Hue Fall 2011

Alumni Magazine of the Fashion Institute of Technology

volume 5 | number 1 | fall 2011

Alumni Magazine of the Fashion Institute of Technology

Hue is the alumni magazine of the Fashion Institute of Technology, a State University of New York 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 27 Street, Room B905, New York, NY 10001-5992, 212 217.4700.

Email: hue@fitnyc.edu

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Address letters to the editors, Hue magazine.

Vice President for Communications and External Relations Loretta Lawrence Keane Assistant Vice President for Communications Carol Leven Editor Linda Angrilli Managing Editor Alex Joseph Staff Writer Jonathan Vatner Editorial Assistant Vanessa Machir Art Direction and Design Empire Design Studio

Hue magazine on the web fitnyc.edu/hue

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Sitings On FIT’s website, fitnyc.edu Continuing and Professional Studies: fitnyc.edu/continuinged FIT job openings: fitnyc.edu/jobs Gladys Marcus Library: fitnyc.edu/library The Museum at FIT: fitnyc.edu/museum To view videos about the college, go to: youtube.com/aboutfit Email the FIT Alumni Association: victoria_guranowski@fitnyc.edu Go to fitnyc.edu/hue to tell us what inspires you for Sparks, or update wyour alumni info.

6 Securing FIT’s Future Making connections, building relationships 7 FIT Sweeps CFDA Student Awards Win-win-win situation 9 The Coterie Show in Pictures Secrets of a fashion trade show 12 Immersion Techniques Starchitect David Rockwell breaks boundaries 16 Daphne’s World Meet style icon Daphne Guinness

19 T he Complete Package Two packaging designers create shelf appeal 22 High-Wire Act Brooklyn Circus makes and sells dapper duds 25 S enior Momentum An old photograph brings a 1948 alumna to campus 26 W e Mean Business Nicole Grippo ’09 helps four job-hunting alumni

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22 Departments 4 Hue’s News 7 Faculty On… 8 I Contact 28 Alumni notes 31 Sparks

Covers Front: A page from a handmade 1940s

book, with photos of FIT’s earliest students. The center photo shows Millicent Potok ’48, better known now as Penny Cohn (right). This summer, she visited the West 27th Street campus for the first time. See p. 25.

Back: The front cover of the book of

1940s photos.

Correction: “Not Playing Around,” our story about Aziza Braithwaite Bey, Apparel Design ’62, Museum Studies ’89 (vol. 4, no. 3, summer 2011), neglected to mention that Bey earned her PhD in multicultural education and visual culture from the Union Institute in 2004.

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FIT’s Campus: Looking Good The West 27th Street campus entered the fall semester with a new look, thanks to a full docket of renovations:

• T he lobby of the Dubinsky Center now features new seating areas and flexible event space.

• A new student lounge on the fifth floor of the Dubinsky Center features tables for laptops and a movable stage with audiovisual equipment.

• T he façades of FIT’s buildings are being inspected and repaired, to comply with local law.

Billy Farrell

what’s happening on campus

• A s part of a campus-wide landscaping project, the outdoor area between the David Dubinsky Student Center and the Business and Liberal Arts Center now has new paving, planters, seating, and a glass railing along the upper level.

Anna Wintour, Valentino, and Diane von Furstenberg.

Smiljana Peros

Couture Council Recognizes Valentino

FIT’s updated courtyard.

Valentino was honored with the 2011 Couture Council Award for Artistry of Fashion at Lincoln Center in September, at a benefit luncheon traditionally held before Fashion Week. Valentino is, according to museum director Valerie Steele, “a man who has dressed every beautiful woman of the past 50 years, from Jacqueline Kennedy to Madonna.” The event, packed with celebrities, raised $700,000 for The Museum at FIT.

Happy Constitution Day!

Jusil Carroll, Fashion Design ’11, won this year’s Supima Design Competition on September 8.

Eight contestants, two from FIT, were given five undyed fabrics and charged with creating five evening dresses. Carroll won $10,000 for her collection, accented with leather and digital printing. Carroll is no stranger to accolades.

She also won the $25,000 Liz Claiborne Design Scholarship Award, the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence, and the AFT International Fashion Sketch Contest.

U.S. law states that all schools receiving federal funding must celebrate Constitution Day, September 17. This year, FIT held a competition to design a Constitution-related postcard.

From 19 entries, the winner was Michelle Carl, Illustration ’14, for her Norman Rockwell-inspired drawing of a self-made man—which the Constitution made possible— knitting himself together.

Jusil Carroll, celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe, and Jesse Curlee, president of Supima.

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hue | fall 2011

Dan and Corina Lecca

Dan and Corina Lecca

FIT Student Wins Supima Prize

Carroll’s collection was inspired by The Blair Witch Project.

The CoolRoofs Project

QU I C K R E A D >> Hyperallergic, an art blog, named The Museum at FIT the fourth of “10 Fashion Museums to Visit Before You Die.” Number one was the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. >> For the second year in a row, FIT won first

what’s happening on campus

Bad news for those who enjoy sweltering summer highs: FIT’s campus might be cooling down, thanks to a reflective roof.

Dark roofs absorb heat, making it more expensive to air-condition buildings and contributing to the Urban Heat Island Effect, one reason New York gets so hot in summer.

This fall, with help from NYC CoolRoofs (a collaboration between the Department of Buildings and NYC Service, the city’s volunteermarshalling division), FIT students painted 3,000 square feet of roofing white, using a special coating called Roof X Tender. Another 7,000 square feet will be painted this spring.

NYC CoolRoofs has already painted two million square feet of roofing in the city. They especially look for roofs on public buildings and affordable housing, as well as areas with a cluster of black roofs, where the cooling effect will be more pronounced. “We spend a lot of time on Google Maps,” Amy Rushfirth, NYC CoolRoofs’ outreach coordinator, said.

The coating will reduce cooling costs from 10 to 40 percent and carbon emissions by four tons per year, without adding much to heating costs in the winter. Summer temperatures around campus may drop a bit, too.

Pictures from the Edge

and second place among nine other schools at the 2011 Paperboard Packaging Alliance Student Design Challenge. The task: create both high-end and mass-market packaging for a smartphone. >> On September 21, the annual FIT Golf Classic raised $271,680 at Quaker Ridge Golf Club in Scarsdale, NY. >> Nancy Fischetti, Home Products Development ’13, was named the first Carole Sloan Scholar for earning the highest GPA in the program.

She received $2,500. Sloan, who died in January, was a longtime editor and writer for Home Textiles Today and Furniture Today. >> Dr. Giacomo (Jack) Oliva has been named Incomparable Women of Style: Selections from the Rose Hartman Photography Archives, 1977-2011, displays more than 60 of Hartman’s images, including never-before-seen shots of New York’s underground style icons. The exhibition, presented by the Department of Special Collections and FIT Archives, runs through January 20 in the Gladys Marcus Library. Read more at fitnyc.edu/hartmanexhibit. Above, Grace Jones at a CD release party at Le Bar Bat, 1993.

vice president for Academic Affairs. Previously, the music scholar was dean of the University of Nebraska’s Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts, director of the University of Florida’s School of Music, and head of the University of Mississippi’s music department.

Remembering September 11

A student volunteer getting started on painting the roof.

On October 16, President Joyce F. Brown accepted The Town Hall’s Friend of the Arts award for her abiding interest in the development, enrichment, and support of the arts.

President Brown is in good company: Elaine Stritch, Tony Bennett, and Dizzy Gillespie have won the award in past years. Also, on September 6, President Brown received the Fashion Island Outstanding Educator Award from the Staten Island Economic Development Corporation.

Smiljana Peros

President Brown Receives Accolades

FIT commemorated the 10th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks by reprising Peace by Piece, an exhibition of 80 tiles, created by members of the FIT community soon after the attacks, in the lobby of the Marvin Feldman Center. Manu Dhingra, International Trade and Marketing for the Fashion Industries ’99, who survived the attacks with burns, is pictured here with President Brown. These days, Dhingra is producing food-related pop-up events around the city through GluttNY, a company he co-founded in April.

fitnyc.edu/hue

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Matthew Septimus

Securing FIT’s Future

The development team: Duncan, center, with Oldehoff and Culver. Not pictured: Guranowski and Hervas.

It’s all about relationships

These days, alumni and friends of FIT can find lots of

priority. “Financial need should never be a reason not

ways to participate in the life of the college—whether

to attend,” she says. Tuition remains relatively affordable,

it’s “liking” the alumni page on Facebook, attending a

a fact she can share with would-be donors: “Your gift

campus event, sponsoring an internship, or endowing

to FIT supports five students, not one, as it would at a

a scholarship. FIT is working to create a variety of

private university.”

channels for alumni and other key audiences to connect

When it comes to development, she says, there’s no

with the college and with one another. It’s all about

difference between public and private institutions. Before

building relationships essential to securing FIT’s future.

FIT, Duncan was vice president for development at

Spearheading these efforts is Dawn B Duncan, vice

NYU’s Polytechnic Institute, assistant dean for develop-

president for Development and Alumni Relations and

ment and alumni relations at NYU’s Steinhardt School,

executive director of the FIT Foundation. Duncan’s team

and director of major gifts at the University of Florida

includes Terry Culver, director of development; Kevin

Foundation. In every case, she says, it was about creating

Hervas, director of corporate and foundation relations;

and sustaining a “culture of giving.” FIT is now develop-

Vicki Guranowski, director of special events; and Allison

ing that tradition.

Oldehoff, manager of alumni and faculty relations.

Obviously, fundraising is essential, but development

They’re strengthening ties with alumni, industry, and

goes beyond that; it’s often about creating community

other supporters, and matching them with opportunities

pride. Last January, Alumni Relations invited alumni and

to contribute time, expertise, and resources—opportuni-

friends to gather in a local pub to watch the final episode

ties that not only benefit FIT and its students, but reflect

of the reality-TV design competition, The Fashion Show.

the donors’ values and interests.

When Jeffrey Williams, Fashion Design ’09, won, the

In the past, public colleges didn’t focus much on

crowd erupted in cheers—the FIT equivalent of the big

fundraising, but now they have no choice. Public funding

football win.

for higher education has decreased as costs continue to

More events are on the horizon, to build connections

skyrocket, and private support—from industry, alumni,

and promote the power of the FIT alumni network—

and other sources—enables public colleges like FIT

100,000 strong. In the past, Duncan says, “Alumni often

to undertake projects like new buildings and campus

didn’t come back to the mother ship. We’re going to

renovations. Scholarship funding is Duncan’s first

change that.”

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hue | fall 2011

Get Connected!

Recognizing that strong relationships with alumni are critical to the college’s future, FIT’s Alumni Relations Office offers new and fun ways to connect with your alma mater. Here’s a sampling: » Want to help students learn about the industry? Take part in a professional “speed networking” event or “shadowing” program. » Looking to market your handcrafted designs? Join the FIT alumni group on Etsy.com. » Interested in catching up with classmates? Four regional reunions, in New York City, Washington, DC, Florida, California, and the first-ever international alumni reception in Tokyo, are being planned. » If you’d like to support alumni efforts, consider making a gift to the annual fund.

Find out about these and other opportunities through alumnirelations@fitnyc.edu or by connecting with FIT Alumni on Facebook and Twitter.

FIT Sweeps CFDA Student Awards

Above: In his entry, Kieran Dallison imagined a young woman running away to be surrounded by beautiful things. The clothes were “a daydream of what could be possible without reallife limitations like budgets or deadlines.”

Right: Lauren Sehner’s sketches highlight the basic elements of design and take cues from abstract expressionism.

To mark the CFDA’s 50th anniversary, The Museum at FIT will present Impact: 50 Years of the CFDA, February 9 to April 14, 2012.

Matthew Septimus

insights from the classroom and beyond

Since 1996, the Council of Fashion Designers of America has held a student design competition for juniors in 17 schools across the country. This year, FIT students took home prizes in every category.

As a class assignment, every sixth-semester Fashion Design student drew up 10 to 15 sketches for sportswear and evening wear.

Professors Steven Stipelman, Christopher Uvenio, and Colette Wong, as well as Valerie Steele, director of The Museum at FIT, selected the six strongest portfolios to enter into the CFDA contest.

In addition, the CFDA judges two other competitions, for the Geoffrey Beene Design Scholar Award and the Liz Claiborne Design Scholarship Award, each for entries geared toward that designer’s aesthetic, and each worth $25,000. Two FIT students are chosen to submit their work for each contest.

Four Fashion Design students from the class of 2012 earned plaudits: Lauren Sehner won the Geoffrey Beene scholarship, and Sydney Halela won honorable mention in the Liz Claiborne competition. Kieran Dallison won a $10,000 CFDA scholarship, and Lania Gonzalez won a $5,000 CFDA scholarship.

Sehner was formally recognized at the CFDA Awards on June 6 at Lincoln Center, where she witnessed a community of top designers and other celebrities catching up like old friends.

“It was as down-to-earth as it could possibly be,” she said.

“It felt like in x number of years, I’ll be there with my friends.”

—Jonathan Vatner

A New Way of Seeing Karen Santry, associate professor, Illustration As illustrators, we need to make the thing in front of us more than what it is in order to capture its essence. The secret is to push the shapes—exaggerate them, make them clearer and easier to read by getting rid of the mush. It’s a way of making an illustration more powerful and memorable, and it applies to all the different types of illustration I teach. (This semester, I’ve got General Illustration and Anatomical Life Drawing.) For example, if I were drawing a bodybuilder, I would draw his upper chest using curves to emphasize the muscles and bulk. I wouldn’t draw the curves in his legs, because they might compete with the curves of his shoulders; I’d simplify them with straighter lines. To get this across to students, I work with the model in advance and create 20 different samples, sometimes drawing everything, sometimes leaving things out. The students always say that the one with something left out is more sophisticated.

By leaving out certain areas, you put the viewer’s imagination to work so the mind goes into fantasy and creates an emotional connection. Another trick we have is playing with symmetry. A person will look at a drawing of a face much longer if the model’s bangs are represented as a single unit on one side and individual spikes on the other. Necessity dictates these techniques; we’re competing with photography. If your illustration appears on a spread opposite a photograph in The New York Times, which one will captivate the viewer? If it’s not the illustration, we’re out of business.

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Reaching Out Anubhuti Swarup a student in first person

Fashion Merchandising Management ’13 As the FIT Student Association’s vice president for alumni affairs, you ran a speed networking event with alumni last semester. How did that work?

We had 13 alumni from different backgrounds: design, marketing, textile development, you name it. They sat at different tables with four or five students at each one. They had a quick little chat and then rotated, like speed dating.

Two alumni told me later that they wanted to hire interns from FIT. You organized a shadowing program too, and placed 52 students.

We wanted to let students try out a field for just one day without needing to commit to it. We had a range of high-powered alumni, including Brenda Mikel, the patternmaker for Narciso Rodriguez; she did the draping for the dress Michelle Obama wore on election night. One student got invited back to see the factory for Padma Lakshmi’s jewelry line, and another decided to study abroad in London after shadowing a music publicist who had done it.

We got so many applicants, I didn’t get a chance to shadow anyone myself. Next year, I guess.

What’s next for the program?

We should be able to handle 100, maybe 150, students next year. Eventually we’d like to create a database so students could match with alumni at any time of the year. [To participate, alumni should email alumnirelations@fitnyc.edu.]

And what’s this about a freelancing event?

Yeah, we’re also planning to have panel of alumni and possibly some faculty talk to Art and Design students about freelancing: how to prepare your portfolio and look for jobs.

How do you spend your precious moments of spare time?

I like to take candid pictures of people in New York. I want to capture their natural emotions, so I don’t ask before I shoot. I’m still afraid people will get mad at me. But generally people like getting their picture taken.

Sounds like you keep awfully busy. How do you have time to do your schoolwork? you make time for it.

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hue | fall 2011

Erica Lansner

I make lots of lists. When you enjoy something,

THE COTERIE SHOW IN PICTURES

Last September, the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center was dressed up simply but tastefully: white and light gray carpeting and white booths lit with warm spotlights. Lady Gaga and Ke$ha blared while slender beauties walked the floor, clutching coffee and Diet Coke as though they were the latest must-have accessories.

Behind the scenes at New York’s biggest women’s wear trade show

By Jonathan Vatner

Consider the typical trade show. Sallow fluorescent light bears down on a grid of 10-foot-by-10-foot booths and drab industrial carpeting. Booths are divided with “pipe and drape,” dark, heavy fabric that does nothing for the glamour quotient.

This setup might be acceptable for some industries, but when the merchandise is fashion, the show needs to sparkle. ENK Fashion Coterie, one of many trade shows that helps move clothes from runways to retail shelves, gets it right. Here’s how.

A few days after the fall and spring fashion weeks in New York, some 1,450 design houses rent booths at ENK to show off their latest women’s wear to 25,000 retailers. The retailers place orders, and the clothes are sewn and shipped in time for the next season.

Adrian Cabrero/ENK International

The booths by the entrance were the most exciting. Here, a vintage pickup truck stuffed full of hay bales and sunflowers was parked in front of the booth for Textile Elizabeth and James, the Olsen twins’ casual line.

Elyse Kroll (left), pictured here with Kathy Hilton, is the founder, chairman, and namesake of ENK International Trade Events, which produces 26 fashion trade shows a year. “Designers come because the show looks hip and cool,” said Kroll, whose fluorescent nails almost match her spray of red hair. “And we look good.”

Photos by Matthew Septimus

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Smart planning means that sign-in and registration go smoothly, exhibitors receive free lunch, lounge space is plentiful and easy to find, and attendees get the best hotel rates in New York.

The show highlights the work of up-and-coming designers in an invitation-only, subsidized area with an open layout, called TMRW (pronounced “tomorrow”).

“If you’re a medium-sized retailer, our show lets you see all the designers under one roof,” said Nastos, shown here with May Kwok, Fashion Merchandising Management, who organized TMRW. “If you’re the buyer for Bloomingdale’s, you could see anybody at any time—but our show lets you discover the next talent.”

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hue | fall 2011

Kroll and a handful of experts jury the show, selecting which designers get a booth and where it goes, based on their samples. (Milly, designed

by Michelle Smith ’92, got a prime spot this year.)

If a designer’s work has declined, the booth will be relegated to the back— or dropped entirely.

Making these decisions requires diplomacy. “Every single exhibitor wants the best position every single day—that’s their job,” Tom Nastos, Textile and Apparel Marketing ’81, president of ENK, said. “Our job is to have the best show possible. We try to bridge the gap as best we can.”

Richard Chun, managing director of Idiel Showroom, which imports Asian fashions, has shown in the TMRW section three times.

This season, Idiel’s prominent position helped attract such renowned retailers as Intermix and Takashimaya.

Meet ENK’s President

Recently, Kroll and Nastos have taken a chance in Beijing with ENK China, a show that debuted earlier this year. ENK Milan launches in 2012.

In both cities, ENK cooperates with existing shows.

The Milan show will coincide with White Milan, which features high-end Italian designers, to help familiarize Italian buyers with ENK’s mostly American brands. The Beijing show is held within CHIC (China International Clothing and Accessories Fair), a massive show during China’s fashion week. From CHIC’s 100,000-plus attendees, ENK handpicks 4,000 whom its exhibitors should meet.

Tom Nastos Textile and Apparel Marketing ’81 Looking at Tom Nastos—breezy and unflappable—one would never guess how much responsibility he juggles, running two companies and teaching supply chain management in the Global Fashion Management MPS program at FIT.

Mornings he spends at Endurance LLC, his menswear

company that manufactures and wholesales licensed clothing for Rocawear and Ecko Unltd., among others. He founded the company in 1999, after selling off Wear 2 B Seen, which specialized in manufacturing private-label brands for Wal-Mart and the like, as well as making bodywear.

In China, the concept of independent stores, rather than marketplaces, is very new.

So at the Beijing show, instead of meeting with retailers, designers meet with distributors, who ship the goods to markets around China or sign deals to open stores.

Afternoons, he heads over to ENK International Trade

Events to write up business plans and meet with exhibitors.

He joined the board in 2006 and became president in 2009.

Part of the reason Elyse Kroll, founder and chairman of

ENK, hired him was his knowledge of manufacturing in China. He has been jetting over there since he was just 17, when the company he worked for, Dial Imports, sent him to collect samples from factories.

“The pulse of the country is really strong,” he said. “You

can do big things.”

Dial Imports also sent Nastos to FIT to enroll in the Textile

and Apparel Marketing program. The high ratio of women to men was at first off-putting, then appealing. (Eventually, he met his wife at the college.) “My friends thought I was a genius,” he said. “Pretty soon, I had 40 or 50 of them taking Adrian Cabrero/ENK International

China is becoming a huge market, impossible to ignore, Kroll said.

“It used to be, ‘Do you want to be a pioneer?’ Now it’s, ‘If you want to be smart, get over there.’”

continuing education classes and hanging out in the cafeteria.”

fitnyc.edu/hue

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Paul Wesley Griggs at Edit

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hue | fall 2011 AMPAS

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Luminaries: An occasional series on people

Rockwell’s set design for the Academy Awards included a curtain with 100,000 Swarovski crystals.

with extraordinarily distinguished careers

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Rockwell’s 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale installation featured geometric shapes that coalesced and crystallized into iconic film scenes when viewers approached.

Immersion Techniques

Rockwell put that quality to work in his

design for the Kodak Theater, the permanent home of the Academy Awards, completed in 2001. The massive space, viewed by hundreds of millions of people around the world, is the face of the Oscars, the world of film ensconced in a glamorous shell. The slightly

David Rockwell, winner of FIT’s Lawrence J. Israel Prize, is an “architect of experiences”

exaggerated scale of the elements of the space—including a dramatic curved ceiling and large arched ribs that rise up to meet in a circle—is designed to read well on camera

By Alan Brake

and draw in the at-home viewer.

When he was asked to do the production

design for the 2009 Oscar broadcast, he took the job on the condition that he could rework the space itself. He changed the arrangement of the orchestra-level seating and swapped in new upholstery (from pinkish red to cool, nighttime blue). He added dramatic new elements like a proscenium curtain made

Architect David Rockwell defies categorization.

of 100,000 Swarovski crystals. The project was so successful, he was asked to return the

With countless accolades for iconic restaurant and hotel designs—most notably Nobu and

next year. The growing role of technology in

W Hotels—he is constantly reinventing himself. His firm, the Rockwell Group, works in

his practice is evident in the 2010 set design,

architecture, interior and product design, graphics, and interactive installations, and is

which included integrated LED lighting,

branching out into playground and theater set design. Rockwell won a Presidential Design

animating the crystal curtain, and large

Award for the restoration and renovation of Grand Central Terminal in 2001, and a National

projection screens. Three rotating platforms

Design Award from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in 2008, and his set for the

on the stage added to the effect, creating a

82nd Annual Academy Awards won a 2010 Emmy. FIT recently awarded him its 2011 Lawrence

constant interplay of images, light, and

J. Israel Prize, administered by the Interior Design Department, which brings a leading design-

movement. The project won an Emmy

er to campus for a lecture and reception with students.

for art direction.

Rockwell’s sunlit office overlooks the humming traffic and crowds of Union Square. His

Emmy sits on a shelf that includes books on his friend, the fashion designer Isabel Toledo; the traditional architect Robert A.M. Stern, with whom he collaborated on the master plan for Times Square early in his career; and the top-tier editorial photographer Todd Eberle. “I look for inspiration in anything that looks interesting,” he says. He is affable, with a wry sense of humor, which tempers his slightly restless energy. He moves quickly through the office,

R

ockwell’s unconventional career has frequently gone off the script followed by most architects. At Syracuse University in the late

1970s, he studied under rigorous modernists

greeting associates and bantering with assistants.

who praised functionality and austerity. In

that period, aesthetic orthodoxies were being

His studio fills three floors of a long, narrow building, and numbers about 140 employees,

making it one of the larger privately owned architecture firms. Throughout the space, which

challenged, and architects like Robert Venturi

feels as much like an artist’s studio as an architecture office, models, samples, and past work

and Denise Scott Brown, in Learning from

crowd the shelves. “We do all different kinds of work. We don’t see things as hermetically

Las Vegas, and Rem Koolhaas, in Delirious New

sealed in bubbles,” he says. Typically, Rockwell sets up interdisciplinary teams, so a graphic

York, were beginning to explore how popular

designer, an architect, and an interior designer would all collaborate on a project.

culture and the messy realities of urban

life shape architecture. Like these thinkers,

His work often incorporates both handmade objects and new technology, highly tactile

materials, and a broad palette of cultural references, usually vastly enlarged in scale.

Rockwell realized that modes of communica-

Writers often call Rockwell an “architect of experiences,” referring to the immersive quality

tion and spectacle—like billboards and

of his designs.

flashing lights—could drive architectural

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One of Rockwell’s goals in running his firm is, “having a group of people who want to play with you.”

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extremely noteworthy in the field and all

ation Playground is now in production, to be

our students know his work,” said Johannes

used in playgrounds across New York and

Knoops, assistant professor of Interior Design,

around the country.

and chair of the prize committee. “He’s been innovative in his use of materials and technology, and the way he combines elements to create an overall effect.”

His open, multidisciplinary approach

has led to the firm’s broad body of work.

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ultural institutions also commission the firm. The Rockwell Group’s interactive studio, which creates digital projects and develops new

technology, grew out of an art commission for the Venice Biennale. The studio used

has created textured wall coverings for

digital technology to project an interactive

Maya Romanoff, indoor/outdoor seating and

web of fragments of famous feature films,

benches for Desiron, Tibetan-inspired rugs

including 2001: A Space Odyssey and The

for The Rug Company, and sleek, minimalist

Wizard of Oz, onto screens (see photo, p. 12).

form. He became fascinated with Times

doors for the Italian company Lualdi. Avoiding

Visitors approach the screens, and the web

Square, which had gone from being a respect-

a narrow stylistic stamp, the firm’s projects

flickers and moves in response, creating a

able theater district and New York’s meeting

reflect various clients’ design briefs and

kaleidescopic effect. If the viewer stops

place to a seedy, rundown part of the city.

identities.

moving, the film fragments become sharper.

Blandon Belushin

The product-design studio, for example,

Still, Rockwell knew its past and its potential, so he made it his thesis project. In the early 1990s, he helped craft a new master plan for the district, which many credit with guiding the area’s rebirth.

One word often associated with Rockwell

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Other interactive projects include a lobby ecently, the firm has been investi-

installation for the Cosmopolitan Hotel in

gating the nature of child’s play.

Las Vegas, and an interactive projection for

A father of two, Rockwell was

a party at the National Building Museum in

dismayed at the quality of many

Washington, DC.

of the city’s public playgrounds, and the

is “spectacle,” which can be traced both to

uninspiring nature of their equipment. At

together many of these threads of media,

the Times Square project and his theater set

Burling Slip in Lower Manhattan, the firm

accessibility, and culture: the Elinor Bunin

designs. He doesn’t produce shallow effects

sought to reinvent the playground. Drawing

Munroe Film Center for the Film Society of

or cartoonish themed spaces, but creates

on the “adventure playgrounds” that became

Lincoln Center, which includes two theaters,

joyful and memorable spaces that balance

popular in postwar Europe, which encouraged

offices, a café, and an amphitheater. The

his clients’ identity and needs with his own

creative play with building materials instead

center is designed to cater to devoted cine-

sensibility. “What makes his architecture

of typical playground equipment, Rockwell

philes as well as casual moviegoers. With

popular and entertaining is the choice of

created a contemporary version in durable

a bright orange entrance, the space is meant

a theme and the myriad details that come

foam—circles with holes, tubes, cubes, and

to be welcoming and democratic, a populist

together in the final choreography,” wrote

various other shapes. (In Europe, adventure

note within the high-culture acropolis of

Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture

playgrounds included hammers and nails

Lincoln Center.

and design at the Museum of Modern Art,

or lengths of rope, but Americans thought

in an essay for Rockwell’s 2004 monograph,

they were dangerous, so they never caught

the center of our collective humanity. He

Pleasure. “The eyes never experience a dull

on here.) The pieces can be assembled into

grew up acting in community theater and

moment, while the main theme of each new

an infinite number of combinations. “What’s

sketching designs for sets. After decades

project shines through and guarantees a

so interesting is that kids typically start out

of regular theatergoing, he decided to jump

dramatic sense of ensemble.”

working on something of their own—a chain

into set design, and met with numerous

or wheel or a small fort—and then they try

directors and producers before eventually

IT’s Israel Prize is given to a leading

to make connections, to link their piece to

landing the job designing the set for the

architect or designer whose ideas

other kids’ pieces to create a larger object,”

Rocky Horror Show in 2000. He went on to

and practice enrich the course of

Rockwell says. The firm did the project pro

make a splash on Broadway with his witty

study for students in the program.

bono and later formed a nonprofit to promote

set for Hairspray, which featured a giant

Previous winners include Clodagh, Vicente

the playgrounds nationwide. A smaller,

curtain in the shape of a 1960s flip hairdo.

Wolf, and Jamie Drake. “David Rockwell is

portable version of the Burling Slip Imagin-

New York Times theater critic Charles

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One of the firm’s recent projects draws

For Rockwell, cultural activities are at

4

Rockwell Group transformed underused office space and a parking garage into Lincoln Center’s Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, which opened in June.

5

Blue foam pieces in the Burling Slip Imagination Playground encourage cooperative play.

6

For the quirky, graphic set of Hairspray, the curtain resembles a flip hairdo.

Isherwood told Hue, “David Rockwell’s set Albert Vecerka Esto

designs are often infused with a pop sensibility that naturally serves the kind of splashy

4

musicals that Broadway traffics in these days. His sets for Hairspray, which might be his best work to date, displayed an affection

5

for the 1960s setting filtered through a satiric sensibility.” In addition to Hairspray, Rockwell has designed the sets for the musicals Legally Blond and Catch Me If You Can, and more serious plays like John Guare’s A Free Man of Color and the revival of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart. “I’m not sure he’s yet established a defining style for his stage work, which isn’t necessarily a flaw if you’re working on material that ranges from these big musicals to serious work like The Normal Heart,” Isherwood said.

Frank Oudeman

W

hile many of his designs are bold and eye-catching, Rockwell also knows when to design with restraint.

His simple set for the Tony-winning revival of The Normal Heart subtly underscores the

6

urgency of the play, a scorching account of the early days of the AIDS epidemic in New York. Headlines about the crisis are carved into the otherwise unadorned white box, reinforcing the idea that this health emergency was rapidly intruding into the homes and lives of gay New Yorkers.

Between acts, names of the dead are projected on the stage. As the story unfolds, the list grows longer, eventually extending beyond the proscenium onto the walls of the theater. The expanding list of names adds to the sense of dread that gives the play its raw power. The simple visual language recalls Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial in Washington. Unfolding on Rockwell’s set, The Normal Heart itself becomes a memorial.

After the curtain falls, crowds spill onto the streets with tears on their faces, holding friends, thankful to be present. While many

Eric Laignel

architects strive to build permanent structures, Rockwell knows that collective, temporal experiences can be just as indelible.

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Roxanne Lowit ’64 captured Guinness at an opening for artist David LaChapelle. “We need better things, not more,” Guinness has said. “We should not pollute the world with meaningless, unused things when we can support things of rare and precious beauty.”

Daphne’s World Why we need Daphne Guinness

By Alex Joseph

nlike most men, I love getting dressed, but I wouldn’t refer to it as an art form. If I coordinate textures and colors and add the right scarf, I feel clever, but not like de Kooning.

So it was with some skepticism that I approached The Museum at FIT’s exhibition about style icon Daphne Guinness.

When I saw the show, which comprises 100 couture pieces collected by Guinness, I realized that a certain paucity of garments might be preventing me from reaching my creative apex. I mean, I just don’t own an Alexander McQueen catsuit dripping with gold and bronze bugle beads or a flowing cape of glistening black feathers. If I did, I’d wear them. I’d feel like a sci-fi superhero, and that’s a nice feeling. I’m not sure I’d want the Gareth Pugh black leather outfit that bristles with thousands of nails. What might a prospective paramour think? Gender distinctions aside, I’d enjoy donning Hogan McLaughlin’s brown leather and rhinestone jumpsuit with its towering shoulders. Sadly, my ability to fit into something that slender ended many seasons (and cheeseburgers) ago.

What kind of person wears such outfits? Hue arranged a short interview with Guinness, and I soon found myself won over by her inimitable presence.

A recent New Yorker profile described her as “a slightly deranged fairy invented by C.S. Lewis,” but my own associations were Patsy Stone, the fantastic flameout played by Joanna Lumley on Absolutely Fabulous, and “Little” Edie Beale from the 1974 documentary Grey Gardens. Fragile, freaky, and disarmingly friendly, Guinness sat holding a crumbling edition of Lord Byron poems. As the interview went on, she leaned more and more into her hand, as if trying to obscure herself. That hand, it should be pointed out, sported engraved silver finger cuffs that evoked the Middle Ages.

“I know it sounds bizarre,” she said, “but I always thought I looked pretty normal.”

There’s something touching about this, as if we all had the daredevil sense of balance required to wear ten-inch platform shoes—with air where the heels should be.

Equally touching are her reasons for doing the FIT show.

“What’s the point of having lots of things and hoarding them, when they might make somebody happy?”

Her mind is as exceptional as her wardrobe. Reading St. Augustine, she said, she was delighted to discover that his ideas prefigured string theory. Literature has inspired other epiphanies: “I was sure that Manichaeism was part of Zoroastrianism—and it was!

I was so happy to find that out the other day.”

The first piece of couture she ever bought, she said, was a blue Chanel suit. She seemed less interested in the outfit than the experience of buying it: “It was so much fun to be involved in the process!” Now she attends the Paris shows to support her designer pals; afterward, she said, they go out for sandwiches. The image of Guinness eating a homely sandwich gave me pause, but she assured me, “Oh, I like simple food. They have the best ham sandwiches in the world in Paris.”

If you go to the exhibition, Guinness says look for the hand

“ Good things always happen to me in that coat,” Guinness said of this handpainted kimono.

“I met Alexander [McQueen] in that coat. It was weird. I don’t stalk designers. He came up to me and said, ‘I designed that.’”

Victor Boyko/Getty Images

U

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Guinness occasionally designs clothing and jewelry. To mark the debut of a diamond glove she created in collaboration with designer Shaun Leane, she posed as a corpse at a party. “I came up with the idea about four days before,” she says. “I had a friend make that Perspex box. I didn’t realize it would look so ‘floaty.’”

Hat designer and friend Philip

Fred Duvall/Film Magic

Dave M. Benett/Getty Images

Treacy added the veil.

Guinness at the memorial service for Alexander McQueen, St. Paul’s Cathedral, London: “It’s funny, there’s a picture of me stumbling on that day, but I can’t remember that. I’m always falling over— even in my bare feet.”

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painted ombré silk kimono that Alexander McQueen designed early in his career, at Givenchy. In the late ’90s, she became friends with him, and with his muse, Isabella Blow. Visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s blockbuster McQueen show last spring no doubt noticed that several pieces were contributed by Guinness. Some had belonged to Blow; after her suicide in 2007, Guinness saved her clothing collection from dispersal by buying it—all of it.

It’s worth wondering why the fashion collector is seldom accorded the same respect as the fine art collector. Guinness’s collection reflects a personal, idiosyncratic vision—but so does the highly regarded Barnes Collection of early modern art, to give just one example.

Of course, Albert Barnes didn’t wear his Matisses and van Goghs.

Clothes carry the imprint of the body, so they reflect the owner in a way a painting can’t.

One needs substantial funds to own this quality collection, and Guinness doesn’t pretend she’s poor. She’s of the Guinness brewing family, and her ancestors are a storied bunch, including her grandmother, author Nancy Mitford (Love in a Cold Climate). Also, Guinness was married to Greek shipping magnate Spyros Niarchos for 13 years.

These days, fashion both defines her, and renders her unclassifiable.

People call her a muse, and there’s something inspiring about how she wears clothes. Photographer Roxanne Lowit ’64 contributed this story: “Maybe ten or 15 years ago, one of the first times I met Daphne, we were running across the Place Vendôme in Paris. We were late for a meeting with Valentino, and you can’t be late for him. Daphne was wearing platform shoes that were even bigger than the ones she wears now, and putting on mascara as she was running over the cobblestones. I thought, ‘She’s going to put her eye out.’”

This dedicated quality comes through best perhaps in a one-minute video tribute to McQueen that screens at the exhibition, and on YouTube.

As heavenly choir music soars, Guinness writhes around in a church wearing stupendous garments and a really big snake. It’s everything a fashion video should be—creepy, crazy, beautiful, sad, and momentous.

Vogue editor Hamish Bowles calls her a “fashion proselytizer— on the one hand nurturing young and sometimes even unknown creative talents, on the other setting a standard for established designers to live up to.”

Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of FIT’s museum, puts it best in her book about the show: “The fashion or style icon is a special type of fashion insider, someone who is far more than an ‘early adopter’ or celebrity clothes horse. The fashion icon not only inspires clothes, but actually creates a look that affects the way other people dress and/or think about dressing.”

Allons-y, closet! With Guinness as our guide, we can all be artists of fashion. Or at least we can try.

Daphne Guinness runs at The Museum at FIT through January 7.

See Guinness describe her favorite outfit in the show: fitnyc.edu/hue

The Complete Package Maria Mileo Rega ’02 and Vincent Rega ’02 share their love of visual branding (and each other)

By Jonathan Vatner

Anyone who has stepped inside a supermarket in the past decade has doubtless encountered the work of Maria and Vincent Rega, both Packaging Design ’02. Maria, associate design manager for visual branding for Dove Skincare, has previously overseen projects for Starbucks, Mountain Dew, and Lipton. Vincent, design director at CBX, a third-party strategic branding and design agency, has worked on M&M’s, Del Monte, LifeStyles condoms, 7UP, and Snapple. As it happens, they’re married—and they met at FIT. Even though they work in the same industry, their jobs differ tremendously. Vincent, at an agency, dreams up attention-grabbing visuals and strategies for many brands. Maria, in design management, oversees the development of new packaging for just one brand, Dove, devising concepts in collaboration with agencies similar to CBX. They try not to bring their jobs home, but Vincent admits that he sometimes bounces ideas off of her. “She’s got a great eye,” he says. “And sometimes we disagree.

It’s fun for us to fight about it.”

Portraits by Leif Huron ’10

Vincent Rega, design director, CBX Vincent calls packaging “a totally different world of design. There are so many things that need to be communicated properly on pack. You need to meet consumers’ needs while building a brand at the same time.”

When CBX gets a new project, a team of designers, strategists, and account managers brainstorm ideas, visit stores to see what packages jump out at them, create inspiration boards, sketch ideas and redraw the best ones on a computer, then present them to the client on concept boards. After that, the process becomes a long series of refinements until the client gives the final approval. Then the production team has a 3D model made.

The firm also takes into account consumer preferences—using sustainable materials, or highlighting the calorie count on the front of the package. Other times that means incorporating a digital component or selling the items in a custom-built store. For example, to elevate the image of Duane Reade pharmacies, CBX recently designed one on Wall Street that looks like a high-end department store. Even after nearly a decade of long hours at CBX, Vincent still loves his job. “It’s a new challenge every day. One day it’s dog food, the next day it’s condoms, the next day it’s a carbonated beverage.”

Vincent’s STANDOUT projects

M&M’S REDESIGN (2010) “We found that a lot of people associate M&M’s with a big bowl that you share with your family,” Vincent says. To bring out that feeling of sharing, his team replaced the illustrated candies behind the logo with a glass bowl of M&M’s.

The beloved M&M characters, or brand ambassadors, are hanging out in the foreground.

Vincent also worked on the launch of M&M’s Pretzel, which was a 2011 Product of the Year, an award voted on by consumers. The concept: The orange M&M is having an identity crisis about his innards, sparked by the x-ray that shows a pretzel inside him.

7UP (2010) “Some designs are revolutionary,” Vincent explains. “What we did for 7UP was more evolutionary.” 7UP had been emphasizing its natural ingredients, but consumers didn’t care. To bring out the soda’s refreshing quality, the CBX team replaced the image of lemons hanging from a tree branch with lemon and lime wedges releasing carbonation as they swished across the package.

MILO’S KITCHEN (2011) These high-quality dog treats from Del Monte Pet look like human food—chicken jerky, meatballs, etc. Vincent wanted the packaging to appeal to the kind of person who would give those things to a dog. The snapshots of shared moments between human and animal communicate, “This is my equal, not my pet.” A product window shows that the treats really look like meat.

LIFESTYLES CONDOMS (2011) CBX offered up so many good packaging ideas—the names all incorporating the “y” from LifeStyles—that the condom maker came up with extra varieties to put in them: Wyld, uniquely shaped and ribbed; the textured Thryll; and extra-large Kyng, in a gold box so that men buying it could show off a little.

maria’s STANDOUT projects

DOVE VISIBLE CARE (2010) For this high-quality body wash, Maria pulled out all the stops. “We wanted our current customers, the core body-wash users, to trade up,” she says.

The bottle has a new proprietary shape—upside-down with organic curves—with a technically innovative color gradient incorporated into the plastic, though the bottle is still mostly white (all Dove products except Dove for Men are colored “white plus”— just hints of color). Maria experimented with different metallic and pearlescent properties on the labels, to match the luminescence of the product. “It’s not just liquid goop,” she says. “It’s a beautiful product, and we wanted to reflect that in our design.”

FRAPPUCCINO (2003 and 2010) In the first redesign of Starbucks’ trademark beverage, she emphasized the branding on the bottle by moving it up, gave the design more shelf presence by updating the logo, and played up the different flavors by adding a background color. In 2010, Starbucks wanted to underscore the whimsical, indulgent feeling of “finding your moment,” as the campaign goes.

Maria and the Starbucks creative team accomplished this by adding more playfulness to the logo and background textures.

SEATTLE’S BEST COFFEE (2010) Maria based her design for these new on-the-go iced lattes on the company’s three pillars: approachability, smoothroasted coffee, and its heritage in the world-famous Pike Place Market. She combined the brand’s signature red and brown with a red mug from the original café and a Seattle skyline. Also, the straightforward text emphasizes the coffee’s smoothness. The cans won a 2010 American Inhouse Design Award from Graphic Design USA. Since then, however, Seattle’s Best decided to project a different image and needed to redesign the cans.

maria Rega, associate design manager, Dove Skincare, Unilever Visual Branding In her eight years at PepsiCo, Maria worked on Mountain Dew, Mug Root Beer, Slice (now Tropicana Twister soda), and AMP Energy, as well as brands bottled by PepsiCo such as Lipton, Starbucks, and Seattle’s Best Coffee (now a subsidiary of Starbucks). Last year, she made the transition to Dove, Unilever’s flagship brand.

“I always wanted to get into the personal care field,” says Maria. “In the Dove world, the products are good for you. The things we say in our advertising are really backed up in truth.”

Dove is a packaging designer’s dream. Most of Dove’s bottles—for its body washes, shampoos, and lotions, among many other products—are created from scratch, which allows almost limitless possibilities in the shape and graphics. Also, the company uses a high-quality printing process. “When I first came on,” she remembers, “we were using three very similar blues for one product, 11 colors in all. I had just come from the soda world, where we would have used far fewer colors to keep costs down. ‘How can you use three blues?’ I asked. My counterpart smiled and said, ‘Welcome to Dove.’”

The design process gets surprisingly complicated, involving brand managers, formulation experts, design agencies, the legal department, and the top brass at Dove. Maria is the first one to see the design and the last one to sign off on the finished product.

•

• High -Wire Act• • With the Brooklyn Circus, Ouigi Theodore and Gabe Garcia, Communication Design alumni, produce and sell stylish clothing—and a cultural manifesto.

B y Jonathan Vatner

Photos by Nick Parisse ’09

How does the Brooklyn Circus smell?

Like the sweet yet manly pomegranate candle custom-blended for the shop, burning by the entrance. How does it sound?

Like the tunes of Al Green, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Frank Sinatra, Jay-Z, Fela Kuti, and even Phil Collins, issuing from the speakers. What’s on its bookshelf? A two-volume history of the circus, published by Taschen; 100 Years of Harley-Davidson; and Freedom, a photographic history of the African-American struggle for self-determination.

Indeed, the Brooklyn Circus, now five years old, is not just a clothing shop in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn.

It’s a melting pot of cultures and races transmuted into commerce. It’s a lifestyle inspired by men of taste—most notably Ouigi Theodore and Gabe Garcia, co-owners of the brand—but also jocks and dandies from the first half of the 20th century, a golden age of tailors and barbershops. “It was a time when gentlemen really put that extra effort into their daily regimen,” Gabe says.

Ouigi, the founder and philosopher-in-chief of the Brooklyn Circus, sums up the brand: “It’s not just a fashion statement. It’s a cultural statement.”

• THE BEARDED MAN • Ouigi can be recognized by his neckerchief, which he used to see on laborers in Haiti—where he spent the first eight years of his life before moving to Crown Heights, Brooklyn—but which also evokes images of Boy Scouts and French sailors.

He also sports an eight-panel cap. “If you look at history, everyone’s wearing a hat,” Ouigi says. “It’s such a beautiful thing.”

But his most distinctive feature is his luxuriant beard, which juts out from his face at a gravitydefying angle. People stop him on the street and accost him with, “You’re the Bearded Man from the Brooklyn Circus, right?”

He’s resigned to the moniker—and to the tourists posing for photos with him. “I’ve spent five years in this beard,” he says. “The beard will stay.”

Ouigi aims to refine urban style. “A nice blazer and jeans and a polo shirt and shoes, that’s urban to me,” he says, “as opposed to a loose dirty t-shirt and sneakers. When those kids grow up to be men, where do they go from that? Into a three-piece suit? We attract the guy who doesn’t want to dress like his grandfather and probably doesn’t want to dress like his 18-year-old brother.”

The brand draws a fantastic array of shoppers, both locals and tourists, from guys working for GQ, Esquire, and W to the UPS man. “The customer is not black, is not white, is not young, is not old,” Ouigi riffs. “He has a particular taste and knows what he’s looking for.”

•THE CIRCUS•

In the shop, t-shirts, shorts, shoes, and socks are laid out on a ping-pong table by the entrance. More socks are packed in an open suitcase. Jeans are piled on an antique trunk. A roughed-up pair of boots stands atop a stack of old books. Sure, the hats and shoes are arranged on shelves, but the weathered wood structure looks like it belongs in an old factory, not a retail store.

“We’re always fine-tuning,” Ouigi says. “If a space isn’t vibrating the way it should, people feel it.”

The shop sells classic shoes in the British style— with ornate broguing and serration—by established brands Tricker’s and Grenson, and brightly colored Happy Socks. Inside a glass case, antique watches and shoehorns are laid out like specimens. But almost everything else—eight-panel caps and porkpies (Gabe’s hat of choice), button-down shirts, leather and wool varsity jackets, combed cotton shorts, Japanese selvedge denim, and more—is by Brooklyn Circus.

The clothing line came about incrementally. In the early days, Ouigi and Gabe started manufacturing graphic tees to get customers wearing their brand around town. Now they produce a continually expanding line of signature apparel, designed by freelancers and manufactured mostly locally. Long-sleeve shirts retail for $140, short-sleeve for $125. Varsity jackets range from $320 to $480.

Perhaps the entire philosophy of the Brooklyn Circus can be summarized in the hang tags on the clothes. The painstakingly stained paper tags show the store’s logo, an adult elephant leading a baby— representing the previous generation showing the way—and the date, 1920, when Ouigi’s grandmother was born.

“My grandmother always taught me to respect old things,” Ouigi says. “Things of value are things that last, not just things that shine, and not just things that people want in the moment.”

That ethos has pushed the Brooklyn Circus’s offerings toward a higher quality product. “It’s really about long-term stuff with us,” Ouigi says, “versus something that flies off the shelf and people get two or three wears out of it.”

Ouigi longed to visit the circus as a kid, but his family could only afford Coney Island sideshows. “I’ve been drawn and driven to the circus. So many cultures under one tent.” Opposite: Ouigi and Gabe in their studio. Right: the Brooklyn Circus.

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They also regret spending too much on the design process. For their hat collection, they sampled 50 designs and produced only 12. Because they pay for each sample, 25 to 30 pieces per year adds up to thousands in unnecessary expenses.

“We’re starting to realize that there’s a balance to be found,” Ouigi says.

• WESTWARD HO! •

Most of the store’s furnishings—luggage and display cases, plus button-tufted sofas and brass valets and hooks—came from flea markets and antique shows: Rose Bowl, Alameda, Brimfield. “We love going out there, even in 110-degree weather for hours with no shade,” Gabe says.“It’s part of our therapeutic process.”

• THE BROMANCE• Ouigi never dreamed about selling clothes. In 2003, he opened a clothing shop (called Race) because he wanted to make use of extra space in his graphicdesign studio.

Gabe, on the other hand, always wanted a clothing boutique. As far back as he can remember, the California native cared about his duds. He used to write down what he wore every day so that he wouldn’t duplicate an outfit. Deemed “best dressed” in eighth grade, he often came late to school because it took him so long to pick out clothes.

The two met during Gabe’s first semester at FIT. “He had a pair of Evisu jeans, and I could tell he had a similar interest in clothing,” Gabe says. Then Gabe found out Ouigi owned a shop. “I immediately thought, ‘You have a shop. I want a shop.’ I was going to find out how he did this.”

Gabe kept stopping by the shop to pick Ouigi’s brain and buy something. Then he started hanging out there. Then he started helping out wherever he could.

“He was cool,” Ouigi says of Gabe. “I always had a fascination with California, and he always had questions about my style.”

In 2006, when Ouigi decided that Race wasn’t working, Gabe agreed to be his apprentice for a new endeavor: the Brooklyn Circus. “I had a retail background, and he knew the business aspect,” Gabe says. “I had creative ideas, and he knew how to bring them to fruition. I let him lead the way, helping where I could.”

Gabe now serves as the art director and handles the wholesale business. The two play an equal part in creative decisions—though there’s always a battle.

They are opposites: Ouigi constantly reexamines his style, drawing from historical photos. Gabe gravitates toward simplicity and stability.

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“I know what Gabe is going to be attracted to, and it’s probably the piece I hate,” Ouigi says, but diplomatically adds, “We’re from two different coasts, so our different backgrounds create a certain synergy and balance.”

• MADE IN THE USA •

About 90 percent of Brooklyn Circus clothes are made in the U.S., in factories that date back to the ’30s. A factory in New Jersey makes the hats, the shirts are made in Manhattan, the jeans in San Francisco.

“Modern factories are trying to replicate what the older machines did,” Ouigi says.

He selects manufacturers mainly by instinct, shaking the owner’s hand and glancing at the workers and the way the place is laid out. “Sometimes it’s about how many units they can do, and they put you at the bottom of the totem pole because your quantity is lower. The guys we work with, though, are absolutely meticulous about everything. If you’re doing ten, that ten is just as important as J. Crew’s thousand or million.”

He is often disappointed. When the son of a shirt factory owner in New Jersey took over, the quality declined, and Ouigi stopped ordering from him.

And for some items, such as ties and bowties, he still hasn’t found a solution. The steady closure of America’s factories isn’t making the search easier.

Working in such small quantities has proved a challenge. Once they bought too many shirts to get a volume discount. Summer passed and they didn’t sell out. Winter came, and customers wanted jackets, not shirts. “Two years later, we’re still trying to get rid of shirts,” Ouigi says. “You sold as much as you could and you can’t put it on the floor again. You’re stuck with 75 extra shirts, and that’s your profit margin. And you get taxed on your inventory, too!”

In early 2007, Gabe decided to fulfill his original dream and open a Brooklyn Circus of his own in the Bay Area. That way, he and Ouigi would each own a store and be equal partners in the business. A 600-square-foot spot—slightly smaller than the shop in Brooklyn—opened up next door to Harputs, Gabe’s favorite sneaker shop, and he pounced, in order to trade on some of the time-honored retailer’s cred.

The Brooklyn Circus opened July 4, 2008.

Despite setting up a pop-up shop inside Harputs during the buildout, as well as aggressive sticker campaigning, business was off to a crawl. “The street wasn’t known for shopping,” Gabe says. “The only shop there was Harputs.” It probably didn’t help that he had opened right before the recession.

But special events, including a happy hour combined with a private shopping night, helped build up business. Three years in, he’s finally seeing consistent sales.

The retail operation continues to grow. The Brooklyn shop moved a few doors down in 2008, and the former Brooklyn Circus became the duo’s office and studio—and now, a vintage boutique. They’re also looking to open stores in other cities, possibly in Atlanta and Austin, and very likely in Tokyo.

The clothes have already found their way to Chicago, Sweden, and Japan, and through the store’s online shop, which debuted in 2009, even more places.

The success of those efforts has led Ouigi and Gabe to wholesale more aggressively. This year, they debuted a collection of sweaters, hats, and varsity jackets at Project, a contemporary-fashion trade show in New York and Las Vegas. But they are proceeding warily. “We don’t want the wholesale aspect to go so fast that the retail is affected,” Ouigi says. “We want them to parallel each other.”

All of this would be small potatoes compared with what might be on the horizon. Several big-name companies and a few celebrities have offered to invest in the company and grow it much faster.

But the two entrepreneurs, who built a brand on attention to detail—and financed everything from their savings—have been hesitant to relinquish control, which these investors all have demanded. “We’re honored and flattered to be at the table five years into the business,” Ouigi says. “But if they want you now, imagine what they’ll do for you three years from now.” •

Senior Momentum Millicent (Penny) Potok Cohn ’48 was in FIT’s third graduating class

Above: Millicent Potok—now Penny Cohn—in a 1948 photo from an FIT book of the college’s early graduates (see Hue’s front and back covers). “My mother named me Millicent after an Aunt Minnie who died. Another aunt, a fashion designer in Paris, said, ‘That’s a long name for a little girl,” so they called me Penny, from the ‘cent’ in Millicent.”

Years before FIT’s first building opened in 1959, the college was housed in the top two floors of the Central High School of Needle Trades, on West 24th Street. In 1946, Penny Potok, a graduate of the high school, enrolled at FIT to study apparel design.

Penny’s mother died when she was 17, and her father wanted her to work instead of going to college.

She convinced him to let her go, arguing that it wouldn’t cost anything—at the time, FIT was free—and she commuted from Flatlands, Brooklyn. After school, she assembled Christmas cards in a greeting-card factory, and as part of her curriculum, she worked at a

wedding-gown factory, sewing horsehair into the linings of dresses to stiffen the hems.

Eventually, she became a children’s wear and lingerie merchandise manager for Barker’s Department Stores (similar to Kmart), traveling to stores throughout Louisiana, Texas, Puerto Rico, Panama, and Haiti. She also visited manufacturers in East Asia. “I traveled a great deal when women were not traveling,” she recalls.

“In Tokyo, when I had to use the facilities, they sent a security guard to watch the door, because there were no bathrooms for women.”

After Barker’s went out of business, Penny was offered a job managing an office building in New York City, and more than 30 years later, she still works there, five days a week. “I’m not retiring unless I have to,” she says.

Lorenzo Ciniglio

When Penny graduated from high school, her award from the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) was reported in the newspaper.

Penny visited FIT’s “new” campus in July for the first time, even though she works just six blocks away. She was surprised at how big the buildings and classrooms were, and impressed with the student work on display. “You’ve come a long way, baby!” she exclaimed.

Did you or someone you know graduate from FIT in the ’40s?

Drop us a line! Email us at hue@fitnyc.edu.

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We Mean Business

Nicole Grippo, Fashion Merchandising Management ’99 and Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing and Management ’09, preps four fellow alums for their close-up Landing a job is about the whole picture: skills, self-knowledge, preparation, and, of course, presentation—everything from your resume to your confidence to your clothes. The four alumni shown here, each looking for work, are thinking about all of it.

The director of FIT’s Career and Internship Center, Andrew Cronan, says the dire economy is bringing many alumni to the CIC. At the center, counselors with relevant industry experience can “help you identify your own personal interests, values, and goals, and determine which companies are looking for someone like you,” he says. “Career planning is a lifelong process, so you’ll use what you learn here again and again.”

Self-analysis is critical, but surface matters, too. The right style can impress an employer, so Hue turned to Nicole Grippo ’09 and the CIC to help four alumni at different career stages step up

The Recent Grad Yvette Beauchamp Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing ’11 Background: Part-time work at a cosmetics retailer, freelance makeup artist Immediate career goal: Coordinator or assistant in product development Style: Yvette wanted to look sophisticated, not so trendy.

In this fitted blazer, with metallic threading and updated cut, she looks creative and professional at once.

Counselor’s advice: Young job hunters can appear more authoritative and confident by honing public speaking skills. • Be organized! Keep a journal of companies and contacts you send resumes to; note dates of interviews.

their game. Grippo, a beauty editor at Sephora, has worked as a beauty and fashion editor for Woman’s Day, Redbook, and Life & Style.

Helping Grippo in her mission was Nancy Alusick, who studied Apparel Design at FIT and teaches in the Fashion Styling certificate program offered by the Center for Professional Studies.

Photographer Christopher Hall ’11 captured the results.

The alums, the experts, and the Hue team gathered one warm September day— and voila! A transformation was effected.

Afterward, the four subjects consulted with CIC counselors. Meet the four here— and hire them!

The Career and Internship Center offers free lifetime career services, including a job bank, to alumni. Check out the CIC web page at fitnyc.edu/cic, or call 212 217.3000.

The Creative Type Jose Marrero Illustration ’09 Background: T-shirt, logo, and character design; concept art for video games— all for small, independent companies Immediate career goal: Concept artist/ character designer for a triple-A game company Style: Creative types don’t need to wear a suit to an interview, but they still need to look professional—even if the firm is dressed down. Dark denim is okay for an interview when accompanied by a tailored button-down. For a more corporate company, throw on a casual blazer. And polish your shoes.

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hue | fall 2011

Counselor’s advice: It’s hard to find fulltime work as an illustrator, so be willing to consider other professions that require drawing skills if you’re looking for more than freelance assignments. • Networking is far more effective than online job boards. Contact people you’ve lost touch with. Set up informational interviews— talk to people who are in the field that interests you, and find out what their job is like. People like to talk about themselves, and they’ll feel less awkward if they know you’re not asking them for a position. If you demonstrate your passion, curiosity, and knowledge of the industry, they might offer to help.

Photos: Christopher Hall, Photography and the Digital Image ’11 Styling: Nancy Alusick, Apparel Design Hair: Livio Angileri Makeup: Niko Lopez Retoucher: Andrew Emma, Photography ’11

The Stay-at-home Mom Who Wants to Get Back in the Business

The Seasoned Pro Challenged by the Economy

Danielle Mastroianni Callari Fashion Merchandising Management ’99

Valerie Myers Advertising Design ’79

Background: Six years as account executive for accessories at Liz Claiborne; out of the industry seven years; now doing part-time billing for local doctor

Background: Art director, production director, and consultant, for editorial/print; laid off as creative director for Microsoft in corporate downsizing, 2009

Immediate career goal: Account executive in apparel or accessories Style: Danielle said, “I feel like I need some edge, and to not look like a soccer mom,” so Nicole gave her a classic sheath dress—but in leather, for a fashion twist.

Counselor’s advice: Catch up with industry changes by reading trade journals. • Take computer classes at your local high school or community center; list your specific computer skills on your resume, or it will raise a red flag.

Immediate career goal: Creative director at mid-sized marketing firm or department Style: In Valerie’s industry, the day of the business suit is long gone. Instead of a blazer, try a sweater with a skinny belt; a silk blouse in a jewel tone adds punch.

Counselor’s advice: If applying for jobs in various fields, make sure the language in your resume is targeted to each one. You might think your skills are obvious, but some might not be. For example, Valerie’s experience with all demographics, from millennials to boomers, needed to be called out in her resume. • For an unemployed older candidate, it’s especially important to stay upbeat and busy. Get a sales job, volunteer, take classes, or attend networking events—get out of the house every day.

fitnyc.edu/hue

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The Mother of Reinvention

1979

Virginia Armstrong-Whyte, Fashion Design, plans

Leda Sanford, Fashion Design ’53

to launch Gone to the Dogs Couture, a business providing high-end apparel and accessories for pooches, after completing her professional certificate in Pet Product Design and Marketing at FIT this year. Armstrong-Whyte, who holds an MBA from NYU and designs one-of-a-kind silk purses on the side, previously worked in fashion design,

news from your classmates

retail management, and educational publishing.

1985 Chris Mazzilli, Menswear Design and Marketing,

co-founded Gotham Comedy Club, known as the setting for the Comedy Central show, Live at Gotham, which ran for four seasons until 2009.

These days, he is launching BuildandSearch.com,

Leda Sanford left her husband at age 33 and began climbing the editorial mastheads

a search engine to help auto enthusiasts find

of Teens & Boys Outfitter and Men’s Wear (now Menswear). In 1975, she became editor and

parts and buy classic cars. He is partnering with

publisher of American Home, an iconic title in its twilight years, making her the first woman

Jim Anderson, one of the founders of About.com

publisher of a major magazine, she says.

and Spotify, the digital-music service.

That’s where her “confessional memoir,” Pure Moxie (iUniverse, 2010), begins. The story follows her ups and downs at such titles as Chief Executive, Attenzione, Bon Appétit, Modern

1986

Maturity (now AARP, The Magazine), and Get Up & Go! The book also describes, in juicy

Catherine Courtlandt M cElvane, Illustration,

detail, her love affairs with powerful men.

director of education

Hue caught up with Sanford, calling from her home in Sausalito, CA.

Hue: Your memoir is only 125 pages! How did you fit everything in?

at the Harvey B. Gantt

Sanford: Someone said, “Miley Cyrus’s biography is 300 pages! How could you write such a

Center for African-

short book?” The truth is, I really don’t like big books. There are too many words out there.

Culture in Charlotte,

Hue: What was your favorite magazine to work for?

NC, illustrated her

Sanford: I loved Men’s Wear. I got to meet all these great designers—Ralph Lauren, Pierre

second bilingual

Cardin, Oscar de la Renta.

children’s book, Wings

Hue: What was your biggest regret?

and Dreams: The Legend of Angel Falls/ Courtlandt McElvane’s facepainting style derives from the Alas y Suenos: La Leyenda del Salto Angel.

The book, a folktale

African, aboriginal Australian, and East Indian traditions.

about the origin of Venezuela’s Angel Falls, the highest waterfall in the world, was written by Irania Macias Patterson and published by Novello Festival Press last fall. The illustrations are colored pencil and white Sharpie on colored paper.

Jasiatic

American Arts +

Sanford: I regret that I didn’t understand the volatility of the man who owned Attenzione, the magazine for Italian Americans. That magazine was mine: I created it and believed in it, and it won awards left and right. He got mad at me—he didn’t like being contradicted— and he only gave me a short time to find the funding to buy it myself before he sold it, in 1982. I thought I had lost a child, that’s how much I loved it. I also kind of regret that Herb Kohler [president of Kohler Company] got away. I was extremely in love with him. He had good looks and tons of money.

Hue: Are you seeing anyone now?

Sanford: Nope! I’ve had my fill of men. I would like to invest what energy I have left in more worthy projects.

—Jonathan Vatner

In September, Hue received an email from Jamie Pesavento, Accessories Design ’90. The designer, who creates bridal and eveningwear, wrote that illustrations by Walter Schnackenberg (1880-1961) from our story about the Gladys Marcus Library’s Special Collections inspired his spring 2012 collection: “The collection is about lightness and shine with an almost fairylike quality as displayed in the pleated organza and flowered tulle, as well as the liquid metallic silk chiffon. [Schnackenberg’s] influence is also embodied in the subtle sensuality and sexuality as defined by the plunging necklines and flirtatiousness of the garments. Colors are light and ethereal: delicate champagne, cloudy grays, and shimmering silver.”

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hue | fall 2011

Tatiana Starchevsky

Hue Inspires a Fashion Collection

Travels at Home

1995 Samantha Baker, Fabric Styling, Fashion Design ’93,

has been

Mark Webster, Advertising and Marketing Communications ’00

named the director of print product for Duralee, one of the largest fabric companies for home furnishings. Though she began her career in fashion design, she has been with Duralee 15 years, working in Manhattan a few blocks from FIT.

2001 Lacey Fekishazy, Fine Arts,

is one of a dozen core draftsmen for

the Sol LeWitt Foundation, installing the late artist’s shows in museums around the country. On her own, she does abstract work that blurs the boundaries between sculpture and painting. Her shaped canvases were recently on display in a three-artist show at Art 101, a gallery in Brooklyn. She also opened a shop in Bushwick, Brooklyn, called Sardine— named for its diminutive size and its tin-can-like aluminum siding—selling accessories, vintage clothing, and work by neighborhood artists.

SideTour, a web company that launched in August, subverts the boring tourist routine of museums and overpriced restaurants by connecting visitors (and locals) to experiences that offer a more intimate look into New York City’s multifarious goings-on.

“The best way to engage with cities is through the people who live there,” co-founder Mark Webster says, explaining the concept behind the company.

For example, an investment-banker-turned-monk hosts group lunches in an East Village monastery, and a model and TV personality leads tours of ethical fashions in the Lower East Side. Other SideTours include cooking classes, sailing lessons, and customized workouts. The company is working on expanding into other cities, too.

SideTour represents a sudden detour for Webster. As recently as July, he was running his own consulting business, doing web design and marketing strategy for Fuse Networks and Bloomberg Ventures, among others. On a whim, he and three friends submitted a proposal for SideTour to a prestigious business-incubator program called TechStars, in which a group of big-time CEOs act as mentors to help launch startups in three months.

Fekishazy’s Grouping, Coexisting Casually, at Art 101.

Out of 1,100 applicants, SideTour was one of a dozen selected. Webster shuttered his consulting company and hasn’t looked back.

2004

—Jonathan Vatner

Trevor Jacobson, Advertising and Marketing Communications,

is the fashion and retail director for Nylon magazine, where he sells advertising and marketing packages in the print magazine, online, and through mobile applications. Previously, he sold ads for Condé Nast Digital for four years.

2005 Erina Pindar, Fashion Merchandising Management,

was named

one of Travel Agent magazine’s “30 under 30,” recognizing up-and-coming talent in an industry often perceived as old-fashioned. Pindar oversees the brand identity and social-media efforts at SmartFlyer, a boutique travel agency geared toward the wealthy.

Nandi Chin Fernandez, Fashion Design,

Jennifer Pastecchi, Illustration, earned

won this year’s Operation Dream Dress,

in art education from the School of Visual Arts

a contest organized by Brides magazine.

in 2010 and currently works as a substitute

The theme was “artful romance,” so

teacher. Pastecchi also regularly mounts

she crafted the bodice of her wedding

exhibitions in galleries around New York City;

gown to look like the shell in Botticelli’s

“I AMazon,” a collection of Amazon-themed

The Birth of Venus, all in four-ply silk.

work, was on display at the Queensborough

It was a good year for her: Not only did

Community College Art Gallery in June. Having

she win the $10,000 contest, she also

worked as a concept designer and set dresser on

landed her first full-time design job at

several film projects, she has also recently begun

Olian, a maternity house in Miami.

making her own short films.

2007

2006

Allie Maltese, Advertising and Marketing Communications ,

Eva Capous, Advertising and Marketing Communications, Fashion Merchandising Management ’04 ,

a master’s

recently became corporate

a San Diego import, recently took a

public-relations job at West PR, which repre-

communications manager for airports for JetBlue Airways.

sents Petco and a handful of beauty companies.

She is in charge of announcements, events, education, and

She also writes about beauty and fashion for

culture-building for the 6,000 employees who work in the

AskMissA.com. Those two opportunities arose

airports the airline serves, both “above the wing” (check-in

partly thanks to Haute-Girls.com, a bicoastal

and customer-service agents, for example) and “below the

lifestyle blog that she started in July with a

wing” (baggage handlers, fuelers, and the like).

friend from New York.

The winning dress in the July 2011 issue of Brides magazine.

fitnyc.edu/hue

29

2010

Vintage with a Twist

Linda Fung, Illustration,

Tasha Arana, Patternmaking technology ’01

is lead illustrator and designer at Bright Kids NYC, an early-childhood tutoring company. When she isn’t creating illustrations for tutoring materials or designing book covers and promotional items, Fung freelances on kid-related projects and volunteers at the Brooklyn Tabernacle, where she creates

Daniel Nieto, Accessories Design and fabrication,

is

an assistant footwear designer for Schwartz & Benjamin, making shoes for Diane von Furstenberg.

For his own work, he collects exotic furs and leathers from springbok, fish, and stingrays, among other

Irina Ivanova

news from your classmates

backdrops for children’s Sunday school classes.

animals.

At Sing Blackbird, café patrons sit a few steps from the vintage clothes for sale.

When Tasha Arana followed her boyfriend to Berlin on a tourist visa, she discovered the reason for the city’s bohemian reputation: jobs are scarce and don’t pay much. She met Diana Durdic, an engineer-turned-baker, at a friend’s birthday party (Durdic made the cake). The two women shared a love of vintage and soon struck a bargain. “We set a date,” Durdic says. “If we couldn’t find a better job by then, we’d open a shop.”

Sing Blackbird, the vintage store and vegan café they now co-own, is the result of their combined passions. The double storefront on a quiet tree-lined street took six months to find and three to renovate—from removing the drop ceilings and enlarging the doorway to collecting the chairs one by one. Amid the city’s prevailing industrial-punk look, the refined décor stands out. The sleek coffee bar and chairs, in crisp heather-gray, contrast with cozy birch-patterned wallpaper. A small sewing machine in the corner is a reminder that Arana alters some of the garments, many of which are procured stateside.

She often works to get a more contemporary fit: shortening a pair of shorts, or taking in a blouse. Collared shirts sometimes become skirts, keeping the existing button front and hemline. Customers can also trade quality vintage pieces for store credit.

Though neither Arana nor Durdic was vegan, they decided to offer vegan brunch alongside the traditional rolls and cheese. In a neighborhood known for its kebabs, vegan entrees such as the “Hungry Karl” and “Bunny Breakfast” soon proved immensely

Leo de Angelis

popular. Wednesday nights, Blackbird screens movies, and the walls feature local artists’ work. Their diversified business model draws customers even in winter, when Berlin’s outdoor café life shuts down.

In two years, Sing Blackbird has been featured in Vogue Italia, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Daily Beast. “I can’t imagine leaving,” Arana says. “Having a business in New This shoe reminds Nieto of an injured animal, but the wound is filled with crystals. Unfortunately, this shoe is not engineered to be worn.

York never quite seemed possible, but here I was really confident.”

—Irina Ivanova

Michelle Plotnik, Fashion Merchandising Management,

is a wardrobe stylist for Fuse TV. Plotnik started at the music network as an intern, and now works with designers, PR showrooms, and department store studio services to dress its on-air talent. She is also lead senior stylist for short-form productions at Comedy Central, where she handles wardrobe for commercials (Axe, Twix) and show promotions.

For a live-action South Park promo, for instance, she translated the cartoon characters’ outfits into actual clothes for actors.

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hue | fall 2011

Fuse host Touré with Lady Gaga.

Fuse hosts Mark Hoppus and Amy Schumer with Snoop Dogg.

Happy Trending

Courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, cat. no. 50.2/6841.

sources of inspiration

Melissa Moylan Fashion Merchandising Management ’04

The more you’re exposed to, the sharper your eye gets. I work for the forecasting service Fashion Snoops, which reports on trends for manufacturers, retailers and licensors—companies like Nordstrom, Target, and Warner Brothers. I love doing what I do because I’m not confined to one aspect of the market; I get to see it all—runways, retail, and trade shows. Last spring, I went to the Brimfield Antique Show in Massachusetts, which is a hotbed of inspiration for the home market. I found brilliant Aztec and Navajo patterns that really resonated with what was on the runway just a few weeks earlier, particularly Proenza Schouler’s Santa Fe collection. I think the Southwestern theme, with its desert color palette and patterns, is right for now, in contrast to minimalist designs, which have been popular in fashion recently. Southwest reference has already blown up at retail, with many fast fashion retailers like H&M and Zara featuring the trend before the designer collections hit the floor. It’s always interesting to analyze trends throughout market cycles to see what sells, and anticipate what’s next.

Moylan is trend director at Fashion Snoops, specializing in women’s and men’s wear, and regularly presents trend seminars in Asia, Europe, and the U.S. She lives in Paris.

fitnyc.edu/hue

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Environmental Savings for Hue fall 2011 29 trees preserved/planted 84 lbs waterborne waste not created 12,378 gallons wastewater flow saved 1,370 lbs solid waste not generated 2,697 lbs net greenhouse gases prevented 20,640,550 BTUs energy not consumed

The cover of a handmade 1940s book, containing photos of students in FIT’s earliest graduating classes. An inside page appears on Hue’s front cover; a story about one of the graduates is on page 25. The book is owned by the Department of Special Collections and FIT Archives.

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