Hue Spring 2012

Alumni Magazine of the Fashion Institute of Technology

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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 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 Art Direction and Design Empire Design Studio

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Hue magazine on the web: fitnyc.edu/hue blog.fitnyc.edu/huetoo Get involved with FIT and your fellow alumni. “Like” the FIT Alumni page on Facebook and follow @FITAlumni on Twitter. Email the Office of Alumni Relations at allison_oldehoff@fitnyc.edu and let us know what you’ve been up to.

Environmental Savings for Spring 2012 85 trees preserved/planted 246 lbs waterborne waste not created 36,188 gallons wastewater flow saved 4,004 lbs solid waste not generated 7,884 lbs net greenhouse gases prevented 60,343,200 BTUs energy not consumed Printed by Monroe Litho Inc. on Mohawk Inxwell Super Smooth Eco White FSC-certified, 100% post consumer waste reclaimed/ recycled fiber, made with 100% renewable energy; manufactured chlorine free; certified ISO 14001:2004 Environmental Management System.

Please recycle or share this magazine.

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Features 6 Novel Ideas Author Jennifer Egan’s inspirations and fashion foibles

9 Auto Tune This instructor wrote a naughty ditty for Grace Jones

6 SEcrets of their success Career advice from elite black professionals

9 Through the (Digital) Looking Glass A faculty member designs virtual backdrops for ballet

7 A New Dynasty Insights from a conference on fashion in China 8 To Russia with Love An American fashion show behind the Iron Curtain in 1959

10 A modest proposal

Design for a mostly Muslim audience 12 FONTastic

A lesson in lettering from a cartoonist 14 The Reductionist

Meet fashion star Francisco Costa ’90

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Cover

6 Romer Pedron, Photography and the Digital Image ’09, shoots Francisco Costa in a mirror.

scan ME Chris Eliopoulos, Advertising Design ’89, drew this cartoon, full of symbols that relate to stories in this issue. (He also drew his own alumni profile—and a lesson in fonts—on p. 12.) Scan the QR code with your smartphone to find our new blog, Hue Too. The blog expands on Hue stories, details campus happenings, and shows off the accomplishments of alumni, faculty, and students.

Check it out—and post a comment!

blog.fitnyc.edu/huetoo

14 Departments 20 It Takes a Village Alums integrate traditional crafts from overseas into their contemporary lines

4 Hue’s News

7 Faculty On…

22 Fashion, the American Way Cathy Horyn, fashion critic, on 50 years of the CFDA

11 I Contact

28 Alumni notes

31 Sparks

24 Fashion week Twit Picks Students, alumni, and Diane von Furstenberg narrate fashion week in 140 characters 26 Shirt Happens

Hue’s staff writer (barely) survives a sewing course

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what’s happening on campus

Free Business Training for Designers

Sustainability Conference Details Announced

Alumni to Gather for Japan Fashion Week

Design Entrepreneurs NYC is a free series of three high-level intensive weekend seminars for emerging professional designers wanting to grow their business. The program is funded by a grant from the New York City Economic Development Corporation as part of Mayor Bloomberg’s FashionNYC2020 program to boost the city’s fashion industry.

FIT faculty and industry professionals will teach how to develop a business plan and accelerate growth, with topics that range from building a brand to production management to creating financial statements.

Applicants must have been in business at least a year and show evidence of viability, such as orders from retailers or press coverage. Apply at designentrepreneursnyc.com by March 31.

“The Winds of Change: Making Our Mark on Sustainability,” FIT’s Sixth Annual Sustainability Business and Design Conference, will take place March 27, from 8:30 am to 5 pm.

The conference will focus on best practices for now and the future. Speakers include “No Impact Man” Colin Beavan; Lorraine Smith, a sustainability consultant who has worked with Walmart, Samsung, and Eileen Fisher; and Dr. Stephen Kellert, an expert on biophilia (the connection between humans and nature) from Yale. The conference is free; register at fitnyc.edu/sustainabilityconference.

President Joyce F. Brown; Dr. Valerie Steele, director of The Museum at FIT; Dawn B Duncan, vice president for Development and Alumni Relations; John R. Jones, President of the FIT Alumni Association; and Allison Oldehoff, manager of Alumni and Faculty Relations, are visiting Japan for its fashion week, beginning March 18, to meet the hundreds of FIT alumni living there. Events include a reception at the Ralph Lauren store in Tokyo and a seminar entitled “Globalization of Fashion and the Education Needed to Support It,” led by Dr. Brown, Dr. Steele, and Tadashi Yanai, chairman, president, and CEO of Uniqlo. The seminar is being simulcast for alumni at the SUNY Global Center in Manhattan, and for students in FIT’s cafeteria, March 20 from 7-11 pm.

FIT Partners with Indian College

Jerry Speier

On Display at The Museum at FIT

Student Wins Poster Competition

The Museum at FIT

Howard Dillon, associate vice president for Academic Affairs; Garg; Appignani; and Jha.

This 1987 metallic bustier and fishtail skirt by Thierry Mugler appears in Fashion, A-Z: Highlights from the Collection of The Museum at FIT—Part One, running through May 8. About 50 garments by Dior, Prada, Schiaparelli, and other important designers since 1900 were selected from the museum’s 50,000 pieces and arranged alphabetically from Alaïa to Zoran. Part Two, featuring another 50 masterpieces, will run from May 23 to November 10.

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In 1986, the Indian Ministry of Textiles invited FIT to help set up a fashion college in India. The resulting National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) now operates in 15 cities and has more than 6,000 alumni. India’s fashion industry has exploded, too: Women’s Wear Daily recently reported that this year it will grow to more than $63 billion, from $39 billion in 2010.

A quarter-century later, NIFT has come full circle.

On November 8, two NIFT leaders—Monika S. Garg, joint secretary of the Indian Ministry of Textiles and director general of NIFT, and Banhi Jha, Fashion Design ’91, NIFT’s academic dean—came to FIT to sign an agreement that enables top NIFT students to enroll in a one-year program at FIT, and earn an AAS in addition to their NIFT bachelor’s degree.

Spearheading the partnership, along with Garg and Jha, were Raj Vangapaty, FIT’s registrar; Georgianna Appignani, FIT’s director of International Programs; and three other NIFT faculty members. Appignani, as well as professors Elaine Stone and Eva Nambeth, helped found NIFT. Jha loved her years studying at FIT and was thrilled that her students would also get to study in New York. “A lot of my learning happened in the classroom, but just as much came from imbibing the ambience and magic of the city.”

Malik Moore, Graphic Design ’12, won the National Portfolio Day Association’s poster-design competition.

The poster, a calendar of 2012-13 National Portfolio Days for students interested in higher education in the visual arts, will be sent to thousands of high schools and community colleges in the U.S. and Canada.

hue | fall 2011

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City Source Expo Highlights New York Suppliers

QUICK READ

>> FIT’s Diversity Expo 2011, Diversity Passport: Exploring and Bridging Global Connections,

Jason and Richard Lansey of Gelberg Braid, a custom trimmings company.

On January 10, FIT’s Enterprise Center held the first annual City Source Expo, a trade show at which 43 local suppliers—manufacturers, patternmakers, sample makers, and trims companies—met with and took orders from more than 700 designers, apparel companies, retailers, and students. The event showed designers that they can produce goods in New York City and connected suppliers to a significant pool of clients.

“With prices overseas going up, a lot of business is coming back,” exhibitor Jason Lansey, vice president of Gelberg Braid, said.

“People are surprised that we make everything here.”

The event was funded by a $19,500 SUNY Workforce Development Grant. The Garment Industry Development Corporation and the Fashion Center Business Improvement District helped to recruit manufacturers and market the event. The Enterprise Center will soon hold a related series of workshops on business development for suppliers.

Students Document Occupy Wall Street

Lydia Maria Pfeffer. Fine Arts ’13

Jerry Speier

unfolded November 7-11, with representatives

Urban Studio Makes Waves in Miami For the ARTNOW Fair at Art Basel Miami in December, FIT’s Urban Studio art collective created a 16-foot installation, Stroke & Poke, in the pool at the Catalina Hotel and Beach Club in South Beach. The sculpture, a black triangular column that appears both seductive and threatening, solid and unstable, was conceived by Melissa Starke, Fine Arts ’09 and Fine Arts Department coordinator, with help from Pansum Cheng, a sculpture technician at FIT. Bil Donovan, Illustration ’77, adjunct associate professor of Illustration, also presented at Art Basel. See his mixed-media pieces on the Hue Too blog (blog.fitnyc.edu/huetoo).

FIT Appoints Two Deans

from Abercrombie & Fitch, Macy’s, and VF Corporation speaking about inclusive hiring practices. The centerpiece was an India Festival, featuring traditional dance, crafts, and cuisine. >> Dominican-born designer Oscar de la Renta will receive the 2012 Couture Council Award for Artistry of Fashion at a luncheon on September 12 at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center. >> FIT’s Interior Design Department has awarded Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the architecture and design firm known for the High Line and the renovation of Lincoln Center, this year’s Lawrence J. Israel Prize. >> College Magazine named FIT the second most hipster campus in the U.S., behind NYU, citing its “style cred,” “rich vegetarian menu,” and “obvious shopping access.” >> Jaqui Lividini was appointed to the FIT Board of Trustees in January. She is the founder and

Steven Frumkin has been named dean for the Jay and Patty Baker School of Business and Technology.

He was most recently associate professor and associate director-researcher at the School of Business Administration/School of Textiles at Philadelphia University, developing clothing for the U.S. military. He taught in FIT’s Textile Development and Marketing program from 1994 to 2000.

Mary E. Davis, PhD, has been appointed dean for the School of Graduate Studies, effective in July. Previously, she was chair of the department of music at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. She has written and edited books about Diaghilev, Satie, and Jimmie Rodgers, and, as a specialist in American popular music, she advises the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

CEO of Lividini & Co., a brand development firm for fashion and lifestyle companies and, before that, was senior vice president of fashion merchandising and communications at Saks Fifth Avenue. She also studied at FIT for a semester. Edwin A. Goodman, chairman of the board, was reappointed for a third term through 2018. >> Kieran Dallison, Fashion Design ’12, is the winner of the first Gilt.com/CFDA All-Star Scholarship. The design contest was open to students who took home CFDA awards in 2011. He won $10,000, and his ready-to-wear collection will be available in June on Gilt.com.

A Banner Year for Student Athletes

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Marcello Cutti Jr.

Some FIT students joined the Occupy Wall Street protests; others captured the movement in photos. Juan C. Lopez, Photography and the Digital Image ’12, took this photograph as an assignment for Jessica Wynne’s class, The Picture Story: A Professional Approach to Photojournalism. “In my four years of teaching this class, this is the first time an event has lasted long enough for me to assign it,” Wynne said.

FIT Athletics had a stellar fall season. Both the women’s volleyball and tennis teams were Region XV champions and competed in the NJCAA National Championship—and women’s tennis placed third in the nation. Women’s cross-country finished second in the region and competed in the national championship; the half-marathon team went to the national championship, too. Women’s soccer finished third in the region, a remarkable feat for its first year.

fitnyc.edu/hue

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Secrets of Their Success Five masters of their fields offer career advice

Pieter M. van Hattem

Jennifer Egan on her latest book, thieving, and shopping

by Vanessa Machir

For most people, having their wallet stolen is a nuisance. For author Jennifer Egan, it’s inspiring.

“I have been robbed so many times and in so many ways,” she said, remembering a particularly creative thief who stole her wallet and then called her, impersonating a Citibank employee, in order to elicit her PIN number. “She was really good,” Egan admitted. Years later, she wrote about a sticky-fingered character called Sasha in A Visit from the Goon Squad, which won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award in 2011.

“It’s nice to come back to this block,” Egan said while discussing Goon Squad last fall, at an event organized by FIT’s English and Speech Department. She lived on West 28th Street for five years, though her sojourn in hyper-stylish Chelsea did little for her fashion sense.

“I’ve never been to a sample sale. I think I would hate it,” she said. “I’m almost always wearing things that other people have given to me”—even clothing from her mother, she confessed.

Her visual sense, however, is strong.

For each novel she writes, she conjures an image that corresponds to its structure.

For one of her previous books, Look at Me,

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it was a figure eight, while Goon Squad “is a tangle of yarn or string,” she said. No surprise—it’s a collection of linked stories, each featuring a different character, tone, and style (one consists entirely of PowerPoint slides).

Egan’s writing has been called “eerily prescient.” For example, one of the characters in Look at Me—completed months before September 11—is an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist. The future portrayed in Goon Squad seems bleak.

“ In the 19th century, novels were big, swaggering, bold, flexible animals.”

Strollers are banned in public, lest they hinder an evacuation, and tweeters are paid to manipulate public opinion. The author, however, remains optimistic.

“Human beings are amazingly resourceful.

Sometimes we’re a little slow to figure out when to use our resources to solve problems . . . but once we do, we usually solve them.”

As for the future of literature, she believes the past can offer direction.

“There have been times in our literary history when novels were doing more than a lot of novels do now. If you look at the 19th century, those novels were big, swaggering, bold, flexible animals,” she said. “My feeling is, take chances!”

Watch Egan chat with Hue at fitnyc.edu/hue.

Elizabeth Allen

Novel Ideas

To mark Black History Month, FIT’s Black Student Union assembled a panel of alums and other industry professionals on February 16 to talk about their careers in “the evolving fashion landscape” in front of a packed house of rapt students and graduates.

The presenters found success through utter devotion to their jobs. For example, Amy Andrieux, founder of TheStarkLife.com, started her career as an unpaid assistant at Trace magazine—and within five years became publisher.

“I lived at Trace,” she said. “If you needed something at any hour, everyone knew to call Amy.” Simone Smalls, Direct Marketing ’96, an entertainment, celebrity, and special events publicist, echoed that sentiment.

“Working eight hours is for survival,” she quipped. “Anything beyond that is for success.”

Smalls’s advice to those trying to break in to the industry was, “Sometimes ‘no’ doesn’t mean ‘no,’ it means ‘not right now.’ Keep sending out your portfolio and you might get a shot.”

For other panelists, success meant adaptability. Since digital cameras have made photography technically simpler, fashion photographer Marc Baptiste—who has shot Beyoncé and Drew Barrymore, among many others—said that his artist’s eye has become more valuable. He also talked about embracing Twitter as a marketing tool.

And June Haynes, senior vice president of retail at Valentino, explained how, in response to a drooping economy, the couture house created bridge product without cheapening the brand. For example, Valentino now offers embellished tees at $200 and jellies (plastic shoes) that start at $210.

“Believe me, people still want to feel exclusive,” said Haynes, who attended FIT, “but the girl who wants a bit of the high end can have it.”

Andrieux, Smalls, Baptiste, Haynes, and Jerome LaMaar, Fabric Styling ’07, brand manager and designer of Compleated, a jewelry company.

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A New Dynasty Five things to know before doing business in China

2. China is the fastest growing luxury market in the world. “Coach is doubling, maybe quadrupling its stores in China,” Zakkour said.

“We can make China into the mall of the world.”

3. The Chinese make half of their luxury purchases overseas—in Paris, New York City, and other fashion hubs. For example, 35 percent of Harrods’ sales, and 30 percent of Burberry’s, come from the Chinese, said Renee Hartmann, co-founder of the China Luxury Network, which helps luxury brands break into China.

4. Most Chinese fashion is designed in other countries. “It’s hard to start a luxury brand,” Hartmann said, explaining that luxury consumers want brand heritage—a sense of history—which doesn’t develop overnight. As a result, the Chinese buy foreign brands, and Chinese designers can’t find jobs in China.

5. To sell in China, apparel designers need to become a retail brand. “There are no [wholesale] buyers in China,” Zakkour said. Instead, a company must sell its clothes at retail, either by opening stand-alone stores or working with distributors to rent a booth in a department store. E-commerce is becoming more common, too— though Chinese seldom use credit cards, so most online transactions still end with a cash payment in person.

Drawing by Amy Geller, Illustration MA ’10.

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Matthew Septimus

1. Chinese factories are closing. Now that manufacturing success has lifted 300 million Chinese out of poverty, low-wage factory workers have become scarce, especially in the wealthier coastal provinces.

“China doesn’t want tchotchke jobs for eight cents an hour any more than we do,” said Michael A. Zakkour, principal of Technomic Asia, a consulting firm that helps companies expand into the region. As a result, factories are moving to Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

insights from the classroom and beyond

“Made in China” is one phrase you won’t be hearing much longer. As the nation becomes wealthier, its history of production is fast becoming a future of consumption. The Chinese have embraced luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Hermès, and Coach—and they’re hungry for more. Those involved in producing and merchandising fashion should take heed.

So proclaimed the panel of experts at a December 6 event entitled “Fashion, China, and You,” at New York’s Confucius Institute for Business, a learning center created by the SUNY Levin Institute and Nanjing University of Finance and Economics. The event was co-organized by FIT’s department of International Trade and Marketing for the Fashion Industries.

For doing business in China, though, the learning curve is steep.

As a start, the experts offered some basics.

Eastern Exposure Pamela Ellsworth, chairperson Global Fashion Management, MPS The two weeks that students in our program study manufacturing in Hong Kong and China are tough for me—it’s hotter than hell in Hong Kong, and we have to travel by bus for hours in China—but great for them. We visit one of the largest producers of men’s and women’s shirts, and a leather company that makes Prada bags. We also visit the Guangzhou Embroidery Art Factory, which, like many companies in China, has been a family business for generations—the Chinese value doing business with those they know well. That’s one of those cultural nuances that the students learn. Guanxi is the guiding principle of business and social interaction. It’s the idea of being connected to people in a web of interrelationships; trust and reciprocity are key. In America, you can meet a stranger in Starbucks and walk away with a business deal, but the students learn that in China it can take years to develop a relationship; you can’t just cut to the chase. I am always surprised by how slowly the Chinese move in business with outsiders. Here, if a deal goes bad you can sue, but in Chinese culture, legal agreements are not as explicit as ours. Guanxi doesn’t literally factor into every decision, but it greases the wheels. It’s very subtle and complex. I tell the students that the more I go to China, the less I understand its contradictions.

But I’ve learned a lot about patience.

fitnyc.edu/hue

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Looking Back

To Russia with Love Jacqueline Clay Chester,

Apparel Design ’60, remembers modeling for the

Far Left: I’m on the right in this Life magazine photo of the fashion show, wearing a yellow two-piece bathing suit.

Left: At $500, my evening gown from the show was the most expensive piece I’d ever worn. Here I’m posing in it on the roof of FIT. Below: A recent photo of me.

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wedding. In one, we wore basic black dresses.

The male models came out with hat boxes full of belts, scarves, gloves, and purses, and we embellished in front of the audience.

The clothes were just perfect. For the work scene, my white wool dress was to die for. The bathing suit had a little skirt around the hips but also an outer skirt that I wore like a cape.

In the evenings we could go anywhere.

The subways were absolutely beautiful, with chandeliers and mosaics. I saw my first ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre, and I went again to hear a program of Tchaikovsky, whom I love. And Russians would invite us out to dinner. The organizers warned us not to talk about them by name, because our hotel rooms might be bugged.

And Russians weren’t allowed in our rooms.

One young man, who came to bring me a bottle of vodka and some flowers, was later arrested.

I don’t know what happened to him after that.

The Russians were very extreme.

Half a century later, I still model. Recently, I was in a commercial about diabetes. I’ve also painted, designed jewelry, and written. My play, A Conversation Between Malcolm X and President Obama, debuted in 2009 in Atlanta. It got great reviews. I’m hoping that it will come to New York.

I’m also working on a memoir. The title: From Brooklyn to Moscow.

Vincent Bursey

I was too skinny as a girl, a wallflower. All my girlfriends were buxom and heavy-hipped. When I won a beauty contest in high school, I couldn’t believe it—it was like I had tricked someone.

In 1959, I was in a patternmaking class at FIT, and I was called to Miss Goodman’s office.

[Shirley Goodman was a key figure in FIT’s development.] Her first question was, “What are you doing this summer?” And then, “How would you like to go to Moscow?”

At first I thought she might mean Moscow, Idaho. She explained that an audition was taking place the next day for models for the American National Exhibition in Russia. I was the only FIT student chosen.

It would be seven weeks in Moscow. My mother was afraid to tell the family, because they would have advised against it. None of them had ever been to Europe. I worried not at all, though I could never understand why our country wanted to do this, when there was a Cold War going on.

The exhibition was on 11 acres of Sokolniki Park. Besides the fashion show, there were houses to show how Americans lived. Many Russians couldn’t believe that one family occupied a two-story home. Then, of course, Khrushchev and Nixon had their famous Kitchen Debate.

The fashion shows lasted 35 minutes. There were several scenes to show what Americans wore for different activities: work, the beach, a ball, a

Kat Flattery Ruiz

Carl Mydans /Time & Life Pictures /Getty Images

1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow

Two Russian artists named Boris and Tamara asked me to pose for oil paintings. Tamara told me to dress inconspicuously and met me a block from her apartment. We scooted down the street like KGB agents. Her room was just big enough for a twin bed and dresser.

She pulled the shades down so the neighbors wouldn’t see us and turned on Radio Free Europe—she couldn’t trust Russian radio. They had to paint in semidarkness, because the little bulb they had wasn’t very bright. This is one of the eight portraits they did of me.

hue | spring 2012

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Auto Tune

Through the (Digital) Looking Glass

An FIT instructor co-wrote a hit song for Grace Jones

By Alex Joseph Has there ever been a song as delightfully ribald as Grace Jones’s

John Goodwin, Computer Animation, brings a technological twist to the ballet

“Pull Up to the Bumper”? Memorable lyrics with a naughty refrain (“Pull up to my bumper baby/in your long black limousine”) made it a succès de scandale. In 1981, it spent seven weeks at No. 2 on Billboard’s dance chart.

By Rachel Ellner

Today, Dana Manno, author of those lyrics, is FIT’s Theater

Ensemble advisor. She directs student shows like Cabaret and Guys and Dolls, and imports Actors’ Equity assistants to work

Falling down a rabbit hole just got easier.

on the productions. She also teaches Afro-Caribbean dance and

Sets for the Pasadena Civic Ballet’s production

aerobics at the college.

of Alice in Wonderland don’t exist in the

Manno came to write the song in a roundabout way. In the

physical world. They reside in a computer as

’70s, she danced with Katherine Dunham and the Metropolitan

digital animation files, and come to life only

Opera Ballet Company. She also choreographed and starred

during performances.

in Gordon Parks’s 1976 bio-pic, Leadbelly. One fall, she taught

dance at Adelphi University, and commuted home to

chases the White Rabbit, who jumps into the

Manhattan Plaza, the artists’ residence on 43rd Street. “When

orchestra pit. “The magic is the audience’s

I got to the garage one night, I was exhausted from teaching, so

surprise when they suddenly see [a projected

I was resting in the car for a minute,” she says. “I noticed a sign,

video of ] Alice and the White Rabbit falling

‘Pull Up to Bumper.’ I’m from Montserrat, and we Caribbeans

miles and miles down the rabbit hole,” says

love double entendre.” She pulled out her tape recorder and

John Goodwin, who created the animated

improvised. The entire composition took 30 minutes.

sequence using Photoshop and After Effects,

Flash forward a year, to 1981: Grace Jones was about to

and embedded the dancers in it via green

leave for the Bahamas to record an album when her babysitter

screen. “Moments later, they’re twirling on

quit. Manno’s sister, model and actress Marcia McBroom

stage as live performers again.”

(Beyond the Valley of the Dolls), a friend of the singer, suggested

Manno watch Jones’s son in exchange for the experience of

His technique thrills audiences, and it

also alters the economics of staging a ballet,

hanging out with her. The two women clicked, and one night

allowing performances in smaller venues.

they were in producer Chris Blackwell’s sauna discussing favorite

Alice premiered in February 2011. When it

songs. Manno mentioned the one she’d written. Jones asked her

returns, sets won’t have to be dragged out

to sing it, and when she did, Jones cried, “That’s fantastic!”

of storage. There won’t be fees for rentals,

When the album came out, Manno received a co-writing credit.

In the first scene of the ballet, Alice

refurbishing, or transport. “For touring,

Manno and Jones remain friends. Manno recalls hanging

it’s amazing. You just need a projector and

out together at Studio 54 with actor Geoffrey Holder and

a disk,” Goodwin says. Traditional ballets

producer Nile Rodgers. She still gets royalty checks for “Pull Up to

require pauses for set changes between

the Bumper”; it was recently used in a James Franco film. And

scenes. Animated sets improve the flow

if Jones is ever willing, Manno has a pair of compositions for her.

of performance.

One’s called “Pedal to the Metal,” and the other? “Rough and

Tough.” Is radio ready for Manno—even now?

A former dancer-choreographer, Goodwin

changed careers after studying Computer Animation at FIT, and he now teaches in the department. The computer allows Goodwin to add more of the 145-year-old tale’s idiosyncratic surrealism, and use his creativity— within reason, of course. “We had to make sure the animation didn’t overpower the ballet.”

Manno performed the song with the group Earthdriver for Central Park’s SummerStage series, 2010.

Bernard James

Alice and the White Rabbit fall down the rabbit hole in Goodwin’s animated backdrop for the Pasadena Civic Ballet’s Alice in Wonderland.

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In many ballets, sets are an afterthought,

Goodwin says. With this Alice, choreographer and set designer are working together.

Next for Goodwin: Pasadena’s production of Aladdin. fitnyc.edu/hue

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A Modest Proposal Rabia Z.’s customers can be fashionable without showing skin

by Alex Joseph In November, designer Rabia Zargarpur showed her summer 2012 collection at Casa La Femme, a sumptuous Egyptian restaurant in Greenwich Village. Rendered in jersey in gorgeous jewel tones, her slinky tops, harem trousers, and duster coats, embellished with screen prints of traditional Mukhawara embroidery, exhibited exquisite draping. Zargarpur, who goes

by Rabia Z., also her company name, studied this skill at FIT. Zargarpur’s outfits cover the wearer enough to be modest, but the designer doesn’t call them hijab. “The term ‘Islamic fashion’ is an oxymoron,” she says. “Islam is so spiritual, and fashion is so out there.”

Stylish women don’t have to be religious to abhor midriff-baring or skin-tight trends.

“We have a lot of non-Muslim customers who like that our clothes are modest and fashionable at the same time.”

Point taken. The designer herself is Muslim, though, like most of her customers.

She founded her namesake company after 9/11, when she lived in New York. A spiritual transformation inspired her to begin covering, and to start a company dedicated to the practical problem of looking chic while staying modest. In 2007, sales picked up after she won the Emerging Designer Award for her debut collection at Dubai Fashion Week. The Financial Times and Vogue.com

“ The term ‘Islamic fashion’ is an oxymoron.”

—Rabia Z.

took note. A lively presence on Facebook and YouTube, Rabia Z., now based in Dubai, sells online in 45 countries, with its largest sales to young American Muslims.

After the show, when told that her clothes looked a little, well, sexy, the designer

laughed. “We keep the shows buyer- and media-friendly. My customer knows how to wear the look a little looser, or with a bigger head scarf.” A woman wearing hijab who introduced herself as the Crown Princess of Dubai told a journalist that observant Muslim women usually assemble modest styles piecemeal; Rabia is unusual, she said, in marketing a total, unified look. Taking a tip from Yohji Yamamoto and other Japanese designers who use abstract silhouettes, Rabia has made jersey her signature fabric, as it provides perfect drape. Also: “It’s breathable, comfortable, practical,” she says. But beauty comes first. “The Quran says Allah loves beauty. He was well dressed,” she says.

“Hijab means you don’t have to be sexy, but you don’t have to be ugly, either.”

Watch “Fashioning Hijab” online

Recently, Hue interviewed students and alumni who cover. We asked, “When did you start covering? What does it mean to you? Do you adapt it for weddings and workouts?” For context, we talked to an Islamic studies scholar and Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of FIT’s museum. We turned the surprising results into a short video, supported by grants from FIT’s Diversity Council.

Check it out: fitnyc.edu/hue

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eye contact Jaiah Smith Advertising and Marketing Communications ’13

a student in first person

That’s quite a look.

Beauty is about more than the physical reality of your features.

I’ve worn hijab for a year, and niqab, the face veil, since Ramadan.

I have girlfriends who wear all black, but I prefer to dabble with splashes of color. I was voted Best Dressed in high school actually, before I started covering.

Is it weird to wear niqab at a place like FIT?

Not really. You know how, at the end of Sex and the City 2, those women take off their veils and they’re wearing off-the-runway Versace? That’s exaggerated. But I do wear a Michael Kors watch and BCBG leopard print flats!

You were raised Christian, in Addisleigh Park, Queens.

Your mother was a reverend. What happened?

I had trouble with certain ambiguities in Christianity. I made my shahada, a declaration of faith, three years ago. I went to the mosque uncovered, in jeans, with my hair in a bun. The imam, although polite, didn’t make eye contact. Later, I realized this was his way of giving me the privacy I didn’t give myself.

You say niqab is about privacy and protection. Please explain.

Men are much more respectful. On the subway, it’s “Sister, can I give you a seat?” and not, “Shorty, let me get your number.”

Niqab does for the Muslim sister what the Do Not Disturb sign does for the hotel guest. Wearing the veil puts a limit on me as well; I represent more than just myself. Niqab distinguishes me as a believer and reminds me to resist temptation.

Now that you cover, what sort of reactions do you get?

One time, in October, someone said, “It’s not Halloween yet.”

I didn’t answer. Muslims are instructed to guard their tongues.

The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, has said: He who believes in Allah and the Last Day, let him speak good or keep quiet.

You’re a student ambassador, and give tours for prospective students and their parents. Do you explain the niqab?

I don’t. I just say, “Hi, I’m Jaiah. I’m an AMC student.” People are curious. You can see it.

I bet. What’s the biggest misconception about your look?

Matthew Septimus

That I’m oppressed. When actually, I’m so liberated! I’m not worried about blemishes or my waistline. It’s such a relief, it really is. I enjoy the privacy, the mystique. My style is my own.

I don’t feel the urge to pay exorbitant prices for jeans and handbags. Wearing niqab is totally my choice. And I love it.

Do you ever feel lonely on campus?

At times. I’m very vocal in class. That gives people a better understanding of who I might be. We had to do group projects in a copywriting course, and I was afraid that I’d get chosen last. But several people approached me right away. People don’t know my face, but they know me.

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The Reductionist Francisco Costa, Fashion Design ’90, creative director of Calvin Klein Collection, is redefining minimalism

by Alex Joseph Portrait by Romer Pedron ’09

A few weeks ago, a messenger brought me an invitation to a

His designs have been called conceptual and

fashion show. It was like no other I’ve received—

architectural, full of erudite, modernist references.

deliberate, sans-serif type incised in weighty foam

One of his first collections at Calvin Klein was

core in a shade so subtle it seemed designed to

inspired by sculptor Constantin Brancusi, famous

start arguments over the difference between

for Sleeping Muse (1908), an eerily smooth, alien-

cream and white. Not a drop of ink spoiled the

like bronze head; artist Donald Judd, creator of

elegance; you had to tilt the thing toward the light

the famous Stack (1967)—12 galvanized green

to read it. Naturally, this austere artifact was an

iron “shelves”—is also a touch point. The crass,

invitation to the fall 2012 Calvin Klein Collection

image-cluttered contemporary world seems a far

show. The clothes would be created by the

cry from Costa’s work.

Brazilian-born designer Francisco Costa, and they

would be of a piece with that invitation. Meaning:

the aesthetic of Calvin Klein, Fashion Design ’63,

I would have to pay strict attention, to notice

himself. In Minimalism and Fashion, Costa described

everything, in order to understand.

what happened to his own work after joining the

When it comes to Costa, minimalism can be a

There’s another, obvious reference, of course:

house in 2001: “I learned to strip an idea down to

bad word. No designer wants to be pigeonholed,

its very essence, and then have the discipline to

and anyway, the term isn’t precise enough. Costa

look for more to refine. I call it being ‘Calvin-ized.’”

pointed this out when we met. “I like to think of my work as more ‘reductionist’ than minimal,” he said,

Searching for my place in the dark, cavernous

“because you’re editing and editing and editing.

room where the show would be, I wandered

But it’s also very full! Full of volume, excitement,

through a crowd that included actresses Rooney

thoughts.” In his introduction to a recent book,

Mara and Emma Stone, both wearing Costa.

Minimalism and Fashion, he defined the word in

The clothes lacked any superficial effects, so at

the context of his work at Calvin Klein: “[It’s] about

first I hardly noticed Mara’s sleeveless black wool

creating a perfect balance out of imbalance—

lace dress or Stone’s vermilion separates; instead,

about pairing shapes, fabrics, proportions, and

I noticed their faces, which looked somehow

colors that speak to the harmony of the whole.”

luminous in the gloom. I was reminded of

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Billy Farrell/BFAnyc.com Runway shots: Dan Lecca

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This page, top: Actresses Emma Stone and Rooney Mara wear Costa in the front row of the fall 2012 Calvin Klein Collection show.

Left, and opposite page: Other looks from the show.

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Chanel’s epigram: “Dress shabbily, they notice the dress; dress impeccably, they notice the woman.”

It’s a sentiment Costa himself might have uttered.

The show began with a burst of stripped-

down electronica music. Then came the Calvin-ized outfits. Dresses and coats were rendered in black or parchment hues, or, occasionally, vivid poppy red. Many were bisected with matte glazed silver belts. Full, flared skirts provided volume. There

brand, and further, how his particular take on

were simple black evening dresses featuring shiny

this style came to be so unlike the busy, artificial

black embroidery, and sexy, capacious leather

America of, say, Times Square. As we talked, he

pants. What struck me most, though, was a motif

drew together the strands of his childhood and

of deliciously tactile wools.

the particular American style he reveres, and

renders in his designs.

Costa told me that he starts each collection

with a fabric. “There’s a concept, but the fabric

really is what tells the story.” He chooses one from

Living, 1930-1965, at the Los Angeles County

the previous season to create continuity. No

Museum of Art,” he said. “L.A. meant cars and

sketching is involved. Instead, he feels his way

freeways, and on the West Coast they associated

along. “I do a basic silhouette, and then I take that

them with freedom, with this beatnik sense of

fabric and I drape, and I cut and paste,” he said.

coolness, and that was where their style came

“I cannot design any other way!”

from. Charles and Ray Eames lived in this house

that, from the outside, looks like the Rietveld chair.

The 33 outfits for fall 2012 looked like what

“I recently saw this exhibition, California

a girl with a dragon tattoo would wear if she

And that chair is not decorative. Oh, man, is it not

quit computer hacking and became, say, a

decorative!” (The severely planar Rietveld has nary

high-powered literary agent. She could wear them

a curve that might appeal to a cuddle-seeking

today and she could probably wear them in 2022.

human.) “But then the Eameses lived this kind of

They were a hit. International Herald-Tribune critic

cool, hippie lifestyle there, and they made this

Suzy Menkes wrote of the collection, “The skill of

furniture that’s organic, based on comfort,

Mr. Costa has been to give a fresh identity to

forward and modern. And so I find that is America

Calvin Klein, introducing not just 21st-century

to me, that spirit.

fashion pieces like low-crotch pants, but also a

surface tension with gleaming stitched leather

continued, “but it also represents simple, modern

or rougher, shaved shearling. The result was a

values. Think of Brasilia, for instance.” The

focused collection so apparently simple but so

country’s capital was created in just five years,

densely achieved.”

completed in 1960. “It’s a totally manufactured

At Klein headquarters, I sat beside Costa on a

The body of the plane is the body of the govern-

leather couch in a small, white fitting room with

ment, where all the services are located, and

a purple orchid nodding dutifully on a shelf. He’d

then people live to the north and south,” on the

cut short a design session for our chat, but when

“wings.” It’s so immaculately ordered, he added,

he arrived, wearing a tailored white oxford, he

that the city doesn’t even need traffic lights.

seemed perfectly at ease.

“That’s design utopia, exactly what modernism

was about, you know?”

“Brazil is a very lush country and culture,” he

city. It was created in the shape of an airplane.

Critics have pretty much given up on finding

stereotypical “hot Brazilian” touches—blaring

flower prints, say, or racy hemlines—in Costa’s

designing children’s wear, but he says he was

work. Last year, he told Menkes that those

never influenced by her aesthetic. He did, however,

associations belong more to Rio than the small

observe her skills. “I think that is why I have this

town, Guarani, where he’s from. I asked how it

love affair with the scissors. We had to go to

felt for him to be in charge of an iconic American

work in the factory after school. We would be

Costa’s mother started her own business

sketching or cutting or pasting. My mom had this gift to follow the fabric or the paper and just cut—boomp!—and that was that.” Soon after she died, he left for New York.

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Costa, around age 6, with his aunt, mother, father, and uncle, leaving church after a wedding.

At the time, the family did not buy their clothes, but had a local seamstress create custom outfits.

Even the men’s suits were tailored locally.

Costa entered FIT in the late ’80s as a

Costa is not a designer to turn to for celebrity

continuing education student; at the time, he was

gossip, though he has certainly dressed his share

taking ESL classes at Hunter. Struggling fashion

of red carpet habitués. A silver column dress with

design students take heed: Costa says he was

a slit in the bodice worn by Gwyneth Paltrow at the

“terrible” at sewing, and, in fact, none of his

Academy Awards was one the most buzzed-about

garments was selected for the final fashion show.

outfits in 2011. Asked to name a muse, however,

(In 2008, while accepting FIT’s Mortimer C. Ritter

he chooses eccentric British fashion editor Camilla

Alumni Award at commencement, he said, “I feel

Nickerson, for her intelligence and “subversive

like this is my graduation, because I never attended

spirit.” It’s a quality he admires, and was reminded

the last one.”) One experience he had as a student,

of recently when reading Patti Smith’s memoir,

however, left a big impression. He wanted to

Just Kids. The woman he’s designing for might

participate in a design competition sponsored by

have nothing to do with the industry. She might

the Italian Trade Commission. Georgianna

not be Western, either; the Collection’s largest

Appignani, FIT’s director of International Programs,

market is actually Korea.

was instrumental. “I looked at his portfolio and

I said, ‘Of course.’” Costa won. He was flown to

more international. “I think the world is opening

Como, Italy, and, Appignani says, “he was intro-

up even more, you know? We talk about the

duced to the European sensibility, and that luxury

Middle East, we talk about all the up-and-coming

market.” To this day, Costa credits Appignani for

countries—Russia, China, India, Brazil.... So much

spotting his promise, and feels that winning gave

excitement in those parts of the world,” he says.

him the confidence to forge his career.

expect wildly divergent designs. That essential

For more than a decade, he worked his way up,

Indeed, Costa sees fashion becoming ever

But while his own work may evolve, don’t

starting at Bill Blass and burnishing his reputation

continuity has less to do with the constraints of

at Oscar de la Renta, at Balmain Couture, and at

the Calvin Klein aesthetic (on the contrary, he feels

Gucci under Tom Ford. In 2001, he was recruited

“spoiled” to be working on the Collection, “the halo

for a position at Klein, and he became the creative

of the brand”) than with fashion itself—which has

director of Calvin Klein Women’s Wear Collection

barely changed, he says, in the last 20 years. He

in 2003. Two CFDA awards for women’s wear

refers to an article by Kurt Andersen in the January

designer of the year followed, in 2006 and 2008.

2012 Vanity Fair. Andersen points out that during

Top: Getty Images; Billy Farrell; Wire Image Global

the 20th century, American culture (music, literature, fashion) changed radically every two decades, but it has remained mysteriously static in the face of recent technological revolutions.

Costa’s work can be seen as part of the zeitgeist.

Has he absorbed all the changes in media in the past few years? Does he process every tweet and rightly. Costa’s brainy, stripped down creations are a monument to stability, exactly what our times—

Courtesy of Francisco Costa

and fashion—seem to be calling for. 

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Bottom: Getty Images Global; Wire Image; Getty Images/Steve Granitz

Facebook update? “That’s ridiculous,” he replies,

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Top: Getty Images; Billy Farrell; Wire Image Global Bottom: Getty Images Global; Wire Image; Getty Images/Steve Granitz

Stars wearing Costa, clockwise from top left: Katie Holmes at the 2011 Emmy Awards; Costa with Uma Thurman at the Calvin Klein Collection dinner, 2011; Heidi Klum at the 2012 Golden Globes; Gwyneth Paltrow at the 2011 Academy Awards; Naomi Watts at Elle magazine’s 18th annual Women in Hollywood event, 2011; Freida Pinto and Rosario Dawson at the opening of London’s Design Museum, 2011.

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Updating traditional crafts in the name of cultural preservation— and profit

Sigrid Holbik

It Takes a Village Above: A Guatemalan artisan spinning yarn on a bicycle wheel.

By Jonathan Vatner

Below left: Patti Carpenter’s embroidered pillows from Bolivia.

William Boyd

Of the 50 countries that Patti Carpenter, Fashion Design ’75 and Fashion Illustration ’76, has visited, Haiti was the most devastated—even before the 2010 earthquake. During a 2006 visit, the electricity would run out in the late afternoon, often plunging Port-au-Prince into darkness all night. Children in tatters drank filthy water. Theft was rampant. A sense of hopelessness hung in the air. Then the earthquake flattened the region. Relief organizations from all over the world set up tent cities, and a temporary solution soon became near-permanent.

“People moved down from the hills to live in the tent cities, because it was better than living in the slums,” Carpenter says.

Carpenter, president and creative director of Continuum Home, designs salable products that artisans in developing countries can produce using indigenous methods, and then finds a market for those products. While on a trip sponsored by the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund, she found a cooperative of women who were knitting dolls from recycled yarn and cotton batting. Carpenter tweaked the design by making the girl dolls more colorful and standardizing the size. She named them JouJou Dolls, a creole word for toy and a pun on a West African word for energy, juju—a winking reference to the Haitian belief in witchcraft.

Then she convinced a handful of retailers in the U.S., including the Greenwich Village boutique Mxyplyzyk, to carry them.

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Patti Carpenter

Left: JouJou Dolls from Haiti.

She believes that the dolls will remind buyers to “conjure their power for good.” “My goal is that everybody have them,” she says. “If we do business with these women, they can lift themselves out of poverty and not need the aid that they’re still waiting for.”

The kind of work Carpenter does has been the backbone of sustainable development efforts around the world, according to Sass Brown, Global Fashion Management ’07, resident director of FIT in Florence and author of Eco Fashion, who consults and lectures internationally about heritage crafts and traditional skills. The income strengthens the artisans’ communities and, in an age of mass production, preserves time-honored techniques.

“The developing world is the only part of the planet that retains these skills,” Brown explains. “An eradication of these skills could mean an eradication of handmade products.”

Carpenter began her career as a designer, but the higher she climbed the corporate ladder, the less designing she got to do.

By the turn of the millennium, she was a vice president of design and merchandising for Ralph Lauren’s licensed collections with Jones New York. “It was all about the numbers rather than the inspiration I would have brought from an art show, fashion show, or film,” she says. “I felt called to do more with the gifts I had been given.”

For New Year’s Eve in 1999, she flew to Brazil (her top choice in case the direst Y2K predictions came true) and stood at the edge of the ocean with four million celebrants clothed in white,

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While Patti Carpenter focuses on home goods, Soham Dave, Global Fashion Management ’09, designs women’s clothing inspired by traditional Indian crafts—and hires Indian artisans to manufacture it.

His company, also called Soham Dave, is, according to Sass Brown, “a good example of a contemporary design house that is partnering with craftspeople to produce one-of-a-kind work.”

Meghann Sandu

Sigrid Holbik

offering flowers to Yemanja, West African goddess of the sea. In that ecstatic moment, she vowed to nourish her passion for design.

She had been volunteering with the nonprofit Aid to Artisans, and she decided to make sustainable development her new career. She launched Continuum Home, her international design and development consultancy and, for the next five years, worked with Aid to Artisans in Africa and Central and South America, to produce goods and sell them to Western retailers.

Carpenter determines the colors and patterns based on fashion trends and her own creative inspiration. She also decides what product will sell. For example, few U.S. customers will buy indigenous clothing. Many, however, will buy a tablecloth, pillow, or handbag made from the same fabric. Traditional pottery makes for stunning lanterns or vases, and ceremonial beadwork can be used in coasters and placemats.

But whenever Aid to Artisans moved on to a new country in need, she saw that the craftspeople from the previous country lost their link to the U.S. market— so she provided that link herself. As Aid to Artisans was leaving Bolivia, she presented a handmade alpaca throw to the fashion director of Bloomingdale’s, who bought 400 of them. Thus Carpenter + Company, her product line, was born. Now the line offers dozens of home furnishings from the countries she has visited.

Carpenter’s work is sustainable for two reasons. First, it’s eco-friendly simply because everything is made by hand.

Second, and more important to Carpenter, the work is culturally sustainable. Artisans name the price for their work, and the substantial income helps convince the next generation to learn the craft. “If we don’t value this hand work, it’s going to go away,” she says, “and if we let a culture die out, the world will tip in a way that we can’t fix.”

Top: Artisans in India working for Soham Dave.

Above: Indigo bandhani fabric.

Right: The same bandhani fabric made into a dress.

For example, Dave modernized the peacock motif, common in traditional Indian garb, in a silk halter dress; instead of a continuous pattern, he emphasized individual embroidered shapes. For another dress, he harnessed a tie-dye technique, bandhani, to create bold white spirals on indigo fabric.

“I see lots of designers using crafts in their ethnic items,” says Nimet Degirmencioglu, Global Fashion Management ’09, managing partner of the company. “We are using the crafts as a tool, creating our own styles instead of just taking what’s already available.”

Degirmencioglu, a textile engineer from Turkey, met Dave in a strategic planning class at FIT and decided to help him start a fashion line. While Degirmencioglu grows the brand and sells to eco-boutiques throughout the U.S. and abroad, Dave travels throughout India, searching for more methods of weaving and dyeing to incorporate into his designs. “In India, every village has a different style of handiwork,” Degirmencioglu says. “We are trying to use more of these so that more people can keep their traditions.”

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Dave works with women artisans in the villages he visits and pays them by the piece. Degirmencioglu considers the prices they offer to be fair—and they have to be, because unlike the artisans who work with Carpenter, these skilled workers can find employment elsewhere.

Soham Dave’s modest quantities don’t provide full-time work for the artisans, so the company shares a production facility with other brands.

The clothing, which is made from biodegradable fabrics and natural dyes, is also easy on the environment. The bits of leather in the garments and accessories are sourced from scrap, and the fabric used in the accessories is left over from making the clothes. In fact, the company won the 2011 Innovation Award from the Ethical Fashion Forum, an influential community for eco-fashion in London, for combining sustainable techniques with appealing style.

Working this way isn’t easy. If one size or style sells out, it takes four months to produce another run. Also, keeping costs down is difficult when creating handmade work and paying the artisans a living wage. Despite this, the clothes are affordable. Cotton dresses range from $80 to $150, silk dresses from $300 to $350.

The admirable combination of style, quality, provenance, and price has kept the line selling briskly. “Our customers love the texture of the collection and how comfortable it is to wear,” Degirmencioglu says. “They say they always get compliments.” 

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Fashion, the American Way

Cathy Horyn, New York Times fashion writer, on the history of the CFDA

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IMPACT: 50 Years of Fashion from the CFDA, a show on view at The Museum at FIT through April 17, presents work by designers recognized by the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Conceived

by CFDA President Diane von Furstenberg and curated by Patricia Mears, deputy director of The Museum at FIT, the show marks the organization’s 50th anniversary and includes garments and accessories by its most influential designers. A companion volume, produced by the CFDA and published

by Harry N. Abrams, includes an essay, excerpted here, by New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn.

The first designer I ever knew was Bill Blass. We met on the opening night of the Detroit Auto Show in 1987. He had come to town, with his tux, to promote the latest Bill Blass edition for LincolnMercury, and because I was the fashion writer for The Detroit News—and relatively new on the beat— I went to Cobo Hall to meet him. Seeing this handsome son of a gun, who walked and talked like Gable if Gable had gone to Eton, you would have no trouble believing that he loved nothing better than a long drive, a cigarette on his lips. But Bill had absolutely no aptitude for driving, and nothing— not the flats of his native Indiana, not four years in the army in World War II—had made a difference.

The guys at Lincoln obviously knew that Bill’s charisma—and, of course, his name—could sell cars. That night, as he wheeled me around the convention center, grunting in mock surprise at one god-awful outfit after another, I really wasn’t thinking about any of that. I just hoped that other designers were going to be like him.

Later, whenever I went to New York for the shows, I would drop by his office at 550 Seventh Avenue. Bill was always kind to the out-of-town press, which had done so much to help his career in the ’60s and ’70s, when he traveled the country widely doing trunk shows. I cherish my friendship with him for many reasons, but the most meaningful to me as a writer is that he turned me on to a period in American fashion when everything seemed to intersect.

Some of the fashions displayed in IMPACT: Left: Bill Blass, red cashmere cardigan and red silk satin long skirt, 1984, USA, gift of Bill Blass, Ltd. Above: Rudi Gernreich, wool knit minidress, 1963, USA, gift of Ruth Deardoff.

Right: Thom Browne, pheasant feather/wool suit (jacket and pants), white oxford shirt, gray flannel necktie, gray felted fur bowler hat, fall/winter 2008–09, USA, lent by Browne.

Photos: The Museum at FIT

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As Patricia Mears writes in her essay for the book, the years 1940 to 1945 were a bonanza to American fashion. With Paris houses virtually shut down by the war, new American talent emerged and thrived, while established stars like Clare Potter and Claire McCardell continued to make simple and innovative clothes. Yet by 1962, the year that Eleanor Lambert founded the CFDA, the story had opened up considerably. Now you had a historical moment being shaped by a dashing group of designers, a few influential editors who were by no means lap dogs, some astute money men, and this swinging bunch of socialites who didn’t have the slightest hang-ups about seeing their names in print. Yes, the clothes were great and, yes, designers were becoming household names (blah blah), but more to the point, you had this incredibly vital story, set around the personalities and ambitions of a handful of key figures, at the very moment when fashion was beginning to acquire status and cultural importance in New York. It had the dimensions of a novel.

Anyway, that’s how I saw things when Bill would talk of his friendships with John Weitz and the sexy, and ultimately self-destructive, Jacques Tiffeau, or the arrival of Oscar de la Renta on the scene and his subsequent marriage to the worldly Françoise de Langlade; there were the gossipy lunches with Donald Brooks and John Fairchild of Women’s Wear Daily, the rise of Diana Vreeland at Vogue, the striking presence of society women like Chessy Rayner, Nan Kempner, Louise Grunwald, and D.D. Ryan, and the still relatively modest lifestyles with time for pleasure. By the end of the ’60s, you had the emergence of Halston as a dress designer, complete with his Europeanstyled entourage. It was an era when everything was personal—the feuds as well the dreams—and it set the stage for the big businesses and vast fortunes that would follow in the late ’70s and ’80s, changing forever the dynamics of our industry.

When I first began covering the collections in New York, in 1986, I was dimly aware of the CFDA. Actually, what most of us writers knew were the Big Five—Bill, Oscar, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, and Donna Karan. We gamely schlepped around the Garment District, wedging ourselves into showrooms, climbing filthy stairs to see new designers we had heard about by word-of-mouth (I still recall visiting a young Ricky Vider in a shoebox space), running over to the Plaza or the Pierre to catch Bob Mackie or Carolyne Roehm and clothes blazing with Lesage beadwork, and trooping down to SoHo to see Marc Jacobs or Stephen Sprouse, or a new guy named Isaac Mizrahi doing these amazing colors. If it occurred to some of us to complain about this inconvenient setup, I don’t remember.

We were having too much fun.

Like many writers, I grumbled a little when the CFDA created the centralized tents in Bryant Park, sure that some creative, grime-coated spirit would be sacrificed to convenience. I was wrong. A trace of Garment District grit remained.

And I think the modest, realistic, endlessly cheerful Stan Herman was a kind of miracle to the organization and the industry in general.

Or perhaps, as we say, timing is everything.

Under the energetic leadership of current president Diane von Furstenberg, and thanks to groundbreaking ideas like the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund for young talent and substantial scholarships awarded on behalf of Geoffrey Beene and Liz Claiborne, the CFDA has set a standard for the global fashion community.

The new home at Lincoln Center reflects that.

Each of us has a separate relationship to fashion; each of us dreams and thinks about it differently, and each remembers why we joined the party in the first place. 

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Diane von Furstenberg @DVF

NY fashion week starts Thursday.

Good luck to all the great American designers: show your talent and live your passion! love Diane

Fashion Week

Twit Picks

Christine Sciarratta Fashion Merchandising Management ’14

Students and alumni report from the shows—in 140 characters or less

@ChrissyRenee11 Volunteered at: Public School

Hanging out backstage after Public School’s presentation with Bradley Soileau from Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die video!! dressing male models for Public School fall 2012

It was a week of red carpets and white catwalks, of floodlights and flashbulbs, of double espressos and blisteringly high heels. For countless FIT alumni and hundreds of students working and watching the shows, fall 2012 New York Fashion Week, February 9-16, was pure, delicious chaos.

The sheer number of shows—not to mention the difficulty of getting past the door—made it impossible to see everything. But thanks to Twitter, we could follow the excitement on the runway and behind the scenes. Read on for some of our favorite tweets.

Dennis Basso Fashion Design ’73 @DennisBasso

Thanks @womensweardaily for the wonderful review. I’m feeling so great about it and will sleep tonight.

Lauren Kate Garcia Advertising and Marketing Communications ’14 @GreatLaurenKate Volunteered at: the Victoria Beckham show at the New York Public Library.

Nicholas Vo Advertising and Marketing Communications ’15 @NicholasVo

David Beckham sat in the front row (next to Anna Wintour!) for the first time at today’s @VictoriaBeckham show at the @NYPL. – @VictoriaBeckham’s signature zip dress was spotted on models, guests, and the production crew at today’s show!

Volunteered at: Douglas Hannant, Fashion Design ’94 Also attended 24 shows, including Nicholas K., Michael Kors, Tracy Reese, Whitney Eve, DVF, Reem Acra [Fashion Design ’86], Carlos Miele, and Alexandre Plokhov.

No show has had so many people trampeding, sneaking in, and crowding as much as that of Michael Kors.

– While everyone is getting ready to go to class, I’m getting ready to go to Lincoln Center.

– Just chatted with the lovely @cocorocha and Ming Xi backstage at Reem Acra – Tribal + southwestern influences @ Custo Barcelona.

Spotting a trend this season.

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Nina Garcia Marketing: Fashion and Related Industries ’93 @ninagarcia

During @nyfw we have witnessed the return of the dandy... Maybe inspired by the movie “The Artist”?

Here I am with Jessica Alba, backstage @MichaelKors, she looked GORGEOUS wearing a custom-made dress by MK

hue | spring 2012

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ol’s m

Nanette Lepore Fashion Design ’83 @nanettelepore

take a peek at some backstage beauty pictures!!

Hey @nickiminaj, hot pink sparks are flyin!! @MikeBloomberg’s right!! emerging American designers are reason for success of #nyfw and our factories are what keep us going @ariannahuff So happy you’re coming to my show, maybe you’ll find another dress to fall in love with all over again ;) sneak peek at runway shoes!!

Robert Verdi Jewelry Design ’88 @robertverdi

@CalvinKlein [Fashion Design ’63] austere and monastic this season + Duckie Brown’s tweeds and plaids and loose pants, oh my!

Trend report: embellished booties! From bright brocades to fur trim, embellished booties are hot on the runways TrendWatch: gold sequins are the new black for the red carpet! Runway looks from @MichaelKors & Naeem Khan

John Bartlett Menswear ’88 @johnbartlettNY

Congrats to all of my fellow @CFDA designers who presented during #nyfw.

So much talent and vision!

I just wish fur would stop being used :(

Rachel Martin Fashion Merchandising Management ’15

Ralph Rucci Fashion Design ’80 @mrralphrucci

Preview of extra terrestrial energies [Rucci’s twitpic of fabrics for his fall 2012 collection.]

@rachelinthecity Shows attended: Libertine, Concept Korea, and Tibi.

I went up to the check in desk for Concept Korea at Lincoln Center, said I was from FIT and they printed me a ticket. Love my life.

– I don’t think I’ll be wearing heels for a long time after this week. My feet wanted to cry, but it was so worth it!

Joe Zee Advertising and Communications ’92 @mrjoezee

Andrea Maeng Fashion Design ’11, BS International Trade and Marketing ’13 @miandreaming Interned at: Vivienne Tam.

Two days ago feels like a week ago, a week ago feels like a month ago. #busybusy – Intern. School. Intern. School. Intern.

In that order, in one day.

– Ambition is the new sexy @kushandwisdom

The @MichaelKors show=The Happy Show.

No matter what, I always leave with a spring in my step. PS: the clothes are pretty damn gorgeous too.

– I stopped a cab in the middle of Westside Hwy, scaled a middle partition & darted thru moving traffic to get to Jason Wu’s show. #Dedication – I put on sneakers for the first time tonight after a week and it feels so good. I love fashion but I’m fashioned out. At least for now.

Diane von Furstenberg drawing: Amy Geller, Illustration MA ’10 Garcia’s pics: Nina Garcia/WhoSay.com Lepore’s pics: Cameron Billik (model) and Jimmy Lepore Hagan (shoes)

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Shirt Happens How I sewed a men’s dress shirt (in 162 easy steps)

Int’l Trade & Mktg ’13 Fashion Photographer

Textbook Editor

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hue | spring 2012

2. Have your swatches rejected by Professor Blackman for being less than 100 percent cotton,1 stretch or twill,2 patterned,3 too heavy,4 too light-colored,5 or cheap-looking.6 1 The iron burns synthetics. 2 A pain to work with. 3 Lining up patterns is annoying. 4 Heavy shirts cause profuse sweating. 5 White is a stain magnet.

6 No snob appeal.

bad

too much

∫ ∫

yikes

6. Screw in presser foot and needle. The presser foot “skis” over the fabric, keeping it flat, as the needle plunges in and out.

7. Wind bobbin. Since you missed that part of the lecture, ask for help from the student next to you.

Overflow bobbin so thread jams machine.

In-Flight Crew Member

Underwear Designer Writer (Me) Professor Blackman

Because the course was offered in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies, the students came from a range of backgrounds.

1. Go to fabric store. Select swatches of inexpensive fabric that would make a fun shirt.

∫

FIT’s introductory Menswear sewing class comes with an appealing hook: Students, some of whom have never sewed, learn to construct a wearable, industry-standard men’s dress shirt. In the fall, I was assigned to take the class and write about it. I hadn’t wrestled with a sewing machine since the eighth grade, when I won the Home Economics award for a fanny pack—and I hadn’t planned on sewing again.

Each Thursday evening, we gathered round Professor Mark-Evan Blackman, Fashion Design’85, as he showed us the hows and whys of length grains and bias cuts, presser and zipper feet, edgestitching and pickstitching, felling and Merrowing, stitch length, seam allowance, and button placement.

Then we sat at our industrial machines and tried, with mixed results, to copy him.

Now that the course is over, I may not sew the rest of my wardrobe, but I have newfound respect for those who do it for me.

∫

Professor Blackman’s version of correcting the term paper.

By Jonathan Vatner

10. Pluck threads and sew seam again.

11. Trim corners.

Realize you trimmed the wrong corners and need to start over.

12. Cry.

Photos by Smiljana Peros

3/9/12 11:39 AM

RIGHT:

WRONG:

Collar∫

Interfacing ∫ 3. Repeat step one until you stop caring what your shirt will look like. Buy three yards of plain black fabric.

4. Trace pattern pieces onto fabric and cut them out. Try not to worry about how lopsided they look.

5. Iron interfacing onto collar, collar band, cuff, and shirt-front placket to stiffen them. Do not pause to wonder why, despite using the same patterns, the interfacing is not the same shape as the fabric.

8. Thread machine. Insert bobbin.

Jam machine. Open up belly of machine to pluck out knotted thread from cesspool of lubricating oil. Accidentally rub oil on hands, clothes, and fabric.

much

9. Pin two plys of collar together and begin sewing. Pump pedal to control turbo-fast needle. Press pedal too hard and send seam careening off edge of fabric.

162. Wear shirt. Coyly ask friends, coworkers, and strangers what they think before casually revealing that you made it yourself.

(Regrettably, Hue did not have space for steps 13 through 158.)

159. Buy ten buttons at trimmings store. Collapse from decision fatigue.

160. Take shirt to a buttonhole lady in Garment District. She will make perfect buttonholes to fit your buttons for about 50 cents each.

161. Sew buttons on by hand.

Use a lockstitch instead of a knot to keep thread from pulling through, as a knot could damage the fabric.

Visit Hue’s new blog, blog.fitnyc.edu/huetoo, to see Jonathan’s weekly reports about the class and much more.

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Not bad for an amateur.

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1961

Pluck of the Irish Diane Baran O’Connor, Fashion Buying and Merchandising ’65

Pat Kane Dews, Fashion Buying

M & M Studios

and Merchandising,

signature member of the

A 1981 Chicago Tribune article changed

American Watercolor

Diane and Rob O’Connor’s lives—and the

Society and National Water-

lives of thousands of citizens of Northern

color Society, though her

Ireland. The article, about a California

paintings, mostly abstract,

charity that brought children from the

also use other media,

war-torn region to the U.S. for a summer,

including inks, pencil, sand,

made them anxious to help. Rob was born

and acrylic. She teaches and has written two books,

in Dublin, and their family trip to Belfast

Creative Discoveries in Watermedia and The Painter’s

was harrowing: officers with machine

Workshop: Creative Composition & Design, both

guns at every corner, enforced segregation

published by North Light Books.

of Catholics and Protestants, the threat of violence heavy in the air.

1979

In 1982, the couple replicated the California charity’s model, calling

Marion Murray, Textile Technology,

has designed

it the Irish Children’s Fund. They found

and produced printed

Chicago-area families to host 150 11- and

fabrics for furniture,

12-year-old children from Protestant and

drapery, bedding, and

Catholic backgrounds, then organized

other home decorations Romeo Photography

for 30 years. Her work can be seen in lines by Walmart, Shabby Chic, and Tommy Bahama.

Alex Joseph

news from your classmates

Snow Ridge, watercolor and mixed media, by Pat Dews.

is a

activities to encourage mingling. “The kids could hardly fathom the fact that they could come here and ride a bike down the street,” Diane says. The Irish children were also surprised that religious differences mattered less on American soil. “They’d ask American children if they were Protestant or Catholic, and the American kids didn’t know.”

Last year, she won the Cambridge Who’s Who

Fundraising was the major hurdle. After four frantic years of garage sales and auctions,

Entrepreneur of the Year award.

Diane, who had worked at Sears as a comparison shopper and assistant buyer, started a

1982 John Calabrese, Photography,

catalog called Creative Irish Gifts for steadier revenue. Among other things, it sold Guinness tankards, Aran sweaters, and claddagh rings, traditionally given as tokens of friendship or won first prize in an

love. Diane found the items at gift shows around the world and through jewelry and weaving

environmental portrait competition at Gallery 364

companies in Ireland. Over the course of nearly three decades, Creative Irish Gifts raised

in Brooklyn. The winning shot—Calabrese’s all-time

$4.6 million for the Irish Children’s Fund, allowing more than 3,500 Irish children to

favorite—was his 1986 portrait of William F.

participate in the summer program.

Buckley in front of a bookcase. Upon graduating

As tensions in Northern Ireland began to ease, there were fewer children in need.

from FIT, Calabrese wrote to Buckley (among many

“Life in Belfast had improved so much that we felt our job was done,” Diane says. In 2009,

other notable people), asking if he could photograph

the O’Connors sold the catalog, and the last group of Irish boys and girls came to the U.S. in

him, in an effort to build his portfolio.

2011. But fond memories remain. A friend of Diane’s, who had hosted many children over the years, got a call recently from an Irishman in his late 20s, who had found his scrapbook from his trip to the U.S. He said, “My experience in the U.S. changed my way of thinking. I just wanted to thank you.”

1983 Fadil Berisha, Photography,

has been the

exclusive photographer for Rolex for five years, with campaigns that have included such stars as Roger Federer, Michael Bublé, and Placido Domingo. He was awarded the contract after the success of a 2007 advertisement for the $85,000 Oyster Perpetual Datejust Royal Black, featuring then-77-year-old model Carmen Dell’Orefice, who Berisha felt was the kind of woman who would own that watch. He is also the official William F. Buckley by Calabrese. “I felt uncomfortable telling him to comb his hair,” Calabrese recalls.

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Carmen Dell’Orefice in a Rolex ad shot by Fadil Berisha.

photographer for Miss Universe and Miss USA contestants and winners.

hue | spring 2012

3/9/12 11:39 AM

1985

Smart Cookie

Barbara Martino Reinken, Fashion Buying and Merchandising,

Debbie Wexler, Fashion Design ’78

owns a tween-and-teen boutique in Greenwich, CT, called Stuf. The shop sells casual clothing and accessories for

Debbie Wexler’s entire family cooks for a living.

stylish third-to-twelfth graders. She loves the age group

Her husband Jimmy spent his career as a catering

because the kids are shopaholics and very trend-driven (one

chef and now runs the mess hall at a summer camp.

of them happens to be her daughter). Reinken previously

Her son is also a chef, and her daughter is a baker.

co-owned the Side Door, a women’s boutique.

1987

Therefore, it should be no surprise that in 1979, when her then-fiancé Jimmy opened a gourmet shop in New Jersey, she fled her nascent

Cameron Prather, Fashion Design, is

a fabric decorator who

career in fashion design to bake. “I thought it

worked for interior designer Muriel Brandolini for 18 years

would be fun to work with my future husband,”

before going out on his own. He custom-manufactures

she says.

fabrics for interiors, including window treatments, uphol-

The Wexlers moved to Boca Raton, FL, in 1989 and ran a commercial bakery called Dessert

Smiljana Peros

stery, and pillows, and he upholsters walls.

Design, which they sold in 2003. But the kids started to miss the endless stream of cookies and the opportunity to show off the place to their friends. They convinced her in 2007 to open Two Fat Cookies, where she whips up such decadent treats as Four Chocolate Brownies, Heath Crunches, and Chip Monsters (chocolate ganache sandwiched between two chocolatechip cookies). She sells mostly wholesale to caterers, country clubs, restaurants, and event planners, but she fills—and ships—smaller orders, too, including some from her website,

Doug Young, Photography ’87

twofatcookies.com.

Wexler is an avid experimenter in the kitchen and quick to take requests. Originally, Two Fat Cookies sold only cookies, but as her loyal customers begged for a wider variety, she began to research cake and tartlet recipes, tweaking them until she was happy. Now she even offers sugar-free and gluten-free goodies. “There’s no way I could have said, ‘I’m just making cookies,’” she explains. “I would have been out of business!”

The wall of Prather’s guest bedroom is a patchwork of individually upholstered fabrics, including cotton corduroy, wool felt, and basket-weave silk.

1996 Hans Galutera, Interior Design,

designs interiors for Royal

Caribbean and Celebrity cruise ships. Co-founder and principal of BG Studio International, Inc., a firm of 15 architects and designers, Galutera recently designed parts of the Celebrity Silhouette, including a jazz club, a craft-beer pub, and the grand foyer, which features a majestic sweeping staircase. About five firms work together to design each ship, adhering to

Visit fitnyc.edu/hue for Wexler’s recipe for her popular Hungarian Jelly Bar.

New Again Petra Hanson, Fashion Design ’97, who has designed sweaters for Oscar de la Renta and Adrienne Vittadini, started a company called Metamorfixx, which repurposes vintage clothing by cutting up and recombining one or more garments. “Sometimes you are in love with a fabric but don’t like what they’ve done with it,” she says. “When you are trained to think as a designer, nothing is ever quite right.”

a convention called SOLAS (Safety of Life at Sea), which addresses humidity, weight, and passenger flow, among other factors.

Also, Galutera was recently elected Troy Phillips and Akimitsu Sadoi

Simon Brooke Webb

president of the International Interior Design Association’s The grand foyer of the Celebrity Silhouette.

New York chapter.

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1997

An International Love Story

Daniel G. Hall, Marketing: Fashion and Related

norman L. cohen, textile and apparel studies ’68 and linda kain, Fashion Buying and Merchandising ’69

Industries, Advertising and Communications ’96,

publishes Bella, a bimonthly Staten Island-based magazine focusing on beauty and wellness, which he launched with his wife Courtenay in 2011. The two are working to spread the magazine’s reach to the rest of the boroughs and beyond.

2000 Etu Evans, Accessories

news from your classmates

Design,

has made custom

Italian footwear for such celebrities as Beyoncé and Halle Berry. In 1998, he founded Solesville-The Etu Evans Foundation, a charity that distributes cleaned and resoled shoes Stanley Debas

to first-time job seekers, children with AIDS, and other people in need Gabrielle, one of Evans’s shoe designs.

around the world.

While modeling in FIT’s annual fashion show, Linda Kain, met Norman L. Cohen, a commentator for the show (which featured student commentary at that time). “His accent really caught my attention,” she says. “I thought it was British.”

It was actually South African. They dated until he graduated, when he had to move back to Cape Town to work in the family business, a warp-knitting factory. Kain didn’t follow

2003

him, both because she couldn’t stomach apartheid and because she didn’t want to leave her

Lori J. Lengua, Fabric Styling, Display and Exhibit

is the founder of Make It Known PR,

promoting mostly food, wine, and spirits companies.

Clients have included Patrón Tequila, Georges Duboeuf wines, Campari, and Bombay Sapphire Gin. She credits her success with putting the consumer first and treating journalists like people, not just an opportunity. And despite all the boldface names she’s rubbed up against, she doesn’t get starstruck—except once, for Robin Leach.

recently widowed mother alone. The couple kept in touch for years, but eventually Cohen married in Cape Town, had four children, and started an embroidery business. Kain married in Boston and became a social worker.

In 1998, they met again in New York and discovered that their marriages had ended—and that they were still in love. “The flame had not diminished,” Cohen remembers. “I said, ‘Hey, why don’t we make a go of it?’” They lived together in Cape Town for nearly a decade, then moved back to Boston in 2010. Last year, they married in New York, where they met 43 years before.

“We are still madly in love and have finally found peace together,” Cohen says.

2007

2005 Ktrice McNeill, Advertising and Marketing

Yuka Yoneda, Display and

Communications, was

Exhibit Design,

named 2011 Coach of the Year

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Nikki Robinson, Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing,

runs

from Up2Us, an organization that promotes athletics

editor at Inhabitat, a website

Gloss and Glam, an agency

to help at-risk youth. McNeill has been coaching

dedicated to sustainable

that supplies experienced

underprivileged teens at the Edenwald Community

and innovative design. She

and reliable hair and makeup

Center in the Bronx for two years, after shooting

focuses on the DIY or

artists for TV shows, magazine

hoops at FIT, at Southern Connecticut State

“maker” movement, showing

shoots, weddings, and private

University, and in Italy. He also portrayed a

readers how to create

clients in the tri-state area.

basketball player in a 2011 episode of Law & Order:

various decorations and gifts.

A makeup artist since she

Special Victims Unit entitled “Personal Fouls.”

She also writes for other

was 16, Robinson formed

Inhabitat-owned sites, such

the company after sensing

as Ecouterre, devoted to

a demand for talented artists

sustainable fashion, and

working through agencies.

Inhabitots, for eco-friendly

The company now hires 34

parenting. Her own site,

contractors and is expanding

Clossette, is a “worldwide

to Boston, Philadelphia, and

closet” for swapping designer

San Francisco.

McNeill, right, at the Up2Us award ceremony.

30

is a senior

clothing.

Butterfly Weddings New York

Design ’96,

Above: Cohen and Kain horseback riding in Staten Island, 1968. Above, right: Cohen and Kain on their wedding day, February 18, 2011.

For this bride, Robinson created a modified smoky eye, a soft lip, and eyelash extensions. Her hair is done in a trendy side ponytail with soft curls and is left in its natural part.

hue | spring 2012

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Color Scheming sources of inspiration

Essie Weingarten Fashion Buying and Merchandising ’70

I sold my company, Essie Cosmetics, to L’Oreal in 2010, but I still get to name all the nail colors. It’s the most fun part of my job. I am always looking at the world to inspire my next collection. A name has to have personality, and it has to resonate with women.

For Braziliant, a daring tropical orange, I was inspired by the beaches of Brazil and their seductive beauty. With all that heat, it was the perfect excuse to play with colors and names that sizzle. Brazil plus brilliant makes Braziliant!

Ballet Slippers holds a special>> place in my heart.

Since I was a little girl, I dreamed of being a ballerina.

This pale, satiny pink shade reminds me of how I felt when I danced, and when you wear it, you always feel good. It was also our first best-selling shade.

Our winter 2011 collection was all about jewelry—

we called it “cocktail bling.” Whether you like to accessorize with rings, bangles or brooches, you should always make a statement.

I wanted the same for each color in this collection, and gave them fun, bold names to match, like Brooch the Subject.

Whether it’s a businesslike

purse or a huge carry-on that holds your whole life inside, your bag makes a statement about who you are—and the same holds true for your nail polish.

That’s where the idea for Carry On came from.

Fishnet Stockings, a sexy

red, is all about the mood you set when you’re wearing that little black dress, four-inch Louboutins, and a pair of seethrough stockings.

As for After Sex… the

names just come to me, what can I say?

Illustration: Donna Choi, MFA ’14, interpreted the names of popular Essie nail colors based on their actual shades.

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227 West 27 Street New York, NY 10001-5992 return service requested

Jaiah Smith, Advertising and Marketing Communications ’13, page 11.

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