied Illustration at FIT, where she began to experiment with collage, incorporating images of instruments into her artwork. Shortly afterward, Black left fashion illustration to become more involved in fine art. She saw herself

in the struggles and triumphs of other women attempting to make a name for themselves in the art world, and of visual artists collaborating with musicians. She also identified with the attempts at racial and class uplift she witnessed in her hometown of Pittsburgh—and realized she had a deep desire to participate in community development. She forged a multifaceted career that brings together all her interests.

She began using music therapy to help those suffering from loss and lack of motivation. She views art as a powerful tool for healing and encourages her students to produce their own art while processing their past experiences and thinking hopefully about the future. “Seeing others find inspiration through that work has been life changing” for Black, who has run workshops for senior citizens, individuals with disabilities, and others through the AHRC, Healing Arts Initiative, Yaffa Cultural Arts, and Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement.

In her many endeavors, Black finds meaning in the “interconnectedness of all art forms and in the empowering of others to use their own voices as instruments for positive change.”

—Carmelo Larose

“We introduced a never-before-seen upper pattern for the Air Foamposite One,” he says. “By giving the shoe a new feature, we allowed the consumer to reset the value of something they previously considered old and outdated.”

To develop a product that will be successful around the world, Chisholm relies on the relationships he has built with Nike’s partners.

“You have to truly listen,” he says. “All partners represent a different region of the world and may have very different views on new product opportunities. It’s my job to find the commonalities so we can satisfy the needs of the global consumer with our designs.”

Fashion has always been an important part of Chisholm’s life. Early in his career, he founded an urban contemporary clothing company, FamCo Clothing, centered on his love of hip hop and streetwear. He modeled the styles of his favorite artists and athletes—from rappers Jay-Z and Kanye West to basketball stars LeBron James and Allen Iverson.

When he closed his company, Chisholm applied to FIT, because it was “in the heart of New York City—the streetwear and fashion capital.” In his final year, he received the National Retail Federation Foundation’s prestigious Ray Greenly Scholarship. The $25,000 scholarship is awarded to students pursuing degrees related to digital retail and who push the boundaries of what is possible now and in the future. “What excites me about the field of digital retailing is just the endless possibilities,” he says. —Ashley Festa

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what inspires you?

MY GRANDFATHER’S ORCHID Alicia Tsai, Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing ’14

I was born and raised in Taiwan. As is custom, we had three generations living in the same house. My grandfather built a greenhouse filled with orchids—he was always very busy with work, but going to the greenhouse was his little heaven. There were four of us kids, but I was the only one intrigued by his orchids. This created a close connection between us.

When I was nine, he came over to me one night while I was doing my homework. He gave me an Aerangis orchid, explaining how rare it was and telling me about its star shape and fragrance. This moment imprinted on my brain and encapsulates my whole memory of him.

Two years later, he passed away.

I officially started my company, Aerangis, in 2017. The Beginning candle was so named because it was the start of my fragrance journey, a scent to help me relive that warm and fuzzy moment with my grandfather. It’s based on the Aerangis, but it captures the whole experience … a faint whiff of his cologne, the leaves by the window, the summer breeze in Taiwan.

—As told to Vanessa Machir

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Fashion Institute of Technology 227 West 27th Street New York, NY 10001-5992 return service requested

PANDEMIC PAINTINGS Chalk FIT, an annual tradition since 2013, brings together fourth-year Illustration students to create chalk murals along the college’s concrete façade. For fall 2021, the theme was “The New Normal”—a look at how students have persisted through the COVID-19 pandemic. About 80 students created panels, as well as 15–20 alumni from the class of 2021 who didn’t get to participate last year. “It brings a vibrance to the community,” says Dan Shefelman, chair of the Illustration and Interactive Media Department and the founder of Chalk FIT. Joe Carrotta ’17 and Smiljana Peros

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