Hue Spring 2016

The Magazine of the Fashion Institute of Technology

FIT was here (sorta).

volume 9 | numbers 2 & 3 | spring 2016

ON THE COVER

GET SOCIAL WITH FIT

What on Earth is an astronaut doing on Hue’s cover?

If you’re not following FIT on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, you’re missing out on great connections and conversations. Check out these top posts of the year so far.

Take a look at that flag in the background. It was made by Annin The Magazine of the

Flagmakers, the country’s oldest and largest flag manufacturer,

Fashion Institute of Technology

which has produced flags for innumerable landmark moments

Hue is for alumni and friends of FIT, a

in American history, including presidential inaugurations and

college of art and design, business and

funerals, expeditions to the North Pole and up Mount Everest,

technology. It is published three times a

and the Battle of Iwo Jima. Annin

year by the Division of Communications and External Relations, 227 West

Facebook The invitation to watch The Little Prince in the Haft Auditorium on March 14 reached 567,000 users. Of those, 42,000 viewed the event page, and 1,900 RSVPed yes.

is also the family business of

27 Street, Room B905, New York,

Sandy Van Lieu ’94. Although she

NY 10001-5992, 212 217.4700.

was a child when the Apollo 17 spacecraft touched down on the moon, she honed her manufacturing skills at FIT and is now a

Editor Linda Angrilli Managing Editor Alex Joseph, MA ’13

flagmaking company. Turn to page 18 to learn everything you ever wondered (or didn’t) about our venerable Stars and Stripes.

NOW PLAYING AT hue.fitnyc.edu

Staff Writer Jonathan Vatner Editorial Assistant Laura Hatmaker Art Direction and Design Empire Design Studio Hue online: hue.fitnyc.edu Email: hue@fitnyc.edu 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 alumnirelations@fitnyc.edu and let us know what you’ve been up to.

Courtesy of NASA

Assistant Vice President for Communications Carol Leven

sixth-generation co-owner of the

TM and © 2013 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved

Vice President for Communications and External Relations Loretta Lawrence Keane

>> WATCH: A whiz-bang highlight reel of computer-generated imagery created by Ben Kilgore ’04, including scenes from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, and Prometheus.

Printed by Cohber Press on Rolland Enviro™ Print. The Enviro family has the lowest environmental footprint in North America due to its FSC certification and Ancient Forest Friendly policy, a 100 percent post-consumer waste fiber composition, biogas energy and processed chlorine-free manufacturing.

Environmental Savings as compared to paper using 100 percent virgin fiber.

A report that FIT was named the top public college in New York State by ranking specialist Niche.com: 1,200 likes, 40 comments, and 77,000 total views.

and collaborators including Trupal Pandya ’16 and Alexander Papakonstadinou ’16.

>> WATCH: Hue’s video, Six Questions for Susanne Bartsch, is a Webby honoree! Written by Alex Joseph and produced

68 trees preserved 65,778 gallons of water saved 6,8730 lbs of waste not generated 22,075 lbs CO 2 not generated 57,000,000 BTUs of energy not consumed 28 lbs NO X nitrous oxide gas prevented

by Ken Browne, the short film was made in conjunction with

Please recycle or share this magazine.

and Sciences.

last year’s Museum at FIT exhibition about the legendary nightlife impresario. Webbys, the top prizes for internet content, are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts

—Mark Shearwood, Photography, from “The Kids Stay in the Picture,” page 22

A link to an Observer article about Fairy Tale Fashion at The Museum at FIT: 1,400 likes, 43 comments, and 73,000 views.

Twitter and Instagram The street signs on FIT’s corner: 8,000 views on Twitter and 1,190 likes on Instagram.

Sunshine and shadows on Seventh Avenue: 7,800 Twitter views and 970 Instagram likes.

LinkedIn A reposted alumni note from Hue, featuring a Brooklyn mural by graphic designer Edward Ubiera ’99: 33,000 views.

A link to Hue’s video of Tony Chi ’79 sharing his thoughts on hospitality design: 32,000 views. Check it out at fitnyc.edu/tonychi.

Departments

Features 7 WHY WE BUY A retail expert discloses secrets of shopping

9 MADE TO MEASURE Toss out those dress forms! New technology is here

10 HEAR, HERE

>> WATCH: A short film that lovingly details the lives of nomads in the Himalayas, by Associate Professor Praveen Chaudhry

“I just want to make beautiful pictures.”

A small sampling of cool talks on campus this spring

12 MIRROR, MIRROR Fairy Tale Fashion casts a spell at The Museum at FIT

14 EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN A professor photographs the struggles of nomads in Tibet and Kashmir

16 THE WIGMAKER Raffaele Mollica’s whole career is a hairy situation

NICK PARISSE, PHOTOGRAPHY ’09

18 RAISING THE STANDARD What do the American flags at Lincoln’s funeral, the North Pole, and Iwo Jima have in common?

22 THE KIDS STAY IN THE PICTURE Children’s fashion is a mainstay for Photography alumnus Mark Shearwood

25 THE FORCE IS STRONG WITH

THIS ONE

Hanging out at Skywalker Ranch with costume-keeper Joanee Alina Honour ’92

26 SIX CAREER-DEFINING PIECES BY MARIA CANALE, JEWELRY DESIGN ’82 Diamonds are this girl’s best friend

28 CREATURE FEATURES It’s alive! Or is it? Ben Kilgore, Computer Animation and Interactive Media ’04, explains CGI

4 HUE’S NEWS 8 I CONTACT: STUDENT 32 ALUMNI NOTES 35 WHAT INSPIRES YOU?

ON THE COVER

GET SOCIAL WITH FIT

What on Earth is an astronaut doing on Hue’s cover?

If you’re not following FIT on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, you’re missing out on great connections and conversations. Check out these top posts of the year so far.

Take a look at that flag in the background. It was made by Annin The Magazine of the

Flagmakers, the country’s oldest and largest flag manufacturer,

Fashion Institute of Technology

which has produced flags for innumerable landmark moments

Hue is for alumni and friends of FIT, a

in American history, including presidential inaugurations and

college of art and design, business and

funerals, expeditions to the North Pole and up Mount Everest,

technology. It is published three times a

and the Battle of Iwo Jima. Annin

year by the Division of Communications and External Relations, 227 West

Facebook The invitation to watch The Little Prince in the Haft Auditorium on March 14 reached 567,000 users. Of those, 42,000 viewed the event page, and 1,900 RSVPed yes.

is also the family business of

27 Street, Room B905, New York,

Sandy Van Lieu ’94. Although she

NY 10001-5992, 212 217.4700.

was a child when the Apollo 17 spacecraft touched down on the moon, she honed her manufacturing skills at FIT and is now a

Editor Linda Angrilli Managing Editor Alex Joseph, MA ’13

flagmaking company. Turn to page 18 to learn everything you ever wondered (or didn’t) about our venerable Stars and Stripes.

NOW PLAYING AT hue.fitnyc.edu

Staff Writer Jonathan Vatner Editorial Assistant Laura Hatmaker Art Direction and Design Empire Design Studio Hue online: hue.fitnyc.edu Email: hue@fitnyc.edu 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 alumnirelations@fitnyc.edu and let us know what you’ve been up to.

Courtesy of NASA

Assistant Vice President for Communications Carol Leven

sixth-generation co-owner of the

TM and © 2013 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved

Vice President for Communications and External Relations Loretta Lawrence Keane

>> WATCH: A whiz-bang highlight reel of computer-generated imagery created by Ben Kilgore ’04, including scenes from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, and Prometheus.

Printed by Cohber Press on Rolland Enviro™ Print. The Enviro family has the lowest environmental footprint in North America due to its FSC certification and Ancient Forest Friendly policy, a 100 percent post-consumer waste fiber composition, biogas energy and processed chlorine-free manufacturing.

Environmental Savings as compared to paper using 100 percent virgin fiber.

A report that FIT was named the top public college in New York State by ranking specialist Niche.com: 1,200 likes, 40 comments, and 77,000 total views.

and collaborators including Trupal Pandya ’16 and Alexander Papakonstadinou ’16.

>> WATCH: Hue’s video, Six Questions for Susanne Bartsch, is a Webby honoree! Written by Alex Joseph and produced

68 trees preserved 65,778 gallons of water saved 6,8730 lbs of waste not generated 22,075 lbs CO 2 not generated 57,000,000 BTUs of energy not consumed 28 lbs NO X nitrous oxide gas prevented

by Ken Browne, the short film was made in conjunction with

Please recycle or share this magazine.

and Sciences.

last year’s Museum at FIT exhibition about the legendary nightlife impresario. Webbys, the top prizes for internet content, are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts

—Mark Shearwood, Photography, from “The Kids Stay in the Picture,” page 22

A link to an Observer article about Fairy Tale Fashion at The Museum at FIT: 1,400 likes, 43 comments, and 73,000 views.

Twitter and Instagram The street signs on FIT’s corner: 8,000 views on Twitter and 1,190 likes on Instagram.

Sunshine and shadows on Seventh Avenue: 7,800 Twitter views and 970 Instagram likes.

LinkedIn A reposted alumni note from Hue, featuring a Brooklyn mural by graphic designer Edward Ubiera ’99: 33,000 views.

A link to Hue’s video of Tony Chi ’79 sharing his thoughts on hospitality design: 32,000 views. Check it out at fitnyc.edu/tonychi.

Departments

Features 7 WHY WE BUY A retail expert discloses secrets of shopping

9 MADE TO MEASURE Toss out those dress forms! New technology is here

10 HEAR, HERE

>> WATCH: A short film that lovingly details the lives of nomads in the Himalayas, by Associate Professor Praveen Chaudhry

“I just want to make beautiful pictures.”

A small sampling of cool talks on campus this spring

12 MIRROR, MIRROR Fairy Tale Fashion casts a spell at The Museum at FIT

14 EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN A professor photographs the struggles of nomads in Tibet and Kashmir

16 THE WIGMAKER Raffaele Mollica’s whole career is a hairy situation

NICK PARISSE, PHOTOGRAPHY ’09

18 RAISING THE STANDARD What do the American flags at Lincoln’s funeral, the North Pole, and Iwo Jima have in common?

22 THE KIDS STAY IN THE PICTURE Children’s fashion is a mainstay for Photography alumnus Mark Shearwood

25 THE FORCE IS STRONG WITH THIS ONE anging out at Skywalker Ranch with H costume-keeper Joanee Alina Honour ’92

26 SIX CAREER-DEFINING PIECES BY MARIA CANALE, JEWELRY DESIGN ’82 Diamonds are this girl’s best friend

28 CREATURE FEATURES It’s alive! Or is it? Ben Kilgore, Computer Animation and Interactive Media ’04, explains CGI

4 HUE’S NEWS 8 I CONTACT: STUDENT 32 ALUMNI NOTES 35 WHAT INSPIRES YOU?

hue’s news

hue’s news

Graduate Students’ Exhibition Delves Into a Golden Age of Fashion Journalism

Packaging Design Students Display Champagne Taste

Cutty McGill

TOY DESIGN PROGRAM CELEBRATES 25 YEARS

YUM-O! RACHAEL RAY DELIVERS When two FIT students living in Alumni Hall put up a “Send Food” sign made entirely of Post-it notes in their window, which faces Rachael Ray’s television studio and office, they never expected to meet the celebrity chef and talk show host in person. But lo and behold, Ray showed up at their door with a tray of sandwiches and salad, and she invited them back to the studio with front-row seats. The segment aired February 24.

Teresa Citera and Samantha Gellman, both second-semester Fashion Business Management majors and avid cooks, were thrilled with the delivery, which they said was above and beyond what they could ever make (or afford) themselves.

“And if your parents are thinking that you’re underfed,” Ray told Citera and Gellman, “you can always come on over here and we’ll feed you.”

After that delicious day, a new Post-it sign appeared on the students’ window: “Thx Rachael.”

Manhattan’s Rubin Museum of Art rang with cheers on February 15, when more than 220 Toy Design alumni gathered in the soaring space to celebrate the program’s 25th anniversary. Alumni from every graduating class along with more than 40 executives from leading toy companies paid tribute to the program and its founder and chair, Judy Ellis. In her remarks, President Joyce F. Brown called Ellis the “very heart and soul” of the program, and pointed out that virtually all Toy Design graduates are employed in the industry and have created more than 3,500 products. Four of the alumni at the event had worked on teams that won 2016 TOTY (Toy of the Year) awards from the Toy Industry Association, and one was a nominee.

Recognizing the amount of talent produced by the program, Steve Pasierb, president of the TIA, said, “What we need in this industry is more Judys!” But Ellis, who was inducted into the TIA Hall of Fame in 2013, kept the focus on the graduates. “They’re part of a family that’s so connected,” she said proudly. “You really feel it when they’re all together in a group.” Remembering the event the next day, she was thinking of her former students, some of whom she hadn’t seen in years, though she keeps in touch. “It was so emotional,” she said.

“So much hugging!”

FIT Tigers Are Winning!

It’s been another stellar year for the college’s Athletics Department, which continues to field nationally ranked teams in NJCAA Division III. Women’s tennis finished second in the nation, with Fashion Business Management majors Kiana Brooks and Maia Sepulveda becoming national champions in singles play, and Coach Lynn CabotPuro named Coach of the Year. The half-marathon and cross-country teams both finished in the top ten in the nation, and last spring’s track and field team finished eighth in the country and placed in the top ten in ten events. Check out event recaps and video at fittigers.com.

Tree Composite by Sylvie Covey, adjunct instructor of Fine Arts, digital print, 35 by 45 inches.

EXCITING PERSPECTIVES FROM FACULTY

COLOR US SURPRISED!

What do you get when you combine 90 stellar artworks by FIT’s renowned faculty into one gallery show? New Views: FIT Art and Design Faculty Exhibition, a collection of thought-provoking pieces in a wide array of disciplines and media from the 17 programs in the School of Art and Design. The show, curated by Assistant Professor Karen Middleton, Fashion Design ’75, closed March 20, but it lives on at fitnyc.edu/newviews.

The Pantone Color Institute, which provides trend forecasting and palette-development services, now hosts a daylong course in color forecasting, offered by the Center for Continuing and Professional Studies. To mark the occasion, a few colorful facts about Pantone:

A Fashion Wish Comes True Thanks to a generous Fashion Design student and Make-A-Wish Metro New York, Cindy, a 17-year-old girl with spinal muscular atrophy, which restricts the use of her hands, lived her dream of designing a collection and presenting it on the runway. Over the course of a year, Veronica Apsan ’17 helped Cindy shop for fabric, develop patterns, and fabricate the garments. Together they created four looks: a coat, a dress, a pants/ blouse combo, and a puff skirt and top. An audience of family, friends, and faculty watched Cindy’s fashion show on November 14, presented with hair and makeup services donated by Aveda and models from FIT’s Models and Stylists Association.

 Announced in 1999, the first Pantone Color of the Year—the color of the millennium, in fact—was Cerulean Blue, a calming, universally appealing hue. This year there are two colors: Rose Quartz and Serenity.  Sephora produces makeup in the Color of the Year, every year.  The 59-room Pantone Hotel in Belgium is decorated with blocks of bright color.  Minion Yellow, a color from the hit movie Minions that debuted in 2015, represented the first time the company created a color for an animated character.

Jerry Speier

Left: A Dahl-Wolfe photo of model Bijou Barrington on the January 1942 cover. Right: Model Jean Patchett in a Carolyn Schnurer top, photographed by Dahl-Wolfe for the December 1952 issue.

Sara Griffin and Shan Khan, both Packaging Design ’16, took the top two prizes in an international competition to create a gift box and label for a magnum of Pol Roger Brut Vintage 2006 Champagne that commemorated the life of Sir Winston Churchill. The competition was sponsored by Pentland Group plc, a Londonbased conglomerate of apparel and footwear brands; Arts Thread, a media company and online design portfolio platform; Maison Pol Roger; and the International Churchill Society UK. The judging panel included two of Churchill’s grandchildren.

The students’ designs were picked from more than 700 entries from 20 countries.

Griffin’s box and label were covered with witty pencil drawings illustrating key moments in the British prime minister’s life, such as a plane to represent his role in World War II and a kidney to acknowledge the one he ruptured as a child. Griffin won £1,000, a trip to Maison Pol Roger in Epernay, France, and a paid internship at Pentland. Khan won £750 and an internship offer.

Dr. Joyce F. Brown, FIT’s president, and Judy Ellis, Toy Design founder and chair, with Toy Industry Association executives Ken Ebeling, Ken Seiter, Paul Vitale, and Steve Pasierb.

The event was sponsored by Just Play and Nickelodeon.

MFIT, © 1989 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents

MFIT, © 1989 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents

In 2017, the iconic fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar will reach its 150th year. The magazine has been a trendsetter from day one, but a recent exhibition presented in The Museum at FIT by students in the Master of Arts program in Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice, zeroed in on a 22-year period during which the triumvirate of editor-in-chief Carmel Snow, fashion editor Diana Vreeland, and photographer Louise Dahl-Wolfe broke new ground in fashion journalism. The Women of Harper’s Bazaar, 1936-1958 drew on Dahl-Wolfe’s iconic images, donated to the museum by the photographer herself, to show how the three visionary women collaborated on defining the magazine’s style. Also on display were historic garments from the museum’s collection alongside the Bazaar fashion spreads in which they were featured— for example, Christian Dior’s Mystère coat from the groundbreaking 1947 collection that Snow famously christened “A New Look.” The show was on view from March 1 to April 2.

Fern Mallis, creator of New York Fashion Week and recipient of FIT’s President’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2013, signed copies of her new book, Fashion Lives: Fashion Icons with Fern Mallis, in the Katie Murphy Amphitheatre on March 1.

The book, adapted from her ongoing series of conversations at the 92nd Street Y, comprises 19 interviews with American fashion luminaries—including FIT alumni Norma Kamali, Calvin Klein, and Michael Kors.

QUICK READ Fashion designer Dennis Basso ’73, longtime FIT supporters John and Laura Pomerantz, and the homeshopping channel QVC will be honored at this year’s FIT Foundation gala at the Plaza Hotel on May 9.

4

hue | spring 2016

Academy Award–nominated cartoonist and filmmaker Bill Plympton discussed his art and animation at a February 23 event sponsored by the Illustration MFA program and the School of Graduate Studies.

Opening May 20 in The Museum at FIT’s Fashion and Textile Gallery: Uniformity, an exhibition of 70 objects that explore the history of military, work, school, and sports uniforms, and their effect on the fashion world.

For the third year in a row, FIT hosted the New York City regional competition for Poetry Out Loud, a high-school poetry-reading contest that helps students master public-speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about their literary heritage.

The Fashion Business Management senior capstone event on March 16 brought executives from the fast-fashion brand rue21 to speak with students, who had analyzed the company in their Merchandising Strategies class.

The papers of fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert—who founded the Council of Fashion Designers of America, produced the landmark 1973 Battle of Versailles fashion show, and introduced biannual fashion weeks in New York—are now housed in FIT’s Special Collections. hue.fitnyc.edu

5

hue’s news

hue’s news

Graduate Students’ Exhibition Delves Into a Golden Age of Fashion Journalism

Packaging Design Students Display Champagne Taste

Cutty McGill

TOY DESIGN PROGRAM CELEBRATES 25 YEARS

YUM-O! RACHAEL RAY DELIVERS When two FIT students living in Alumni Hall put up a “Send Food” sign made entirely of Post-it notes in their window, which faces Rachael Ray’s television studio and office, they never expected to meet the celebrity chef and talk show host in person. But lo and behold, Ray showed up at their door with a tray of sandwiches and salad, and she invited them back to the studio with front-row seats. The segment aired February 24.

Teresa Citera and Samantha Gellman, both second-semester Fashion Business Management majors and avid cooks, were thrilled with the delivery, which they said was above and beyond what they could ever make (or afford) themselves.

“And if your parents are thinking that you’re underfed,” Ray told Citera and Gellman, “you can always come on over here and we’ll feed you.”

After that delicious day, a new Post-it sign appeared on the students’ window: “Thx Rachael.”

Manhattan’s Rubin Museum of Art rang with cheers on February 15, when more than 220 Toy Design alumni gathered in the soaring space to celebrate the program’s 25th anniversary. Alumni from every graduating class along with more than 40 executives from leading toy companies paid tribute to the program and its founder and chair, Judy Ellis. In her remarks, President Joyce F. Brown called Ellis the “very heart and soul” of the program, and pointed out that virtually all Toy Design graduates are employed in the industry and have created more than 3,500 products. Four of the alumni at the event had worked on teams that won 2016 TOTY (Toy of the Year) awards from the Toy Industry Association, and one was a nominee.

Recognizing the amount of talent produced by the program, Steve Pasierb, president of the TIA, said, “What we need in this industry is more Judys!” But Ellis, who was inducted into the TIA Hall of Fame in 2013, kept the focus on the graduates. “They’re part of a family that’s so connected,” she said proudly. “You really feel it when they’re all together in a group.” Remembering the event the next day, she was thinking of her former students, some of whom she hadn’t seen in years, though she keeps in touch. “It was so emotional,” she said.

“So much hugging!”

FIT Tigers Are Winning!

It’s been another stellar year for the college’s Athletics Department, which continues to field nationally ranked teams in NJCAA Division III. Women’s tennis finished second in the nation, with Fashion Business Management majors Kiana Brooks and Maia Sepulveda becoming national champions in singles play, and Coach Lynn CabotPuro named Coach of the Year. The half-marathon and cross-country teams both finished in the top ten in the nation, and last spring’s track and field team finished eighth in the country and placed in the top ten in ten events. Check out event recaps and video at fittigers.com.

Tree Composite by Sylvie Covey, adjunct instructor of Fine Arts, digital print, 35 by 45 inches.

EXCITING PERSPECTIVES FROM FACULTY

COLOR US SURPRISED!

What do you get when you combine 90 stellar artworks by FIT’s renowned faculty into one gallery show? New Views: FIT Art and Design Faculty Exhibition, a collection of thought-provoking pieces in a wide array of disciplines and media from the 17 programs in the School of Art and Design. The show, curated by Assistant Professor Karen Middleton, Fashion Design ’75, closed March 20, but it lives on at fitnyc.edu/newviews.

The Pantone Color Institute, which provides trend forecasting and palette-development services, now hosts a daylong course in color forecasting, offered by the Center for Continuing and Professional Studies. To mark the occasion, a few colorful facts about Pantone:

A Fashion Wish Comes True Thanks to a generous Fashion Design student and Make-A-Wish Metro New York, Cindy, a 17-year-old girl with spinal muscular atrophy, which restricts the use of her hands, lived her dream of designing a collection and presenting it on the runway. Over the course of a year, Veronica Apsan ’17 helped Cindy shop for fabric, develop patterns, and fabricate the garments. Together they created four looks: a coat, a dress, a pants/ blouse combo, and a puff skirt and top. An audience of family, friends, and faculty watched Cindy’s fashion show on November 14, presented with hair and makeup services donated by Aveda and models from FIT’s Models and Stylists Association.

 Announced in 1999, the first Pantone Color of the Year—the color of the millennium, in fact—was Cerulean Blue, a calming, universally appealing hue. This year there are two colors: Rose Quartz and Serenity.  Sephora produces makeup in the Color of the Year, every year.  The 59-room Pantone Hotel in Belgium is decorated with blocks of bright color.  Minion Yellow, a color from the hit movie Minions that debuted in 2015, represented the first time the company created a color for an animated character.

Jerry Speier

Left: A Dahl-Wolfe photo of model Bijou Barrington on the January 1942 cover. Right: Model Jean Patchett in a Carolyn Schnurer top, photographed by Dahl-Wolfe for the December 1952 issue.

Sara Griffin and Shan Khan, both Packaging Design ’16, took the top two prizes in an international competition to create a gift box and label for a magnum of Pol Roger Brut Vintage 2006 Champagne that commemorated the life of Sir Winston Churchill. The competition was sponsored by Pentland Group plc, a Londonbased conglomerate of apparel and footwear brands; Arts Thread, a media company and online design portfolio platform; Maison Pol Roger; and the International Churchill Society UK. The judging panel included two of Churchill’s grandchildren.

The students’ designs were picked from more than 700 entries from 20 countries.

Griffin’s box and label were covered with witty pencil drawings illustrating key moments in the British prime minister’s life, such as a plane to represent his role in World War II and a kidney to acknowledge the one he ruptured as a child. Griffin won £1,000, a trip to Maison Pol Roger in Epernay, France, and a paid internship at Pentland. Khan won £750 and an internship offer.

Dr. Joyce F. Brown, FIT’s president, and Judy Ellis, Toy Design founder and chair, with Toy Industry Association executives Ken Ebeling, Ken Seiter, Paul Vitale, and Steve Pasierb.

The event was sponsored by Just Play and Nickelodeon.

MFIT, © 1989 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents

MFIT, © 1989 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents

In 2017, the iconic fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar will reach its 150th year. The magazine has been a trendsetter from day one, but a recent exhibition presented in The Museum at FIT by students in the Master of Arts program in Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice, zeroed in on a 22-year period during which the triumvirate of editor-in-chief Carmel Snow, fashion editor Diana Vreeland, and photographer Louise Dahl-Wolfe broke new ground in fashion journalism. The Women of Harper’s Bazaar, 1936-1958 drew on Dahl-Wolfe’s iconic images, donated to the museum by the photographer herself, to show how the three visionary women collaborated on defining the magazine’s style. Also on display were historic garments from the museum’s collection alongside the Bazaar fashion spreads in which they were featured— for example, Christian Dior’s Mystère coat from the groundbreaking 1947 collection that Snow famously christened “A New Look.” The show was on view from March 1 to April 2.

Fern Mallis, creator of New York Fashion Week and recipient of FIT’s President’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2013, signed copies of her new book, Fashion Lives: Fashion Icons with Fern Mallis, in the Katie Murphy Amphitheatre on March 1.

The book, adapted from her ongoing series of conversations at the 92nd Street Y, comprises 19 interviews with American fashion luminaries—including FIT alumni Norma Kamali, Calvin Klein, and Michael Kors.

QUICK READ Fashion designer Dennis Basso ’73, longtime FIT supporters John and Laura Pomerantz, and the homeshopping channel QVC will be honored at this year’s FIT Foundation gala at the Plaza Hotel on May 9.

4

hue | spring 2016

Academy Award–nominated cartoonist and filmmaker Bill Plympton discussed his art and animation at a February 23 event sponsored by the Illustration MFA program and the School of Graduate Studies.

Opening May 20 in The Museum at FIT’s Fashion and Textile Gallery: Uniformity, an exhibition of 70 objects that explore the history of military, work, school, and sports uniforms, and their effect on the fashion world.

For the third year in a row, FIT hosted the New York City regional competition for Poetry Out Loud, a high-school poetry-reading contest that helps students master public-speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about their literary heritage.

The Fashion Business Management senior capstone event on March 16 brought executives from the fast-fashion brand rue21 to speak with students, who had analyzed the company in their Merchandising Strategies class.

The papers of fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert—who founded the Council of Fashion Designers of America, produced the landmark 1973 Battle of Versailles fashion show, and introduced biannual fashion weeks in New York—are now housed in FIT’s Special Collections. hue.fitnyc.edu

5

hue’s news

Why We Buy

BUILDING HYPE AROUND TYPE

The #TYPE show’s visual identity, designed by Yeh.

An expert in consumer behavior shares strategies for stores

BY ALEX JOSEPH

Smiljana Peros

Despite the shift from print to digital publishing, typography remains the soul of visual communication design. #TYPE, the inaugural exhibition of FIT’s new Creative Technology minor, showcased the best student typographic designs from such courses as Introduction to Kinetic Typography, Immersive Publication Design, Digital Layout Design, Design for Screen-Based Media, and Intro to User Experience Design.

“Often people look at typography as an isolated field of study and don’t realize it’s part of every aspect of design,” said C.J. Yeh, professor and assistant chair of Communication Design and coordinator of the Creative Technology minor.

Examples of professional projects were displayed alongside student works to demonstrate the link between the coursework and current industry practices.

The exhibition was on view from January 26 to February 6 in Gallery FIT at The Museum at FIT.

President Brown, Representative Maloney, and Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen.

Economic Impact Report Proves that

Fashion Is Big Business

Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney (NY-12), joined by New York City Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development Alicia Glen and President Joyce F. Brown, released a new report on the economic impact of the fashion industry on February 18. The announcement, made at FIT, coincided with New York Fashion Week—a biannual event that attracts more than 200,000 visitors to the city and generates nearly $900 million in total economic impact.

The report, compiled by the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, of which Maloney is the ranking member, shows the importance of fashion as an economic driver. The industry—including design, manufacturing, wholesale, and retail—provides approximately 183,000 jobs in New York City, about 6 percent of the city’s private-sector workforce.

Lorenzo Ciniglio

Empowering Women to Speak Up Online

On March 6, Suyeon Kim, Fashion Design ’17, was named the top designer from FIT at the 17th annual Fusion Fashion Show, a competition between FIT and the Parsons School of Design. She described her neoprene and laser-cut vinyl garments as “feminine with unique constructions inspired by the distinct glacial formations of Iceland.” The four shows, held at Parsons this year, were attended by a total of 2,500 people. Parsons won Best Overall School, breaking FIT’s three-year winning streak.

Did you know that only 8.5 percent of Wikipedia editors are women?

On March 8, International Women’s Day, the FIT community participated in a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, a group effort of women (and people of other genders) to write pages about women, to push that statistic higher.

On March 3, the related Women and Technology Symposium featured three female tech stars: Grace Choi, founder and CEO of Mink, the first printable makeup system; industrial designer Krystal Persaud, director of product design at littleBits, which produces electronic building blocks for inventors; and creative technologist Madison Maxey, co-founder and president of The Crated, a startup developing wearable technology. The events were organized by the Information Technology Division and the Gladys Marcus Library, and were supported by an FIT Diversity Grant.

QUICK READ Director Mark Osborne presented his new animated feature, The Little Prince, to a packed house in the Haft Auditorium on March 14, four days before it was to debut in the U.S. The domestic release has now been delayed, though the film has already grossed $95 million worldwide.

6

hue | spring 2016

Six Fashion Design students specializing in intimate apparel received a total of $15,000 in scholarships at the Femmy Awards, the Underfashion Club’s annual event hosted this year by burlesque icon Dita Von Teese on February 2.

On March 11, director Eric Pellerin de Turckheim presented his documentary, Hubert de Givenchy: A Life in Haute Couture, about the legendary fashion designer. It was the first film shown in the School of Art and Design’s Dean’s Dialogue series.

Recently, the consumer expert Paco Underhill was helping a European jewelry brand plan a store in Beverly Hills. In France and Italy, its branches have a private chamber for purchases of $100,000 or more. European luxury shoppers, usually from old money, appreciate discretion (especially if they’re buying for someone other than their spouse).

But the California location wouldn’t need the secret room, Underhill argued: nouveaux-riches Americans like having an audience when they spend.

Fortune 50 companies pay Underhill and his firm, Envirosell, handsomely for such insights.

Everyone else can read the editorials he writes for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and his books, including Why We Buy, which has been translated into 27 languages. In January, 13 executives from around the world came to FIT’s Center for Continuing and Professional Studies for his eight-day course, “The Science of Shopping.”

Participants studied how every aspect of the commercial environment affects consumer behavior, learned principles of design for stores and e-commerce, discussed strategies for changing shoppers’ perceptions of their brands, and conducted a case study of an actual retailer.

Traditionally, companies looking to improve sales conduct consumer surveys. But what people say and what they actually do are often quite different. Shoppers, Underhill says, frequently underestimate the time they spend in stores and may even misremember what they purchased. That’s where the science part of his job comes in. Envirosell analyzes video of stores and hires trackers to secretly observe how people shop.

One of Envirosell’s first clients was a struggling drugstore chain. Scrutinizing the stores’ checkout process on video, they noticed people arriving at the registers with their arms laden with items.

Simply by placing shopping baskets in a more convenient location, Envirosell helped increase the average purchase by 18 percent. Underhill says 20,000 jobs were saved as a result.

Increasing sales is a perennial business challenge, but recent social and cultural changes have left retailers more vulnerable than ever. In their marketing materials, many major brands still cast models who don’t represent the global shopper.

“Imagine three women at the MAC counter at Selfridges,” Underhill says. “One might be the third wife of a Somali warlord, another the daughter of a Kazakh executive, and the third a Pakistani ‘Sloane ranger’ [a well-bred Londoner like the ones DAVID DePASQUALE, ILLUSTRATION ’10

spotted in Chelsea’s Sloane Square]. They’re not peaches and cream.” And while the average web designer is under 30, the person perusing luxury brands online may be considerably older. Our corneas yellow as we age, affecting the way we see color: a yellow background on your site may blunt your message by making the text harder to read.

Though stores have traditionally been owned, designed, and managed by men, the empowered female shopper is altering the retail landscape.

The sensuous environment of Victoria’s Secret is one obvious result. Underhill also appreciates the ingenuity of Pirch, a store that specializes in modern bathrooms and kitchens. A typical sale ranges from $40,000 to $60,000. Through an innovative partnership with Tesla Motors, a woman can browse shower fixtures while her husband test-drives a Model S (or, presumably,

vice versa). Another creative idea is employed by Asiye’s Boutique in Connecticut, which sells prom, homecoming, and specialty dresses using the tagline “Noticeably Unique.” To guarantee that no one else is wearing the same style, each dress is registered to a particular event or school.

With all this change, it’s a stressful time in the retail world, but Underhill almost makes the challenge seem like an intellectual game that’s fun to puzzle out. How different, how much more pleasurable shopping would be if every store employed his ideal mix of artful play and scientific rigor.

FIT will offer “The Science of Shopping” again in June. Participants who complete the course will earn an FIT/SUNY Professional Development certificate. Find out more and register at fitnyc. edu/shopping or call 212 217.7715. hue.fitnyc.edu

7

hue’s news

Why We Buy

BUILDING HYPE AROUND TYPE

The #TYPE show’s visual identity, designed by Yeh.

An expert in consumer behavior shares strategies for stores

BY ALEX JOSEPH

Smiljana Peros

Despite the shift from print to digital publishing, typography remains the soul of visual communication design. #TYPE, the inaugural exhibition of FIT’s new Creative Technology minor, showcased the best student typographic designs from such courses as Introduction to Kinetic Typography, Immersive Publication Design, Digital Layout Design, Design for Screen-Based Media, and Intro to User Experience Design.

“Often people look at typography as an isolated field of study and don’t realize it’s part of every aspect of design,” said C.J. Yeh, professor and assistant chair of Communication Design and coordinator of the Creative Technology minor.

Examples of professional projects were displayed alongside student works to demonstrate the link between the coursework and current industry practices.

The exhibition was on view from January 26 to February 6 in Gallery FIT at The Museum at FIT.

President Brown, Representative Maloney, and Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen.

Economic Impact Report Proves that

Fashion Is Big Business

Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney (NY-12), joined by New York City Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development Alicia Glen and President Joyce F. Brown, released a new report on the economic impact of the fashion industry on February 18. The announcement, made at FIT, coincided with New York Fashion Week—a biannual event that attracts more than 200,000 visitors to the city and generates nearly $900 million in total economic impact.

The report, compiled by the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, of which Maloney is the ranking member, shows the importance of fashion as an economic driver. The industry—including design, manufacturing, wholesale, and retail—provides approximately 183,000 jobs in New York City, about 6 percent of the city’s private-sector workforce.

Lorenzo Ciniglio

Empowering Women to Speak Up Online

On March 6, Suyeon Kim, Fashion Design ’17, was named the top designer from FIT at the 17th annual Fusion Fashion Show, a competition between FIT and the Parsons School of Design. She described her neoprene and laser-cut vinyl garments as “feminine with unique constructions inspired by the distinct glacial formations of Iceland.” The four shows, held at Parsons this year, were attended by a total of 2,500 people. Parsons won Best Overall School, breaking FIT’s three-year winning streak.

Did you know that only 8.5 percent of Wikipedia editors are women?

On March 8, International Women’s Day, the FIT community participated in a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, a group effort of women (and people of other genders) to write pages about women, to push that statistic higher.

On March 3, the related Women and Technology Symposium featured three female tech stars: Grace Choi, founder and CEO of Mink, the first printable makeup system; industrial designer Krystal Persaud, director of product design at littleBits, which produces electronic building blocks for inventors; and creative technologist Madison Maxey, co-founder and president of The Crated, a startup developing wearable technology. The events were organized by the Information Technology Division and the Gladys Marcus Library, and were supported by an FIT Diversity Grant.

QUICK READ Director Mark Osborne presented his new animated feature, The Little Prince, to a packed house in the Haft Auditorium on March 14, four days before it was to debut in the U.S. The domestic release has now been delayed, though the film has already grossed $95 million worldwide.

6

hue | spring 2016

Six Fashion Design students specializing in intimate apparel received a total of $15,000 in scholarships at the Femmy Awards, the Underfashion Club’s annual event hosted this year by burlesque icon Dita Von Teese on February 2.

On March 11, director Eric Pellerin de Turckheim presented his documentary, Hubert de Givenchy: A Life in Haute Couture, about the legendary fashion designer. It was the first film shown in the School of Art and Design’s Dean’s Dialogue series.

Recently, the consumer expert Paco Underhill was helping a European jewelry brand plan a store in Beverly Hills. In France and Italy, its branches have a private chamber for purchases of $100,000 or more. European luxury shoppers, usually from old money, appreciate discretion (especially if they’re buying for someone other than their spouse).

But the California location wouldn’t need the secret room, Underhill argued: nouveaux-riches Americans like having an audience when they spend.

Fortune 50 companies pay Underhill and his firm, Envirosell, handsomely for such insights.

Everyone else can read the editorials he writes for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and his books, including Why We Buy, which has been translated into 27 languages. In January, 13 executives from around the world came to FIT’s Center for Continuing and Professional Studies for his eight-day course, “The Science of Shopping.”

Participants studied how every aspect of the commercial environment affects consumer behavior, learned principles of design for stores and e-commerce, discussed strategies for changing shoppers’ perceptions of their brands, and conducted a case study of an actual retailer.

Traditionally, companies looking to improve sales conduct consumer surveys. But what people say and what they actually do are often quite different. Shoppers, Underhill says, frequently underestimate the time they spend in stores and may even misremember what they purchased. That’s where the science part of his job comes in. Envirosell analyzes video of stores and hires trackers to secretly observe how people shop.

One of Envirosell’s first clients was a struggling drugstore chain. Scrutinizing the stores’ checkout process on video, they noticed people arriving at the registers with their arms laden with items.

Simply by placing shopping baskets in a more convenient location, Envirosell helped increase the average purchase by 18 percent. Underhill says 20,000 jobs were saved as a result.

Increasing sales is a perennial business challenge, but recent social and cultural changes have left retailers more vulnerable than ever. In their marketing materials, many major brands still cast models who don’t represent the global shopper.

“Imagine three women at the MAC counter at Selfridges,” Underhill says. “One might be the third wife of a Somali warlord, another the daughter of a Kazakh executive, and the third a Pakistani ‘Sloane ranger’ [a well-bred Londoner like the ones DAVID DePASQUALE, ILLUSTRATION ’10

spotted in Chelsea’s Sloane Square]. They’re not peaches and cream.” And while the average web designer is under 30, the person perusing luxury brands online may be considerably older. Our corneas yellow as we age, affecting the way we see color: a yellow background on your site may blunt your message by making the text harder to read.

Though stores have traditionally been owned, designed, and managed by men, the empowered female shopper is altering the retail landscape.

The sensuous environment of Victoria’s Secret is one obvious result. Underhill also appreciates the ingenuity of Pirch, a store that specializes in modern bathrooms and kitchens. A typical sale ranges from $40,000 to $60,000. Through an innovative partnership with Tesla Motors, a woman can browse shower fixtures while her husband test-drives a Model S (or, presumably,

vice versa). Another creative idea is employed by Asiye’s Boutique in Connecticut, which sells prom, homecoming, and specialty dresses using the tagline “Noticeably Unique.” To guarantee that no one else is wearing the same style, each dress is registered to a particular event or school.

With all this change, it’s a stressful time in the retail world, but Underhill almost makes the challenge seem like an intellectual game that’s fun to puzzle out. How different, how much more pleasurable shopping would be if every store employed his ideal mix of artful play and scientific rigor.

FIT will offer “The Science of Shopping” again in June. Participants who complete the course will earn an FIT/SUNY Professional Development certificate. Find out more and register at fitnyc. edu/shopping or call 212 217.7715. hue.fitnyc.edu

7

i contact: student

Back to Nature

Made to Measure

Lydia Baird Textile Development and Marketing ’16 You and Willa Tsokanis ’16 established a textile composting system at FIT. How did you come up with the idea?

I started as a Fashion Design student, and I was very aware of how much muslin was being thrown out. In my textile fibers class, I learned that cotton is biodegradable. The idea just came to me.

Students master the latest body-scanning technology used in the industry

Why is composting textiles important?

If we turn fabric into compost, we’re not only keeping it out of the landfill, we’re turning it into a valuable product that we spread on FIT’s natural dye garden and other green spaces on campus. If textile composting becomes a common practice in the industry, it could also address the problem of soil erosion, which is going to be a catastrophe on the scale of global warming.

If our soil turns to desert, we can’t grow crops.

Can other fabrics besides muslin be composted?

Any cotton fabric can be composted, but a poly-cotton wouldn’t fully decompose. I’m doing research with Professor Ajoy Sarkar, and we’re focusing on denim next. We’ll take three types of store-bought jeans, one 100 percent cotton, one with 1 percent spandex, and one eco-friendly denim that’s naturally dyed. We’re sending the results to a lab that will test for toxic chemicals, carbon/nitrogen ratios, salt levels, and nutrients in the soil.

It’s

no secret that size and fit vary widely across—and sometimes even within—brands.

Retailers say sizing is the main reason for clothing returns, and manufacturers are concerned about the time and expense of shipping product around the globe, only to have it returned for poor fit. Now the Jay and Patty Baker School of Business and Technology is preparing students to work with new technology that makes the process more precise.

The students are learning on a state-of-the-art 3D body scanner, donated by [TC]2, a body measurement and visualization technology company. To get scanned, a person enters a private space the size of a changing room and strips down to their underwear.

What’s next for the compost project?

I’ve connected with the composting facility on Governor’s Island, and they’ve agreed to do a pilot this spring, two or three times as big as what we’re doing on campus. Expanding textile composting is going to require municipalities to get involved, not just industry.

What did this project teach you?

I’m beginning to understand the connection between chemistry and fashion.

I remember taking my first science class at Middlebury College when I was 18. We had to come up with a lab question based on something around us.

It was the most dumbfounding thing to me—my education hadn’t taught me to be curious. To realize that science can be creative caused a huge shift in my life.

You already had a career in costume design. What was that like?

I was a shopper for The Amazing Spider-Man 2, The Blacklist on NBC, and Last Week Tonight With John Oliver on HBO—I would pick things up around the city to help realize the costume designer’s vision. I was also doing independent design work. For an Anne Hathaway film called Song One, we had to costume a nomadic Berber tribe wedding. We ended staying up until 3 in the morning, draping and redraping 40 women. It was a great cultural education.

hue | spring 2016

tion Management, and Textile Development and Marketing students are now working with it. The iStyling avatar can also be used for color styling with makeup and accessories, so the technology has applications across more majors, such as Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing.

Frumkin is pleased that the students have the opportunity to learn this new technology. It’s changing the industry by addressing the formidable sizing dilemma, he says. “It takes the guesswork out.”

Body scanners “take the guesswork out.”

MATTHEW SEPTIMUS

8

The scanner works with accompanying iStyling software, which takes the information from the scan and develops an avatar that the customer can use to try on garments virtually. FIT is the only institution of higher education that has this software.

Steven Frumkin, dean of the Baker School of Business and Technology, says students who train on the equipment and software have a competitive edge. “It gives us an excellent connection to industry,” he says. Fashion Design, Technical Design, Produc-

In seconds, sensors capture up to 400 data points across the body, taking thousands of measurements.

The scanner generates a 3D digital image of the person, which can be used to analyze body shapes and develop made-to-measure clothing and other products. It’s light years beyond the traditional dress form or the tailor with his tape. Some retailers have already started using this new tool in their brickand-mortar stores.

Top: Manufacturers often produce garments in multiple countries, and they tend to rely on fit models from those countries, leading to discrepancies in sizing. With the 3D body scanner, a digital model can be sent electronically worldwide, creating more consistent sizing across the brand.

Above: The iStyling software creates an avatar that reflects the customer’s shape and coloring for virtual assessment of garment fit and hue.

hue.fitnyc.edu

9

i contact: student

Back to Nature

Made to Measure

Lydia Baird Textile Development and Marketing ’16 You and Willa Tsokanis ’16 established a textile composting system at FIT. How did you come up with the idea?

I started as a Fashion Design student, and I was very aware of how much muslin was being thrown out. In my textile fibers class, I learned that cotton is biodegradable. The idea just came to me.

Students master the latest body-scanning technology used in the industry

Why is composting textiles important?

If we turn fabric into compost, we’re not only keeping it out of the landfill, we’re turning it into a valuable product that we spread on FIT’s natural dye garden and other green spaces on campus. If textile composting becomes a common practice in the industry, it could also address the problem of soil erosion, which is going to be a catastrophe on the scale of global warming.

If our soil turns to desert, we can’t grow crops.

Can other fabrics besides muslin be composted?

Any cotton fabric can be composted, but a poly-cotton wouldn’t fully decompose. I’m doing research with Professor Ajoy Sarkar, and we’re focusing on denim next. We’ll take three types of store-bought jeans, one 100 percent cotton, one with 1 percent spandex, and one eco-friendly denim that’s naturally dyed. We’re sending the results to a lab that will test for toxic chemicals, carbon/nitrogen ratios, salt levels, and nutrients in the soil.

It’s

no secret that size and fit vary widely across—and sometimes even within—brands.

Retailers say sizing is the main reason for clothing returns, and manufacturers are concerned about the time and expense of shipping product around the globe, only to have it returned for poor fit. Now the Jay and Patty Baker School of Business and Technology is preparing students to work with new technology that makes the process more precise.

The students are learning on a state-of-the-art 3D body scanner, donated by [TC]2, a body measurement and visualization technology company. To get scanned, a person enters a private space the size of a changing room and strips down to their underwear.

What’s next for the compost project?

I’ve connected with the composting facility on Governor’s Island, and they’ve agreed to do a pilot this spring, two or three times as big as what we’re doing on campus. Expanding textile composting is going to require municipalities to get involved, not just industry.

What did this project teach you?

I’m beginning to understand the connection between chemistry and fashion.

I remember taking my first science class at Middlebury College when I was 18. We had to come up with a lab question based on something around us.

It was the most dumbfounding thing to me—my education hadn’t taught me to be curious. To realize that science can be creative caused a huge shift in my life.

You already had a career in costume design. What was that like?

I was a shopper for The Amazing Spider-Man 2, The Blacklist on NBC, and Last Week Tonight With John Oliver on HBO—I would pick things up around the city to help realize the costume designer’s vision. I was also doing independent design work. For an Anne Hathaway film called Song One, we had to costume a nomadic Berber tribe wedding. We ended staying up until 3 in the morning, draping and redraping 40 women. It was a great cultural education.

hue | spring 2016

tion Management, and Textile Development and Marketing students are now working with it. The iStyling avatar can also be used for color styling with makeup and accessories, so the technology has applications across more majors, such as Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing.

Frumkin is pleased that the students have the opportunity to learn this new technology. It’s changing the industry by addressing the formidable sizing dilemma, he says. “It takes the guesswork out.”

Body scanners “take the guesswork out.”

MATTHEW SEPTIMUS

8

The scanner works with accompanying iStyling software, which takes the information from the scan and develops an avatar that the customer can use to try on garments virtually. FIT is the only institution of higher education that has this software.

Steven Frumkin, dean of the Baker School of Business and Technology, says students who train on the equipment and software have a competitive edge. “It gives us an excellent connection to industry,” he says. Fashion Design, Technical Design, Produc-

In seconds, sensors capture up to 400 data points across the body, taking thousands of measurements.

The scanner generates a 3D digital image of the person, which can be used to analyze body shapes and develop made-to-measure clothing and other products. It’s light years beyond the traditional dress form or the tailor with his tape. Some retailers have already started using this new tool in their brickand-mortar stores.

Top: Manufacturers often produce garments in multiple countries, and they tend to rely on fit models from those countries, leading to discrepancies in sizing. With the 3D body scanner, a digital model can be sent electronically worldwide, creating more consistent sizing across the brand.

Above: The iStyling software creates an avatar that reflects the customer’s shape and coloring for virtual assessment of garment fit and hue. hue.fitnyc.edu

9

HEAR, HERE

Mapping Histories Fresh thinkers who visited FIT this spring

Wake Up, People Artist Dread Scott talks about the goals for his revolutionary art The multidisciplinary artist Dread Scott makes work that is designed to provoke—in a big way.

His first piece, created in 1989 when he was a 24-year-old student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, consisted of a ledger book mounted on a table. To write in it, visitors had to stand on an American flag. What Is the Proper Way to Display the U.S. Flag? caused such a firestorm—President George H. Bush deemed it “disgraceful”—that Senator Bob Dole initiated a measure to outlaw the display of the flag on the floor or ground. Years later, Scott (born Scott Tyler) created another piece in which he burned the flag on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. He was arrested, and the case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the artist and the First Amendment. “That means,” Scott told an audience at FIT on February 25, “that you can do whatever you want with it.”

Scott calls his art “revolutionary,” and there’s no mistaking the vastness of his ambition. He wants to change his audience, to “move history forward,” as he puts it. A piece made in 2012 for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Dread Scott: Decision, was designed for maximum audience discomfort. Visitors entered a large space where four naked black men were being menaced by German shepherds. As Scott read aloud the infamous 1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court ruling (from which he derives his nom d’art), in which the

In On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide (2014), shown on the screen, Scott attempted to walk into the jet of a fire hose, recalling the use of fire hoses against protesters during the Civil Rights Movement.

court held that African-Americans were not citizens, the audience was invited into voting booths. The ballot consisted of a simple yes/no question: None of the 2012 presidential candidates were addressing the fact that one out of nine black American men was currently in prison.

Would you still vote?

Though his work is stark and strident, Scott’s manner is affable, and his sense of humor charms.

One piece, Imagine a World Without America,

Look, a Blook!

Blooks come in all shapes and sizes, including designer Judith Leiber’s glam blook handbags, top, and this blook lighter.

10 hue | spring 2016

consists merely of the title printed on a world map with the United States cropped out. Unfortunately, he acknowledged, Canada was also omitted. “That’s their fault,” he said. “They should have known better than to set up beside us.”

The talk was sponsored by ARTSpeak, an interdisciplinary program presented by the departments of Fine Arts and History of Art. Find out more here: blog.fitnyc.edu/artspeak.

For one librarian, fake books speak volumes

Over the centuries, people around the world have felt such fondness for the learning and ideas found in books that they’ve created objects that mimic their shape. Everything from sewing boxes to flasks has been rendered in book form. Mindell Dubansky, The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s preservation librarian, fell in love with these fake books, which she calls “blooks,” short for “book-look.”

Over three decades, she’s amassed 600 of them, and earlier this year, she curated a show, Blooks: The Art of

Books That Aren’t, at Manhattan’s Grolier Club (a space and society for bibliophiles). On March 12, she visited FIT as part of the college’s Love Your Library lecture series to discuss the exhibition.

Dubansky’s obsession began when she found a blook made of coal that commemorated the life of a man killed in a mining accident. Her collection runs from high to low, and she adores it all. She loves a portable Catholic altar that can be folded up and concealed in a hard-bound,

book-shaped container when in hostile territory. But she’s also sweet on gag books, including several that “explode”—when opened, they release a startling pop. “I set them off all the time,” she said.

At heart, Dubansky’s passion for blooks is actually about books. “It’s gratitude. For books. I love ’em,” she explained. “This little simple thing— it’s sitting on the shelf, you pick it up, you start reading, and the next thing you know, your entire life is transformed.”

The feminist work and ideas of artist Joyce Kozloff Artist Joyce Kozloff doesn’t need a man to explain the world to her. On March 8, she visited FIT to share her work and philosophy.

After living in Mexico in the early ’70s and traveling in Morocco and Turkey, she realized the European canon excluded decorative arts—often the domain of women or non-Western peoples.

A co-founder of the Pattern and Decoration movement and the Heresies feminist art collective, Kozloff started her career painting decorative art motifs on canvases to challenge the definition of “high art.” Her 1978 installation An Interior Decorated employed traditional craft techniques: she created hanging silk-screened textile panels, hand-painted tile pilasters, lithographs on Chinese silk paper, and a functional floor composed of hand-painted tiles. Critic Carrie Rickey wrote, “An Interior Decorated is where painting meets architecture, where art meets craft, where personal commitment meets public art.”

In the 1980s, Kozloff made site-specific mosaics. For her 1985 installation in Suburban Station, Philadelphia, titled Galla Placidia in Philadelphia, she used Byzantine mosaic techniques but replaced the Christian saints with

If I Were a Botanist: Gaza, acrylic, mixed media, and collage on canvas, 54 by 91 inches (three panels), 2015.

William Penn, playing with the idea of icons and saints, Western art, and local history.

Collaborating with city planners on public art spurred her interest in cartography. Since the 1990s, Kozloff has worked with maps as a device for examining history, geography, popular art, and culture. Working from vintage French classroom maps in her print series Social Studies (2011), she collaged in contemporary maps and images of conflict zones, slave trade and labor struggles,

Outfitumentary

endangered wildlife. When asked how these works relate to her earlier feminist pieces, she described her annoyance with depictions of Renaissanceera cartographers pointing at tiny globes, as if they were a “literal, visual representation of men explaining things to me. That is what I have always been fighting against.” —Julianna Rose Dow ’08 The talk was sponsored by ARTSpeak.

of rapid-fire video snapshots, patterns and stories emerge. Music is almost always playing in the background; here and there she pulls off a quick improv dance; her hair goes through a range of punk styles; she exposes and covers her body; and the setting changes as she moves into new apartments and studios. These shreds of information hint at important yet elusive transformations.

“There’s so little information that the viewer can actively write their own story as it goes along,” Hardy said. “The story around the edges keeps people going.”

“It’s casual and it’s punk and it’s in your face, and in some ways it’s leading people to nowhere,” Handelman said. “You start to think about what makes a person’s life.”

A portrait of the artist as a young lesbian feminist Beginning in 2001, artist K8 Hardy decided that someone should chronicle the daily fashion combinations of a radical lesbian artist such as herself, to preserve the culture for posterity.

Armed with a MiniDV camera, she recorded a full-body image of herself consistently for 11 years, until the camera went kaput. The resulting film, Outfitumentary, debuted at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and screened at MoMA before Hardy presented it at FIT on March 8, International Women’s Day. The Film and Media program, with support from FIT’s Diversity Council and the Student-Faculty Corporation, showed the movie as part of its monthly screening series.

Hardy, looking glamorous in polka-dot pants, a scarf printed with marching ants, and blue shades, sat down with Associate Professor Michelle Handelman afterward to discuss the film’s conception, lightning-fast editing process, and plotless structure.

The project may have been intended as a simple visual account—and, in fact, Hardy only edited it into a film after witnessing the rise of selfie culture in 2014—but over the 82 minutes

pop culture and propaganda, and extinct and

Top: A recent portrait of Hardy. Above and Right: Stills from Outfitumentary.

hue.fitnyc.edu

11

HEAR, HERE

Mapping Histories Fresh thinkers who visited FIT this spring

Wake Up, People Artist Dread Scott talks about the goals for his revolutionary art The multidisciplinary artist Dread Scott makes work that is designed to provoke—in a big way.

His first piece, created in 1989 when he was a 24-year-old student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, consisted of a ledger book mounted on a table. To write in it, visitors had to stand on an American flag. What Is the Proper Way to Display the U.S. Flag? caused such a firestorm—President George H. Bush deemed it “disgraceful”—that Senator Bob Dole initiated a measure to outlaw the display of the flag on the floor or ground. Years later, Scott (born Scott Tyler) created another piece in which he burned the flag on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. He was arrested, and the case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the artist and the First Amendment. “That means,” Scott told an audience at FIT on February 25, “that you can do whatever you want with it.”

Scott calls his art “revolutionary,” and there’s no mistaking the vastness of his ambition. He wants to change his audience, to “move history forward,” as he puts it. A piece made in 2012 for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Dread Scott: Decision, was designed for maximum audience discomfort. Visitors entered a large space where four naked black men were being menaced by German shepherds. As Scott read aloud the infamous 1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court ruling (from which he derives his nom d’art), in which the

In On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide (2014), shown on the screen, Scott attempted to walk into the jet of a fire hose, recalling the use of fire hoses against protesters during the Civil Rights Movement.

court held that African-Americans were not citizens, the audience was invited into voting booths. The ballot consisted of a simple yes/no question: None of the 2012 presidential candidates were addressing the fact that one out of nine black American men was currently in prison.

Would you still vote?

Though his work is stark and strident, Scott’s manner is affable, and his sense of humor charms.

One piece, Imagine a World Without America,

Look, a Blook!

Blooks come in all shapes and sizes, including designer Judith Leiber’s glam blook handbags, top, and this blook lighter.

10 hue | spring 2016

consists merely of the title printed on a world map with the United States cropped out. Unfortunately, he acknowledged, Canada was also omitted. “That’s their fault,” he said. “They should have known better than to set up beside us.”

The talk was sponsored by ARTSpeak, an interdisciplinary program presented by the departments of Fine Arts and History of Art. Find out more here: blog.fitnyc.edu/artspeak.

For one librarian, fake books speak volumes

Over the centuries, people around the world have felt such fondness for the learning and ideas found in books that they’ve created objects that mimic their shape. Everything from sewing boxes to flasks has been rendered in book form. Mindell Dubansky, The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s preservation librarian, fell in love with these fake books, which she calls “blooks,” short for “book-look.”

Over three decades, she’s amassed 600 of them, and earlier this year, she curated a show, Blooks: The Art of

Books That Aren’t, at Manhattan’s Grolier Club (a space and society for bibliophiles). On March 12, she visited FIT as part of the college’s Love Your Library lecture series to discuss the exhibition.

Dubansky’s obsession began when she found a blook made of coal that commemorated the life of a man killed in a mining accident. Her collection runs from high to low, and she adores it all. She loves a portable Catholic altar that can be folded up and concealed in a hard-bound,

book-shaped container when in hostile territory. But she’s also sweet on gag books, including several that “explode”—when opened, they release a startling pop. “I set them off all the time,” she said.

At heart, Dubansky’s passion for blooks is actually about books. “It’s gratitude. For books. I love ’em,” she explained. “This little simple thing— it’s sitting on the shelf, you pick it up, you start reading, and the next thing you know, your entire life is transformed.”

The feminist work and ideas of artist Joyce Kozloff Artist Joyce Kozloff doesn’t need a man to explain the world to her. On March 8, she visited FIT to share her work and philosophy.

After living in Mexico in the early ’70s and traveling in Morocco and Turkey, she realized the European canon excluded decorative arts—often the domain of women or non-Western peoples.

A co-founder of the Pattern and Decoration movement and the Heresies feminist art collective, Kozloff started her career painting decorative art motifs on canvases to challenge the definition of “high art.” Her 1978 installation An Interior Decorated employed traditional craft techniques: she created hanging silk-screened textile panels, hand-painted tile pilasters, lithographs on Chinese silk paper, and a functional floor composed of hand-painted tiles. Critic Carrie Rickey wrote, “An Interior Decorated is where painting meets architecture, where art meets craft, where personal commitment meets public art.”

In the 1980s, Kozloff made site-specific mosaics. For her 1985 installation in Suburban Station, Philadelphia, titled Galla Placidia in Philadelphia, she used Byzantine mosaic techniques but replaced the Christian saints with

Outfitumentary A portrait of the artist as a young lesbian feminist Beginning in 2001, artist K8 Hardy decided that someone should chronicle the daily fashion combinations of a radical lesbian artist such as herself, to preserve the culture for posterity.

Armed with a MiniDV camera, she recorded a full-body image of herself consistently for 11 years, until the camera went kaput. The resulting film, Outfitumentary, debuted at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and screened at MoMA before Hardy presented it at FIT on March 8, International Women’s Day. The Film and Media program, with support from FIT’s Diversity Council and the Student-Faculty Corporation, showed the movie as part of its monthly screening series.

Hardy, looking glamorous in polka-dot pants, a scarf printed with marching ants, and blue shades, sat down with Associate Professor Michelle Handelman afterward to discuss the film’s conception, lightning-fast editing process, and plotless structure.

The project may have been intended as a simple visual account—and, in fact, Hardy only edited it into a film after witnessing the rise of selfie culture in 2014—but over the 82 minutes

If I Were a Botanist: Gaza, acrylic, mixed media, and collage on canvas, 54 by 91 inches (three panels), 2015.

William Penn, playing with the idea of icons and saints, Western art, and local history.

Collaborating with city planners on public art spurred her interest in cartography. Since the 1990s, Kozloff has worked with maps as a device for examining history, geography, popular art, and culture. Working from vintage French classroom maps in her print series Social Studies (2011), she collaged in contemporary maps and images of conflict zones, slave trade and labor struggles,

pop culture and propaganda, and extinct and endangered wildlife. When asked how these works relate to her earlier feminist pieces, she described her annoyance with depictions of Renaissanceera cartographers pointing at tiny globes, as if they were a “literal, visual representation of men explaining things to me. That is what I have always been fighting against.” —Julianna Rose Dow ’08 The talk was sponsored by ARTSpeak.

of rapid-fire video snapshots, patterns and stories emerge. Music is almost always playing in the background; here and there she pulls off a quick improv dance; her hair goes through a range of punk styles; she exposes and covers her body; and the setting changes as she moves into new apartments and studios. These shreds of information hint at important yet elusive transformations.

“There’s so little information that the viewer can actively write their own story as it goes along,” Hardy said. “The story around the edges keeps people going.”

“It’s casual and it’s punk and it’s in your face, and in some ways it’s leading people to nowhere,” Handelman said. “You start to think about what makes a person’s life.”

Top: A recent portrait of Hardy. Above and Right: Stills from Outfitumentary.

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MIR ROR, MIR ROR A ROM A N T IC SHOW AT T H E M USEU M AT F I T E X A M I N ED HOW FA I RY T A L E S I NSPI R E FA SH ION

BY RAQUEL LANERI

A SHION IS H AV ING A FA IRY-TA LE MOMEN T.

In “Furrypelts,” a little-known Brothers Grimm story, a beauti-

At the Oscars, Cate Blanchett stunned in a seafoam

ful princess tries to avoid marrying her father by asking him for

green Armani dress covered in flowers made of feath-

dresses made of the moon, the sun, and the stars, as well as a coat

ers, which looked fit for a princess; Dolce & Gabba-

made from every kind of animal in the kingdom. Sometimes

na debuted their fall 2016 collection, inspired by

these garments can illustrate a character’s vanity (as in “The Red

Cinderella and full of puffed sleeves, sequins, and dresses embroi-

Shoes,” in which an angel punishes a conceited girl by cutting

dered with helper mice and glass slippers; and Princess Leia has

off her feet); but they can also lead to her salvation (the heroine’s

reemerged as a style and beauty icon, her fantasy hair and long

coat in “Furrypelts” allows her to flee into the woods).

white robes appearing on runways and red carpets.

“I’d seen the term ‘fairy tale’ in a lot of fashion media, and I

garments for centuries, from Louis XIV’s luxurious gold court

also always felt drawn to certain fashion editorials related to

outfits to the embroidered, fur-trimmed yellow cape by Chinese

fairy tales,” says Colleen Hill, associate curator at The Museum

couturier Guo Pei that Rihanna wore to the 2015 Met Ball, which

at FIT. “But no one had explored the connection between literary

took nearly two years to construct and weighed 55 pounds. As

fairy tales and fashion really deeply.”

for those fantasy garments from “Furrypelts,” Zandra Rhodes’s

The result, Fairy Tale Fashion, was on view at the museum from

sunburst-pleated gold-lamé dress from 1981 does dazzle like the

January 15 to April 16. The exhibition included more than 80

sun, while an embroidered beaded silver gown from Bibhu Moha-

garments and accessories, many from the 21st century, arranged

patra, Fashion Design ’99, has an almost craggy, otherworldly

in fantastical tableaux to bring to life such beloved stories as “The

surface that recalls the moon.

Little Mermaid” (some lovely shipwrecked dresses from Rodarte),

“Beauty and the Beast” (a court dress that includes patches of

captivate designers, and us: It’s about transformation—chang-

animal print) and “Sleeping Beauty” (bejeweled armor from Dolce

ing one’s economic status, morphing from a mermaid into a

& Gabbana).

human, entering a parallel world. The most enticing garments

“I just began acting like an illustrator of these tales, thinking

promise this kind of change: the gown that will make you the

about how they looked in my imagination and then seeing how

belle of the ball, the shoes that will allow you to walk more grace-

that could be translated into actual fashion,” Hill says.

fully, the sexy wrap dress that will boost your confidence, the

skinny jeans that you pray one day will fit.

Fashion looms large in fairy tales. Think Cinderella’s glass

slipper, here represented by a heelless, towering 3D-printed shoe

by Noritaka Tatehana; or Red Riding Hood’s cloak, most dramatically updated by Comme des Garçons’s Rei Kawakubo, with an exaggerated, quilted, patent-leather headpiece.

O

Top: Judith Leiber, minaudière, fall 2013. Hand-beaded Austrian crystals evoke Snow White’s apple.

12 hue | spring 2016

Designers have tried to create fantastical, sinfully alluring Above: The “Little Red Riding Hood” display featured a late 18th-century cloak, a nightdress circa 1885, an embroidered Giorgio di Sant’Angelo cloak circa 1970, an Altuzarra cloak, a Dolce & Gabbana dress, and a trippy hooded ensemble from the spring 2015 collection of Comme des Garçons.

Below left: A sea-inspired dress from Rodarte’s spring 2015 collection was an ideal choice to represent “The Little Mermaid.”

Below right: For the “Furrypelts” section, the gowns made from the stars, the moon, and the sun were represented by dresses by Mary Liotta, Bibhu Mohapatra ‘99, and Zandra Rhodes. The coat made from every kind of animal in the kingdom was by Diane von Furstenberg.

There’s another reason why fairy-tale fashion continues to

“Part of the enduring appeal of fairy tales is that they have this sense of optimism,” Hill says. “When we change our wardrobe in some way, I think we all hope for our own fairytale ending.”

Left: Cinderella's glass slipper, represented by Noritaka Tatehana in acrylic using a 3D printer.

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MIR ROR, MIR ROR A ROM A N T IC SHOW AT T H E M USEU M AT F I T E X A M I N ED HOW FA I RY T A L E S I NSPI R E FA SH ION

BY RAQUEL LANERI

A SHION IS H AV ING A FA IRY-TA LE MOMEN T.

In “Furrypelts,” a little-known Brothers Grimm story, a beauti-

At the Oscars, Cate Blanchett stunned in a seafoam

ful princess tries to avoid marrying her father by asking him for

green Armani dress covered in flowers made of feath-

dresses made of the moon, the sun, and the stars, as well as a coat

ers, which looked fit for a princess; Dolce & Gabba-

made from every kind of animal in the kingdom. Sometimes

na debuted their fall 2016 collection, inspired by

these garments can illustrate a character’s vanity (as in “The Red

Cinderella and full of puffed sleeves, sequins, and dresses embroi-

Shoes,” in which an angel punishes a conceited girl by cutting

dered with helper mice and glass slippers; and Princess Leia has

off her feet); but they can also lead to her salvation (the heroine’s

reemerged as a style and beauty icon, her fantasy hair and long

coat in “Furrypelts” allows her to flee into the woods).

white robes appearing on runways and red carpets.

“I’d seen the term ‘fairy tale’ in a lot of fashion media, and I

garments for centuries, from Louis XIV’s luxurious gold court

also always felt drawn to certain fashion editorials related to

outfits to the embroidered, fur-trimmed yellow cape by Chinese

fairy tales,” says Colleen Hill, associate curator at The Museum

couturier Guo Pei that Rihanna wore to the 2015 Met Ball, which

at FIT. “But no one had explored the connection between literary

took nearly two years to construct and weighed 55 pounds. As

fairy tales and fashion really deeply.”

for those fantasy garments from “Furrypelts,” Zandra Rhodes’s

The result, Fairy Tale Fashion, was on view at the museum from

sunburst-pleated gold-lamé dress from 1981 does dazzle like the

January 15 to April 16. The exhibition included more than 80

sun, while an embroidered beaded silver gown from Bibhu Moha-

garments and accessories, many from the 21st century, arranged

patra, Fashion Design ’99, has an almost craggy, otherworldly

in fantastical tableaux to bring to life such beloved stories as “The

surface that recalls the moon.

Little Mermaid” (some lovely shipwrecked dresses from Rodarte),

“Beauty and the Beast” (a court dress that includes patches of

captivate designers, and us: It’s about transformation—chang-

animal print) and “Sleeping Beauty” (bejeweled armor from Dolce

ing one’s economic status, morphing from a mermaid into a

& Gabbana).

human, entering a parallel world. The most enticing garments

“I just began acting like an illustrator of these tales, thinking

promise this kind of change: the gown that will make you the

about how they looked in my imagination and then seeing how

belle of the ball, the shoes that will allow you to walk more grace-

that could be translated into actual fashion,” Hill says.

fully, the sexy wrap dress that will boost your confidence, the

skinny jeans that you pray one day will fit.

Fashion looms large in fairy tales. Think Cinderella’s glass

slipper, here represented by a heelless, towering 3D-printed shoe

by Noritaka Tatehana; or Red Riding Hood’s cloak, most dramatically updated by Comme des Garçons’s Rei Kawakubo, with an exaggerated, quilted, patent-leather headpiece.

O

Top: Judith Leiber, minaudière, fall 2013. Hand-beaded Austrian crystals evoke Snow White’s apple.

12 hue | spring 2016

Designers have tried to create fantastical, sinfully alluring Above: The “Little Red Riding Hood” display featured a late 18th-century cloak, a nightdress circa 1885, an embroidered Giorgio di Sant’Angelo cloak circa 1970, an Altuzarra cloak, a Dolce & Gabbana dress, and a trippy hooded ensemble from the spring 2015 collection of Comme des Garçons.

Below left: A sea-inspired dress from Rodarte’s spring 2015 collection was an ideal choice to represent “The Little Mermaid.”

Below right: For the “Furrypelts” section, the gowns made from the stars, the moon, and the sun were represented by dresses by Mary Liotta, Bibhu Mohapatra ‘99, and Zandra Rhodes. The coat made from every kind of animal in the kingdom was by Diane von Furstenberg.

There’s another reason why fairy-tale fashion continues to

“Part of the enduring appeal of fairy tales is that they have this sense of optimism,” Hill says. “When we change our wardrobe in some way, I think we all hope for our own fairytale ending.”

Left: Cinderella's glass slipper, represented by Noritaka Tatehana in acrylic using a 3D printer.

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hue.fitnyc.edu 13

EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN Associate Professor Praveen Chaudhry’s images of nomads and weavers in Tibet and Kashmir offer a glimpse of a vanishing world

By Alex Joseph

For generations, nomadic tribes in

migrate at least twice a year, and

Kashmir and Tibet have shepherded

Chaudhry has journeyed thousands

the goats that provide cashmere and

of miles with them, both in blazing heat

pashmina fibers for local weavers.

and 20-degree-below-zero winters.

In recent decades, these areas have

Once, after an avalanche, he got stuck

become militarized zones—China

in a location for several days. Occasion-

occupies Tibet, and Kashmir has a

ally, he heard gunshots. The weavers,

bleak record of human rights violations,

he says, have a lifestyle based in

with some 70,000 killed in the last

meditation and work calmly despite the

20 years. By definition, nomads have

danger. Chaudhry marvels at some of

no fixed address, but their borderless

the ironies he’s witnessed—for example,

existence is increasingly endangered

a soldier climbing out of a menacing

by these conflicts.

tank to ask a weaver for a glass of water.

Praveen Chaudhry, an associate

Some of Chaudhry’s students,

professor of political science at FIT,

curious about the project, have joined

researches social movements and

him on his travels. One has since

human displacements. Chaudhry,

enrolled in a PhD program in sociology

honored with a SUNY Chancellor’s

at Yale. Another, Trupal Pandya,

Award for Scholarship and Creative

Photography ’16, has begun a career

Activities in 2010, became concerned

depicting global politics. Over the

that the plight of the nomads was

years, the FIT community has proved

receiving insufficient attention. So,

beneficial in other ways, too. Chaudhry

for the last five years, he has spent

didn’t have experience in photography,

considerable time in the region study-

for example, so he took a course at

ing nomad communities, and taking

the college.

photographs that document, in his

words, “the process of urbanization,

in galleries in the United States, India,

population pressure, growing conflict

and Mexico; a selection also appeared

in the state, environmental degrada-

in the lobby of the Marvin Feldman

tion, and globalization.” Early on, he

Center in February. Chaudhry plans to

decided to avoid obvious emblems of

eventually publish a book of them. In

war and suffering, and instead capture

the meantime, he says he’s discovered

The images have been displayed

images of civil society, which persists

another purpose for the work.

despite existential threats.

Chaudhry has focused on two

asking myself, ‘Why am I doing this?’

groups of nomads, one predominantly

I was giving a talk at FIT, to about 400

Muslim, the other Buddhist. Both

people, and the room was totally silent.

groups are vulnerable to the military as

Here I was, thousands of miles from

well as terrorists, who steal their money

the community I was talking about. I

and goats, and sometimes kidnap

realized that sometimes, it’s just about

young women and boys. The nomads

the human connection.”

14 hue | spring 2016

“As the project developed, I started

Clockwise from left: Weaving pashmina stoles in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir; a nomad in the Changtang Plateau, average elevation 4,700 meters, from the mostly Buddhist Changpa community shepherds goats that produce the pashmina fiber (young goats are dyed to maintain herd identity); a nomad from the mostly Muslim Bakarwal community in Kashmir; a boy beside the kitchen in his tent, constructed from yak hide, which is portable, warm, and waterproof; a weaver absorbed in her work.

hue.fitnyc.edu 15

EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN Associate Professor Praveen Chaudhry’s images of nomads and weavers in Tibet and Kashmir offer a glimpse of a vanishing world

By Alex Joseph

For generations, nomadic tribes in

migrate at least twice a year, and

Kashmir and Tibet have shepherded

Chaudhry has journeyed thousands

the goats that provide cashmere and

of miles with them, both in blazing heat

pashmina fibers for local weavers.

and 20-degree-below-zero winters.

In recent decades, these areas have

Once, after an avalanche, he got stuck

become militarized zones—China

in a location for several days. Occasion-

occupies Tibet, and Kashmir has a

ally, he heard gunshots. The weavers,

bleak record of human rights violations,

he says, have a lifestyle based in

with some 70,000 killed in the last

meditation and work calmly despite the

20 years. By definition, nomads have

danger. Chaudhry marvels at some of

no fixed address, but their borderless

the ironies he’s witnessed—for example,

existence is increasingly endangered

a soldier climbing out of a menacing

by these conflicts.

tank to ask a weaver for a glass of water.

Praveen Chaudhry, an associate

Some of Chaudhry’s students,

professor of political science at FIT,

curious about the project, have joined

researches social movements and

him on his travels. One has since

human displacements. Chaudhry,

enrolled in a PhD program in sociology

honored with a SUNY Chancellor’s

at Yale. Another, Trupal Pandya,

Award for Scholarship and Creative

Photography ’16, has begun a career

Activities in 2010, became concerned

depicting global politics. Over the

that the plight of the nomads was

years, the FIT community has proved

receiving insufficient attention. So,

beneficial in other ways, too. Chaudhry

for the last five years, he has spent

didn’t have experience in photography,

considerable time in the region study-

for example, so he took a course at

ing nomad communities, and taking

the college.

photographs that document, in his

words, “the process of urbanization,

in galleries in the United States, India,

population pressure, growing conflict

and Mexico; a selection also appeared

in the state, environmental degrada-

in the lobby of the Marvin Feldman

tion, and globalization.” Early on, he

Center in February. Chaudhry plans to

decided to avoid obvious emblems of

eventually publish a book of them. In

war and suffering, and instead capture

the meantime, he says he’s discovered

The images have been displayed

images of civil society, which persists

another purpose for the work.

despite existential threats.

Chaudhry has focused on two

asking myself, ‘Why am I doing this?’

groups of nomads, one predominantly

I was giving a talk at FIT, to about 400

Muslim, the other Buddhist. Both

people, and the room was totally silent.

groups are vulnerable to the military as

Here I was, thousands of miles from

well as terrorists, who steal their money

the community I was talking about. I

and goats, and sometimes kidnap

realized that sometimes, it’s just about

young women and boys. The nomads

the human connection.”

14 hue | spring 2016

“As the project developed, I started

Clockwise from left: Weaving pashmina stoles in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir; a nomad in the Changtang Plateau, average elevation 4,700 meters, from the mostly Buddhist Changpa community shepherds goats that produce the pashmina fiber (young goats are dyed to maintain herd identity); a nomad from the mostly Muslim Bakarwal community in Kashmir; a boy beside the kitchen in his tent, constructed from yak hide, which is portable, warm, and waterproof; a weaver absorbed in her work.

hue.fitnyc.edu 15

W IG SIZE Circumference (C) Head Length (HL) Head Width (HW)

Petite (P) /Extra Small (XS) C: 203/4 inches HL: 131/4 inches HW: 103/4 inches

Small (S) C: 211/4 inches HL: 133/4 inches HW: 11 inches

Average (A)/Medium (M) C: 22 inches HL: 141/4 inches HW: 111/2 inches

The

Average (A)/Large (L)

Wigmaker

C: 221/2 inches HL: 143/4 inches HW: 113/4 inches

Large (L) C: 23 inches HL: 15 inches

Above: Mollica in his small Upper East Side studio.

Left: Mollica agreed to make the “Founding Fathers” wig for the September 21, 2015 Donald Trump cover of New York after the magazine’s interns told him they’d be fired if they couldn’t convince

HW: 12 inches

him. He started on a Friday

Raffaele Mollica, Pattern Drafting and Design,

Extra Large (XL)

and delivered it on Monday.

The wig was photographed on

makes lifelike wigs—but only for people who

C: 24 inches

a body double, and a digital artist photoshopped in The

really need them

HL: 153/4 inches

Donald’s face.

HW: 121/2 inches

Right: A staff member carefully brushes a wig.

RAFFAELE MOLLICA EXPENDS A LOT OF energy convincing people not to buy a wig from him.

You’re a wealthy woman who wants to shake up your style? Sorry. A costume designer for a major TV show? No deal. A guy who’s self-conscious about balding? Bah! You look fine!

So who is granted an audience with this king of wiggery, who has augmented the locks of Carol Channing, Evelyn Lauder, Loretta Young, Louise Lasser, Helen Gurley Brown, and Tony Randall?

This bigwig wigmaker who worked for Vidal Sassoon and Elizabeth Arden? It’s a short list: cancer patients, women with alopecia, and Orthodox Jews—women who, for medical or religious reasons, need to wear someone else’s hair. “I can only make one or two a week,” he says. “If they don’t need it, I don’t have time.”

If the $5,000 base price sounds like a lot, con16 hue | spring 2016

sider what goes into each wig. Using the design skills he learned at FIT, Mollica starts by taking scalp measurements and stitching together a netted foundation that fits without uncomfortable drawstrings or elastic. (He does use elastic for Orthodox women, because the wig has to fit over existing hair.)

Then a staff member—he employs five to ten part time—painstakingly threads hairs one by one into the netting. All the hair is sewn into place, and finally, the wig is styled and cut. The team adds highlights using aluminum foil and bleach, just like at the hair salon.

The raw material isn’t cheap, either. Caucasian hair, which Mollica uses almost exclusively, costs $4,000 a pound. A short-hair wig contains about 7 ounces of hair, and a long-hair wig has 12.

“European hair is the most valuable, because it has the most natural colors and textures,” he says.

“The hardest thing to do is the natural look,” Mollica says.

“I want to make a woman look like we didn’t do anything for her.”

SMILJANA PEROS

“Asian hair is all black and straight—it’s hard to embellish. The African strand is the most delicate.”

Hair can last practically forever—Google “mummy hair,” preferably not during lunch— but nature abhors a wig. With proper care and regular maintenance, a Raffaele Mollica creation can look good for five years or longer. Most do not. Sunshine oxidizes the hair. Washing a wig off the block (the head-shaped wooden form) or using a hair dryer can cause warping. Brushing it in long strokes pulls out hairs. And perspiration corrodes the netting over time. (When the wig is going to lie on bald scalp, he applies silicone to repel sweat.)

Mollica is a hair man, through and through— when the Hue team visited his studio, he ran his fingers through our hair to show the difference between natural growing hair and wigs—but he

came to the business in a circuitous way. He emigrated from Sicily in 1956 at 10 years old; after high school he worked for a trims buyer who sent him to FIT for night classes. He was drafted into the military after a year; when he returned to New York in the late ’60s, he got a job at his uncle’s Madison Avenue hair salon. He was constantly criticizing the wigs for sale—thanks to Vidal Sassoon’s influence, New York women were opting for minimalist bobs, but wigs still emulated the teased and trussed-up tresses of the early ’60s.

Finally Mollica made his own, with simple hairstyles that were parted naturally. When he showed them to Sassoon, the legendary hairdresser hired him on the spot as his in-house wigmaker.

“The hardest thing to do is the natural look,” Mollica says. “I want to make a woman look like we didn’t do anything for her.”

PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION BY BOBBY DOHERTY. TRUMP PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHELE ASSELIN/CONTOUR BY GETTY IMAGES

In 1975, he hung out his shingle. He originally made wigs for stage and film but grew frustrated with the inflated personalities in showbiz. “They’re basically the worst people on earth. They want everything for free.” After waiting five years to get paid for a wig for a Carol Channing show, he stopped entirely. In the ’80s, more and more women were coming to Mollica with no hair, as chemotherapy was becoming a mainstream cancer treatment. For him, helping these women was a moral imperative.

Recently, Mollica was diagnosed with cancer, and, like so many of his customers, lost his hair after chemotherapy. “I look in the mirror, and I don’t even recognize myself,” he says, touching his bare scalp. Then he smiles. “For 40 years, I gave people encouragement about losing their hair. So now I’m bald. It’s not so bad.”—Jonathan Vatner hue.fitnyc.edu

17

W IG SIZE Circumference (C) Head Length (HL) Head Width (HW)

Petite (P) /Extra Small (XS) C: 203/4 inches HL: 131/4 inches HW: 103/4 inches

Small (S) C: 211/4 inches HL: 133/4 inches HW: 11 inches

Average (A)/Medium (M) C: 22 inches HL: 141/4 inches HW: 111/2 inches

The

Average (A)/Large (L)

Wigmaker

C: 221/2 inches HL: 143/4 inches HW: 113/4 inches

Large (L) C: 23 inches HL: 15 inches

Above: Mollica in his small Upper East Side studio.

Left: Mollica agreed to make the “Founding Fathers” wig for the September 21, 2015 Donald Trump cover of New York after the magazine’s interns told him they’d be fired if they couldn’t convince

HW: 12 inches

him. He started on a Friday

Raffaele Mollica, Pattern Drafting and Design,

Extra Large (XL)

and delivered it on Monday.

The wig was photographed on

makes lifelike wigs—but only for people who

C: 24 inches

a body double, and a digital artist photoshopped in The

really need them

HL: 153/4 inches

Donald’s face.

HW: 121/2 inches

Right: A staff member carefully brushes a wig.

RAFFAELE MOLLICA EXPENDS A LOT OF energy convincing people not to buy a wig from him.

You’re a wealthy woman who wants to shake up your style? Sorry. A costume designer for a major TV show? No deal. A guy who’s self-conscious about balding? Bah! You look fine!

So who is granted an audience with this king of wiggery, who has augmented the locks of Carol Channing, Evelyn Lauder, Loretta Young, Louise Lasser, Helen Gurley Brown, and Tony Randall?

This bigwig wigmaker who worked for Vidal Sassoon and Elizabeth Arden? It’s a short list: cancer patients, women with alopecia, and Orthodox Jews—women who, for medical or religious reasons, need to wear someone else’s hair. “I can only make one or two a week,” he says. “If they don’t need it, I don’t have time.”

If the $5,000 base price sounds like a lot, con16 hue | spring 2016

sider what goes into each wig. Using the design skills he learned at FIT, Mollica starts by taking scalp measurements and stitching together a netted foundation that fits without uncomfortable drawstrings or elastic. (He does use elastic for Orthodox women, because the wig has to fit over existing hair.)

Then a staff member—he employs five to ten part time—painstakingly threads hairs one by one into the netting. All the hair is sewn into place, and finally, the wig is styled and cut. The team adds highlights using aluminum foil and bleach, just like at the hair salon.

The raw material isn’t cheap, either. Caucasian hair, which Mollica uses almost exclusively, costs $4,000 a pound. A short-hair wig contains about 7 ounces of hair, and a long-hair wig has 12.

“European hair is the most valuable, because it has the most natural colors and textures,” he says.

“The hardest thing to do is the natural look,” Mollica says.

“I want to make a woman look like we didn’t do anything for her.”

SMILJANA PEROS

“Asian hair is all black and straight—it’s hard to embellish. The African strand is the most delicate.”

Hair can last practically forever—Google “mummy hair,” preferably not during lunch— but nature abhors a wig. With proper care and regular maintenance, a Raffaele Mollica creation can look good for five years or longer. Most do not. Sunshine oxidizes the hair. Washing a wig off the block (the head-shaped wooden form) or using a hair dryer can cause warping. Brushing it in long strokes pulls out hairs. And perspiration corrodes the netting over time. (When the wig is going to lie on bald scalp, he applies silicone to repel sweat.)

Mollica is a hair man, through and through— when the Hue team visited his studio, he ran his fingers through our hair to show the difference between natural growing hair and wigs—but he

came to the business in a circuitous way. He emigrated from Sicily in 1956 at 10 years old; after high school he worked for a trims buyer who sent him to FIT for night classes. He was drafted into the military after a year; when he returned to New York in the late ’60s, he got a job at his uncle’s Madison Avenue hair salon. He was constantly criticizing the wigs for sale—thanks to Vidal Sassoon’s influence, New York women were opting for minimalist bobs, but wigs still emulated the teased and trussed-up tresses of the early ’60s.

Finally Mollica made his own, with simple hairstyles that were parted naturally. When he showed them to Sassoon, the legendary hairdresser hired him on the spot as his in-house wigmaker.

“The hardest thing to do is the natural look,” Mollica says. “I want to make a woman look like we didn’t do anything for her.”

PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION BY BOBBY DOHERTY. TRUMP PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHELE ASSELIN/CONTOUR BY GETTY IMAGES

In 1975, he hung out his shingle. He originally made wigs for stage and film but grew frustrated with the inflated personalities in showbiz. “They’re basically the worst people on earth. They want everything for free.” After waiting five years to get paid for a wig for a Carol Channing show, he stopped entirely. In the ’80s, more and more women were coming to Mollica with no hair, as chemotherapy was becoming a mainstream cancer treatment. For him, helping these women was a moral imperative.

Recently, Mollica was diagnosed with cancer, and, like so many of his customers, lost his hair after chemotherapy. “I look in the mirror, and I don’t even recognize myself,” he says, touching his bare scalp. Then he smiles. “For 40 years, I gave people encouragement about losing their hair. So now I’m bald. It’s not so bad.”—Jonathan Vatner hue.fitnyc.edu

17

RAISING THE STANDARD

6 TH I NGS

The moon landing. The Battle of Iwo Jima. Abraham Lincoln’s

Flags are the family business for Sandy Dennis Van Lieu, Manufacturing Management ’94

funeral. These indelible historic moments are united by the stirring presence of the star-spangled banner, a patriotic symbol of America. Remarkably, one company made flags for all these events and countless more: Annin Flagmakers.

With 500 employees across three factories in Virginia and Ohio, Annin is the largest f lag manufacturer in the U.S. Founded in Lower Manhattan in 1847 by Alexander Annin, it’s also the oldest. And FIT has played a role in its story. Sandy Van Lieu, executive vice president and co-owner of the Roseland, NJ-based company—and the greatgreat-great-granddaughter of its founder—studied manufacturing at FIT in order to become a better manager at the firm.

“We learned how to take apart and put together a sewing machine, how to train a sewing-machine operator, and how to lay out a plant,” Van Lieu recalls. “It gave me credibility with the employees. They said, ‘She’s not just some owner’s kid.’”

She put those skills to work as soon as she graduated, in 1994. In that first year on the job, she reduced the lead time for making a custom flag from three months to three weeks.

Now it takes a single day. Currently, she manages relationships with Annin’s major customers, such as Walmart and Target, and she helps steer the company, ensuring its longevity as a profitable and ethical business.

Scrubbed of its meaning, any flag is merely a textile, one that must be durable and supremely colorfast. Annin makes its high-end flags from nylon 66, a formulation that is extra sturdy yet still lightweight enough to flutter in a gentle breeze. Premetallized acid dyes, mixed in an in-house chemistry lab, make the flag UV-resistant, and another chemical is applied to protect against acid rain.

The stripes are stitched together and the stars are embroidered with a poly-cotton yarn. The fly hem, farthest from the flagpole, is reinforced with up to six rows of lockstitching to prevent fraying.

Digital printing is used for less expensive flags, as well as those manufactured in small quantities, such as flags for U.S. states and territories and U.N. member nations, as well as custom flags for sporting events, religious and social organizations, and the military.

Though dominated by only a handful of companies, the flag industry is fiercely competitive. But because of Annin’s heritage and the national pride inherent in every flag, Van Lieu feels a responsibility to use ethical business practices, manufacturing domestically, hiring fairly, and promoting from within.

“It’s a different feeling when you make a flag—I can’t explain it,” she says. “We hold ourselves to a higher standard.”

BY JONATH A N VAT N ER

WE DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT FLAGS b ★c

1

The colors of the American flag are Old Glory Blue, Old Glory Red, and white, as defined by the Standard Color Reference of America, published by the Color Association of the United States. There are no exact Pantone matches for the blue and red.

b★ c

2

Nylon flags are most popular in the North, while heavy duty cotton is preferred in the South.

b★ c

3

If a flag is not lit, it should be lowered at sunset.

b★c

4

Annin sells 60 percent of its flags between April and July, for “flag season”: Memorial Day, Flag Day, and Independence Day.

b★ c

5

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that almost 99 percent of American flags are made in the U.S.; more than 95 percent of the imported flags are made in China. (Annin produces all its flags domestically.)

b★ c

6

Annin will make Nazi flags only for movies. Following the Charleston church massacre of 2015, that rule now applies to Confederate flags as well.

Far left: Employees at Annin & Co., circa 1900.

Left: Annin’s Fulton Street headquarters, before the company sold the building in 1925.

Right: Van Lieu in an Annin factory during her years at FIT.

ACADEMIC IMAGE

COURTESY OF ANNIN

hue.fitnyc.edu 19

RAISING THE STANDARD

6 TH I NGS

The moon landing. The Battle of Iwo Jima. Abraham Lincoln’s

Flags are the family business for Sandy Dennis Van Lieu, Manufacturing Management ’94

funeral. These indelible historic moments are united by the stirring presence of the star-spangled banner, a patriotic symbol of America. Remarkably, one company made flags for all these events and countless more: Annin Flagmakers.

With 500 employees across three factories in Virginia and Ohio, Annin is the largest f lag manufacturer in the U.S. Founded in Lower Manhattan in 1847 by Alexander Annin, it’s also the oldest. And FIT has played a role in its story. Sandy Van Lieu, executive vice president and co-owner of the Roseland, NJ-based company—and the greatgreat-great-granddaughter of its founder—studied manufacturing at FIT in order to become a better manager at the firm.

“We learned how to take apart and put together a sewing machine, how to train a sewing-machine operator, and how to lay out a plant,” Van Lieu recalls. “It gave me credibility with the employees. They said, ‘She’s not just some owner’s kid.’”

She put those skills to work as soon as she graduated, in 1994. In that first year on the job, she reduced the lead time for making a custom flag from three months to three weeks.

Now it takes a single day. Currently, she manages relationships with Annin’s major customers, such as Walmart and Target, and she helps steer the company, ensuring its longevity as a profitable and ethical business.

Scrubbed of its meaning, any flag is merely a textile, one that must be durable and supremely colorfast. Annin makes its high-end flags from nylon 66, a formulation that is extra sturdy yet still lightweight enough to flutter in a gentle breeze. Premetallized acid dyes, mixed in an in-house chemistry lab, make the flag UV-resistant, and another chemical is applied to protect against acid rain.

The stripes are stitched together and the stars are embroidered with a poly-cotton yarn. The fly hem, farthest from the flagpole, is reinforced with up to six rows of lockstitching to prevent fraying.

Digital printing is used for less expensive flags, as well as those manufactured in small quantities, such as flags for U.S. states and territories and U.N. member nations, as well as custom flags for sporting events, religious and social organizations, and the military.

Though dominated by only a handful of companies, the flag industry is fiercely competitive. But because of Annin’s heritage and the national pride inherent in every flag, Van Lieu feels a responsibility to use ethical business practices, manufacturing domestically, hiring fairly, and promoting from within.

“It’s a different feeling when you make a flag—I can’t explain it,” she says. “We hold ourselves to a higher standard.”

BY JONATH A N VAT N ER

WE DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT FLAGS b ★c

1

The colors of the American flag are Old Glory Blue, Old Glory Red, and white, as defined by the Standard Color Reference of America, published by the Color Association of the United States. There are no exact Pantone matches for the blue and red.

b★ c

2

Nylon flags are most popular in the North, while heavy duty cotton is preferred in the South.

b★ c

3

If a flag is not lit, it should be lowered at sunset.

b★c

4

Annin sells 60 percent of its flags between April and July, for “flag season”: Memorial Day, Flag Day, and Independence Day.

b★ c

5

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that almost 99 percent of American flags are made in the U.S.; more than 95 percent of the imported flags are made in China. (Annin produces all its flags domestically.)

b★ c

6

Annin will make Nazi flags only for movies. Following the Charleston church massacre of 2015, that rule now applies to Confederate flags as well.

Far left: Employees at Annin & Co., circa 1900.

Left: Annin’s Fulton Street headquarters, before the company sold the building in 1925.

Right: Van Lieu in an Annin factory during her years at FIT.

ACADEMIC IMAGE

COURTESY OF ANNIN

hue.fitnyc.edu 19

BANNER YEARS

1901

1909

A spray of Annin flags decorated Teddy Roosevelt’s inauguration. The company has produced flags for every presidential inauguration since Zachary Taylor’s in 1849.

American explorers Robert Peary and Matthew Henson, along with Peary’s Inuit assistants, displayed Annin flags during an early expedition to the North Pole.

1969

This iconic photo of firefighters raising an Annin flag from the wreckage, published in the Bergen Record the day after the September 11 terrorist attacks, brought hope to a shattered nation.

Annin employees worked overnight for months to meet the unprecedented demand for flags, 20 times greater than usual.

1969 The first flag on the moon was one small step for a man, one giant leap for Annin. There’s no wind on the moon, so a bar along the top edge props up the flag.

Courtesy of NASA

Luther Jerstad

20 hue | spring 2016

Jim Whittaker, the first American to scale Mt. Everest, planted an Annin flag on the peak.

In the midst of Vietnam War protests, Newton Heisley, an ad man for Annin, designed the POW/MIA flag for the National League of Families, uniting America in the call to bring captured and missing troops home.

2001

Annin supplied the first flag raised on Iwo Jima during World War II. (The second, larger flag, depicted in the Marine Corps War Memorial, was not made by Annin.)

1963

Library of Congress/Prints and Photographs Division

1971

The first flag on the moon was one small step for a man, one giant leap for Annin. There’s no wind on the moon, so a bar along the top edge props up the flag.

Courtesy of Annin

1948

When Alaska became the 49th state, the star field had to be amended. Annin’s president Digby Chandler designed an elegant 49-star pattern, as well as a 50-star pattern to be used after Hawaii joined the Union later that year. The 49-star flag, produced for only three months, is now a collector’s item.

Getty Images/ The Record (Bergen Co. NJ)

Library of Congress/Prints and Photographs Division

1959

An Annin flag draped Abraham Lincoln’s coffin—and every presidential coffin since.

Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson

1865

Library of Congress/The Crowley Company

Library of Congress/Prints and Photographs Division

Some of Annin’s highest-profile flags throughout American history

PHOTO RESEARCH BY STEVEN BIBB

hue.fitnyc.edu 21

BANNER YEARS

1901

1909

A spray of Annin flags decorated Teddy Roosevelt’s inauguration. The company has produced flags for every presidential inauguration since Zachary Taylor’s in 1849.

American explorers Robert Peary and Matthew Henson, along with Peary’s Inuit assistants, displayed Annin flags during an early expedition to the North Pole.

1969

This iconic photo of firefighters raising an Annin flag from the wreckage, published in the Bergen Record the day after the September 11 terrorist attacks, brought hope to a shattered nation.

Annin employees worked overnight for months to meet the unprecedented demand for flags, 20 times greater than usual.

1969 The first flag on the moon was one small step for a man, one giant leap for Annin. There’s no wind on the moon, so a bar along the top edge props up the flag.

Courtesy of NASA

Luther Jerstad

20 hue | spring 2016

Jim Whittaker, the first American to scale Mt. Everest, planted an Annin flag on the peak.

In the midst of Vietnam War protests, Newton Heisley, an ad man for Annin, designed the POW/MIA flag for the National League of Families, uniting America in the call to bring captured and missing troops home.

2001

Annin supplied the first flag raised on Iwo Jima during World War II. (The second, larger flag, depicted in the Marine Corps War Memorial, was not made by Annin.)

1963

Library of Congress/Prints and Photographs Division

1971

The first flag on the moon was one small step for a man, one giant leap for Annin. There’s no wind on the moon, so a bar along the top edge props up the flag.

Courtesy of Annin

1948

When Alaska became the 49th state, the star field had to be amended. Annin’s president Digby Chandler designed an elegant 49-star pattern, as well as a 50-star pattern to be used after Hawaii joined the Union later that year. The 49-star flag, produced for only three months, is now a collector’s item.

Getty Images/ The Record (Bergen Co. NJ)

Library of Congress/Prints and Photographs Division

1959

An Annin flag draped Abraham Lincoln’s coffin—and every presidential coffin since.

Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson

1865

Library of Congress/The Crowley Company

Library of Congress/Prints and Photographs Division

Some of Annin’s highest-profile flags throughout American history

PHOTO RESEARCH BY STEVEN BIBB

hue.fitnyc.edu 21

Sometimes Shearwood photographs adults. This shoot, a collaboration with stylist Lorenzo Posocco, depicted the theme of “Britishness” for Redmilk, an Italian online magazine.

When Shearwood works with Stella McCartney, “Stella herself approves all the models and makes sure they represent what she loves in childhood.” The back-to-basics look for her autumn/winter 2015 campaign—simple, uncluttered background, focused purely on the character of the children—represented a new approach for the designer.

THE KIDS STAY IN THE PICTURE For Photography alumnus Mark Shearwood, making the perfect photo is never child’s play

BY ALEX JOSEPH

22 hue | spring 2016

You have to be very, very patient when photographing children, says Mark Shearwood, who shoots campaigns for Tommy Hilfiger, Stella McCartney, Sonia Rykiel, Zara, and others. “The hardest thing is to stay relaxed—you know, chill, not bossy,” he says, on a call from his native London. “Any emotional vibe in the room rubs off on them.” You can just tell an adult model what to do; but if kid models get stressed out, “there’s a good chance you won’t get what you want [in the photographs].”

NICK PARISSE, PHOTOGRAPHY ’09

Shearwood came to New York from Manchester University, where he’d already polished off his liberal arts classes. He enrolled at FIT strictly to “soak up as much information on photography—as many technical skills—as possible.” He learned what he needed quickly, and left with expertise, a New York edge, and a new friendship: Nick Parisse ’09, who made his portrait for this article.

Back in England, Shearwood started as an assistant to a commercial photographer, learning how to work with clients, stylists, and art directors. Eventually, a long, well-paying project shooting catalog fashion allowed him to become independent, but he was still trying to forge his own style. “I just wanted to make beautiful pictures,” he says. He spent all his free time shooting and honing his craft.

His big breakthrough came in 2012, when he pitched a feature idea—twins— to Milk, an innovative children’s fashion

Shearwood’s feature about twins, a collaboration with stylist Rachel Caulfield for Milk magazine in 2012, was a turning point in his career. “It was inspired by old photographs of myself and my younger brother wearing the same clothes, and photographed in some of the same spots in Liverpool and London where I played as a child.” He searched extensively for models with the right look. “As soon as I saw those skinhead boys, I knew I had to cast them,” he says. They had never done a photo shoot before.

hue.fitnyc.edu 23

Sometimes Shearwood photographs adults. This shoot, a collaboration with stylist Lorenzo Posocco, depicted the theme of “Britishness” for Redmilk, an Italian online magazine.

When Shearwood works with Stella McCartney, “Stella herself approves all the models and makes sure they represent what she loves in childhood.” The back-to-basics look for her autumn/winter 2015 campaign—simple, uncluttered background, focused purely on the character of the children—represented a new approach for the designer.

THE KIDS STAY IN THE PICTURE For Photography alumnus Mark Shearwood, making the perfect photo is never child’s play

BY ALEX JOSEPH

22 hue | spring 2016

You have to be very, very patient when photographing children, says Mark Shearwood, who shoots campaigns for Tommy Hilfiger, Stella McCartney, Sonia Rykiel, Zara, and others. “The hardest thing is to stay relaxed—you know, chill, not bossy,” he says, on a call from his native London. “Any emotional vibe in the room rubs off on them.” You can just tell an adult model what to do; but if kid models get stressed out, “there’s a good chance you won’t get what you want [in the photographs].”

NICK PARISSE, PHOTOGRAPHY ’09

Shearwood came to New York from Manchester University, where he’d already polished off his liberal arts classes. He enrolled at FIT strictly to “soak up as much information on photography—as many technical skills—as possible.” He learned what he needed quickly, and left with expertise, a New York edge, and a new friendship: Nick Parisse ’09, who made his portrait for this article.

Back in England, Shearwood started as an assistant to a commercial photographer, learning how to work with clients, stylists, and art directors. Eventually, a long, well-paying project shooting catalog fashion allowed him to become independent, but he was still trying to forge his own style. “I just wanted to make beautiful pictures,” he says. He spent all his free time shooting and honing his craft.

His big breakthrough came in 2012, when he pitched a feature idea—twins— to Milk, an innovative children’s fashion

Shearwood’s feature about twins, a collaboration with stylist Rachel Caulfield for Milk magazine in 2012, was a turning point in his career. “It was inspired by old photographs of myself and my younger brother wearing the same clothes, and photographed in some of the same spots in Liverpool and London where I played as a child.” He searched extensively for models with the right look. “As soon as I saw those skinhead boys, I knew I had to cast them,” he says. They had never done a photo shoot before.

hue.fitnyc.edu 23

and lifestyle magazine based in Paris.

Initially, the publication wanted to take his concept and do it themselves, but Shearwood persisted. Seeking nonprofessional models, he found his subjects mostly through friends of friends. “I always try to pick someone that’s not anyone else’s first choice,” he says. Shot over two weeks around the U.K., often in neighborhoods he grew up in, the portfolio of images captured his slightly moody, innocently quirky aesthetic. Nine months later, he photographed his first campaign for McCartney.

Shearwood doesn’t adapt his style to different shoots, or companies. “My approach stays the same—‘natural.’”

But he doesn’t want to repeat himself, either. After his pictures for last year’s Zara campaign were published, he had to turn down offers from clients who wanted him to re-create the same look. He doesn’t always photograph children; at this early point in his career, he still wants the freedom to grow. But kids are his specialty, and he seems to relish the particular challenge of working with them. “The moment you put your camera down,” he observes, “the kids will do something amazing.”

For a Milk magazine feature about the connection between mothers and daughters, Shearwood traveled to Miami with stylist Rachel Caulfield. In the first rounds of casting, the girls were the focus; the mothers didn’t realize they too were being considered. “We spent many hours with each family, allowing them to feel comfortable so they looked completely at ease.”

Honour styled 70 costumes and props from the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and designed mannequins for a show at Discovery Times Square.

Clockwise from top left: C-3PO, BB-8, and R2-D2; Qui-Gon Jinn, Darth Maul, and Obi-Wan Kenobi; an imperial officer; handmaiden costumes from 1999’s The Phantom Menace.

Though he often works in the digital format, Shearwood shot this entire 2015 feature for the skater issue of Redmilk on film, with his Hasselblad. “This shoot made me determined to move back to shooting film, which I love,” he says. A gritty, abandoned skate bowl in South London provided a perfect setting.

THE FORCE IS STRONG WITH THIS ONE “STAR WARS IS HUGE IN MY LIFE ,” SAYS JOANEE

2016 at Discovery Times Square. The show, featuring the

Honour ’92. She and her colleagues take care of the Star

actual costumes, has gotten rave reviews, and attests to the

Wars archive of original costumes, models, art, and props.

importance of the clothes—from Obi-Wan Kenobi’s robes to

“We’ve got R2D2, the Millennium Falcon, and the Death

Princess Leia’s “slave bikini,” and a host of looks from the

Star,” she says, though her job mostly involves the costumes.

new movie.

As the senior registrar for the Lucas Museum of Narrative

Art in California, Honour styles them for exhibitions, stores

Honour says, “so I found and helped design poses for

and preserves them, and conducts research. Costumers for

faceless mannequins with beautiful cheekbones.”

Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens, the latest sequel

in the franchise, wanted continuity with the original movies,

surprised by the attention to detail—couture-level sewing

so they often contacted her from London while filming

in some fabrics, their wrinkles carefully steamed out by

to verify specific details. For Lucasfilm Disney licensing,

Honour, elaborate gowns affixed atop archival-friendly

which creates Star Wars-related merchandise, she’ll take

Mylar. Styling the Queen Amidala costume for display

a costume’s measurements or assist researchers using

involved sewing discreet magnets into the lining of the

3D scanners to reproduce high-end costumes. Details

headpiece to hold it in place. It took a year just to dress the

matter, because the audience can be obsessive. “The fans

mannequins. Being a registrar also means creating elabo-

Shearwood created Zara’s autumn/winter 2015 campaign images in his London studio.

When Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the designers behind Rodarte, visited Skywalker Ranch, says Honour, “my two worlds— fashion and Star Wars—collided.”

The pair came for a photo shoot featuring props from the museum and Star Wars-themed gowns they created in silk and silk chiffon for their fall ’14 collection.

24 hue | spring 2016

EXHIBITION PHOTOS: PAUL MARTINKA FOR DISCOVERY TIMES SQUARE, 2015 LUCASFILM LTD.

Joanee Alina Honour, Fashion Design ’92, stewards Star Wars costumes and props at George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch

“We wanted the costumes to speak for themselves,”

Visitors used to seeing the garments onscreen may be

know even more than me,” she says.

rate condition reports to ensure that objects are returned

as immaculate as when they left the archive.

It took Honour and the archive team four years to assemble

the exhibition, Star Wars and the Power of Costume. This

collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, tied to the

returning to Skywalker Ranch. “It’s my dream job,” she says.

release of The Force Awakens, is on view until September

“Everything I’ve ever wanted to do is here.” —Alex Joseph

Honour travels worldwide to work on shows, but she loves

hue.fitnyc.edu 25

and lifestyle magazine based in Paris.

Initially, the publication wanted to take his concept and do it themselves, but Shearwood persisted. Seeking nonprofessional models, he found his subjects mostly through friends of friends. “I always try to pick someone that’s not anyone else’s first choice,” he says. Shot over two weeks around the U.K., often in neighborhoods he grew up in, the portfolio of images captured his slightly moody, innocently quirky aesthetic. Nine months later, he photographed his first campaign for McCartney.

Shearwood doesn’t adapt his style to different shoots, or companies. “My approach stays the same—‘natural.’”

But he doesn’t want to repeat himself, either. After his pictures for last year’s Zara campaign were published, he had to turn down offers from clients who wanted him to re-create the same look. He doesn’t always photograph children; at this early point in his career, he still wants the freedom to grow. But kids are his specialty, and he seems to relish the particular challenge of working with them. “The moment you put your camera down,” he observes, “the kids will do something amazing.”

For a Milk magazine feature about the connection between mothers and daughters, Shearwood traveled to Miami with stylist Rachel Caulfield. In the first rounds of casting, the girls were the focus; the mothers didn’t realize they too were being considered. “We spent many hours with each family, allowing them to feel comfortable so they looked completely at ease.”

Honour styled 70 costumes and props from the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and designed mannequins for a show at Discovery Times Square.

Clockwise from top left: C-3PO, BB-8, and R2-D2; Qui-Gon Jinn, Darth Maul, and Obi-Wan Kenobi; an imperial officer; handmaiden costumes from 1999’s The Phantom Menace.

Though he often works in the digital format, Shearwood shot this entire 2015 feature for the skater issue of Redmilk on film, with his Hasselblad. “This shoot made me determined to move back to shooting film, which I love,” he says. A gritty, abandoned skate bowl in South London provided a perfect setting.

THE FORCE IS STRONG WITH THIS ONE “STAR WARS IS HUGE IN MY LIFE ,” SAYS JOANEE

2016 at Discovery Times Square. The show, featuring the

Honour ’92. She and her colleagues take care of the Star

actual costumes, has gotten rave reviews, and attests to the

Wars archive of original costumes, models, art, and props.

importance of the clothes—from Obi-Wan Kenobi’s robes to

“We’ve got R2D2, the Millennium Falcon, and the Death

Princess Leia’s “slave bikini,” and a host of looks from the

Star,” she says, though her job mostly involves the costumes.

new movie.

As the senior registrar for the Lucas Museum of Narrative

Art in California, Honour styles them for exhibitions, stores

Honour says, “so I found and helped design poses for

and preserves them, and conducts research. Costumers for

faceless mannequins with beautiful cheekbones.”

Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens, the latest sequel

in the franchise, wanted continuity with the original movies,

surprised by the attention to detail—couture-level sewing

so they often contacted her from London while filming

in some fabrics, their wrinkles carefully steamed out by

to verify specific details. For Lucasfilm Disney licensing,

Honour, elaborate gowns affixed atop archival-friendly

which creates Star Wars-related merchandise, she’ll take

Mylar. Styling the Queen Amidala costume for display

a costume’s measurements or assist researchers using

involved sewing discreet magnets into the lining of the

3D scanners to reproduce high-end costumes. Details

headpiece to hold it in place. It took a year just to dress the

matter, because the audience can be obsessive. “The fans

mannequins. Being a registrar also means creating elabo-

Shearwood created Zara’s autumn/winter 2015 campaign images in his London studio.

When Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the designers behind Rodarte, visited Skywalker Ranch, says Honour, “my two worlds— fashion and Star Wars—collided.”

The pair came for a photo shoot featuring props from the museum and Star Wars-themed gowns they created in silk and silk chiffon for their fall ’14 collection.

24 hue | spring 2016

EXHIBITION PHOTOS: PAUL MARTINKA FOR DISCOVERY TIMES SQUARE, 2015 LUCASFILM LTD.

Joanee Alina Honour, Fashion Design ’92, stewards Star Wars costumes and props at George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch

“We wanted the costumes to speak for themselves,”

Visitors used to seeing the garments onscreen may be

know even more than me,” she says.

rate condition reports to ensure that objects are returned

as immaculate as when they left the archive.

It took Honour and the archive team four years to assemble

the exhibition, Star Wars and the Power of Costume. This

collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, tied to the

returning to Skywalker Ranch. “It’s my dream job,” she says.

release of The Force Awakens, is on view until September

“Everything I’ve ever wanted to do is here.” —Alex Joseph

Honour travels worldwide to work on shows, but she loves

hue.fitnyc.edu 25

SIX PIECES BY

CAREER-DEFINING

MARIA CANALE,

F I R E WOR K S C OL L E C T ION T I F FA N Y & C O. , 1 9 91

1 3

“This was my first big collection in the industry.

They’re fairly large brooches with an irresistible burst of color.

They made quite an impact! Fireworks was featured in a double-page color ad in The New York Times Magazine. Tiffany sold the collection for decades.”

DI A MON D I N T E R N AT ION A L C U F F, 1998

4

“De Beers used to sponsor the Diamond International competition for diamond jewelry.

I designed a cuff based on the iconic Charles Rennie Mackintosh Willow chair. I won based on the rendering, and Suna Bros. made the piece.

It garnered an incredible media response, and I built a whole collection from it.”

KREMENTZ K A L E I D O S C OP E T OU R M A L I N E N E C K L AC E , 2 01 1 “Richard Krementz, owner of Krementz & Co., was one of those rare people who said, ‘Just design, and we’ll get it made.’ Nobody says that! He was a gemstone fanatic. One day, he showed me a very long watermelon tourmaline and asked me to design a one-ofa-kind piece. I put it in a necklace juxtaposed with baguettes. As the jewelers were setting it, the stone broke. When a one-of-a-kind piece breaks, it’s a tragedy. But we recut the two pieces and remade the necklace. The irony was that the necklace actually worked better with the two stones. It now had more movement and lay better on the neck.”

JEWELRY DESIGN ’82

BY JONATHAN VATNER

IN

her first jewelry-rendering class at FIT, Maria Canale had an epiphany that altered the course of her career.

She had trained at a jeweler’s bench from the age of 13 and assumed she’d go into metalsmithing. But when Sandra Boucher, a now-retired adjunct faculty member and a legend in the industry, taught her how to design and paint a lifelike representation, her aspirations shifted dramatically. “I didn’t know the job of a designer existed,” Canale says. “I was used to making things out of metal, and I thought, ‘This is so much more creative.’”

Thus began a remarkable career. Canale has designed signature lines for industry titans Harry Winston, Richard Krementz, Carvin French, and for 20 years, John Loring, the famed design director at Tiffany & Co. “John had a lot of respect for designers,” she says. “He had that Tiffany aesthetic embedded in his DNA, and he passed that on to me.”

Three decades in, Canale is still hitting new milestones. In 2013, she began a collaboration with Neiman Marcus on an all-diamond collection using responsibly sourced Forevermark stones. For the first time, she used her name on her designs and began to develop a brand.

“I was always 20 feet from stardom, behind the scenes,” she says. “Even now, when I interact with customers, they say, ‘You’re just like me. You’re a real person.’”

Her winning humility carries through to her work. Her jewelry is beautiful, but her first concern is for the women who wear it. She doesn’t design heavy, clunky things. She also puts hours of care into choosing—and sometimes designing from scratch—settings and clasps, so that each piece is easy to put on, hangs naturally, doesn’t pull hairs or pinch, and feels weightless.

“I want women to wear their diamonds, not keep them in the vault,” she says.

“To me, it’s all about, do you feel good in it?”

On these pages, Canale tells the stories behind six pieces that have made women feel really good.

“I’m not great at being photographed, but the photographer, Marty Umans, caught me off guard with something funny and took the picture while I was laughing.”

26 hue | spring 2016

6 “To me, it’s all about, do you feel good in it?”

2

A S T E R N E C K L AC E , M A R I A C A NA L E F OR N E I M A N M A RC US , 2 01 5

SPECT RU M OPA L , 1 9 92 “The Spectrum Award, sponsored by the American Gem Society, is the last great industry competition. For this brooch, I used a triangular black opal with phenomenal colors.

To be honest, I’m not an opal lover, but this one was on fire. I set it with rubellite, green tourmaline, and yellow citrine, and accented it with diamonds. The result is incredibly graphic, and it won the Spectrum Award in 1992. I’ve won ten times.”

“We’re not all Queen Elizabeth: a woman today wants jewelry that’s easy to wear.

The Aster necklace is a flower on a hinged frame—you can open it up and put it on without having to fuss with a clasp. The petals are set with rose-cut diamonds that create a subtle, airy feeling like that of a real flower, and the full-cut Forevermark diamonds are set in the center of each blossom for impact.”

5

DE C O C U F F, M A R I A C A N A L E F OR N E I M A N M A RC US , 2 01 3 “My first line exclusively for Neiman Marcus is steeped in Art Deco. This cuff has a classic trellis shape—it’s timeless, not trendy. And it’s light because it’s made by hand. You don’t even know you have it on—it becomes part of you.”

“I was always 20 feet from stardom, behind the scenes.”

hue.fitnyc.edu 27

SIX PIECES BY

CAREER-DEFINING

MARIA CANALE,

F I R E WOR K S C OL L E C T ION T I F FA N Y & C O. , 1 9 91

1 3

“This was my first big collection in the industry.

They’re fairly large brooches with an irresistible burst of color.

They made quite an impact! Fireworks was featured in a double-page color ad in The New York Times Magazine. Tiffany sold the collection for decades.”

DI A MON D I N T E R N AT ION A L C U F F, 1998

4

“De Beers used to sponsor the Diamond International competition for diamond jewelry.

I designed a cuff based on the iconic Charles Rennie Mackintosh Willow chair. I won based on the rendering, and Suna Bros. made the piece.

It garnered an incredible media response, and I built a whole collection from it.”

KREMENTZ K A L E I D O S C OP E T OU R M A L I N E N E C K L AC E , 2 01 1 “Richard Krementz, owner of Krementz & Co., was one of those rare people who said, ‘Just design, and we’ll get it made.’ Nobody says that! He was a gemstone fanatic. One day, he showed me a very long watermelon tourmaline and asked me to design a one-ofa-kind piece. I put it in a necklace juxtaposed with baguettes. As the jewelers were setting it, the stone broke. When a one-of-a-kind piece breaks, it’s a tragedy. But we recut the two pieces and remade the necklace. The irony was that the necklace actually worked better with the two stones. It now had more movement and lay better on the neck.”

JEWELRY DESIGN ’82

BY JONATHAN VATNER

IN

her first jewelry-rendering class at FIT, Maria Canale had an epiphany that altered the course of her career.

She had trained at a jeweler’s bench from the age of 13 and assumed she’d go into metalsmithing. But when Sandra Boucher, a now-retired adjunct faculty member and a legend in the industry, taught her how to design and paint a lifelike representation, her aspirations shifted dramatically. “I didn’t know the job of a designer existed,” Canale says. “I was used to making things out of metal, and I thought, ‘This is so much more creative.’”

Thus began a remarkable career. Canale has designed signature lines for industry titans Harry Winston, Richard Krementz, Carvin French, and for 20 years, John Loring, the famed design director at Tiffany & Co. “John had a lot of respect for designers,” she says. “He had that Tiffany aesthetic embedded in his DNA, and he passed that on to me.”

Three decades in, Canale is still hitting new milestones. In 2013, she began a collaboration with Neiman Marcus on an all-diamond collection using responsibly sourced Forevermark stones. For the first time, she used her name on her designs and began to develop a brand.

“I was always 20 feet from stardom, behind the scenes,” she says. “Even now, when I interact with customers, they say, ‘You’re just like me. You’re a real person.’”

Her winning humility carries through to her work. Her jewelry is beautiful, but her first concern is for the women who wear it. She doesn’t design heavy, clunky things. She also puts hours of care into choosing—and sometimes designing from scratch—settings and clasps, so that each piece is easy to put on, hangs naturally, doesn’t pull hairs or pinch, and feels weightless.

“I want women to wear their diamonds, not keep them in the vault,” she says.

“To me, it’s all about, do you feel good in it?”

On these pages, Canale tells the stories behind six pieces that have made women feel really good.

“I’m not great at being photographed, but the photographer, Marty Umans, caught me off guard with something funny and took the picture while I was laughing.”

26 hue | spring 2016

6 “To me, it’s all about, do you feel good in it?”

2

A S T E R N E C K L AC E , M A R I A C A NA L E F OR N E I M A N M A RC US , 2 01 5

SPECT RU M OPA L , 1 9 92 “The Spectrum Award, sponsored by the American Gem Society, is the last great industry competition. For this brooch, I used a triangular black opal with phenomenal colors.

To be honest, I’m not an opal lover, but this one was on fire. I set it with rubellite, green tourmaline, and yellow citrine, and accented it with diamonds. The result is incredibly graphic, and it won the Spectrum Award in 1992. I’ve won ten times.”

“We’re not all Queen Elizabeth: a woman today wants jewelry that’s easy to wear.

The Aster necklace is a flower on a hinged frame—you can open it up and put it on without having to fuss with a clasp. The petals are set with rose-cut diamonds that create a subtle, airy feeling like that of a real flower, and the full-cut Forevermark diamonds are set in the center of each blossom for impact.”

5

DE C O C U F F, M A R I A C A N A L E F OR N E I M A N M A RC US , 2 01 3 “My first line exclusively for Neiman Marcus is steeped in Art Deco. This cuff has a classic trellis shape—it’s timeless, not trendy. And it’s light because it’s made by hand. You don’t even know you have it on—it becomes part of you.”

“I was always 20 feet from stardom, behind the scenes.”

hue.fitnyc.edu 27

Right: Cutting-edge CGI technology allowed intimate scenes between human and ape in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Below right: Kilgore rigged the mayor of Whoville, voiced by Steve Carell, in Horton Hears a Who!

TM and © 2013 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved

HOW BEN KILGORE, COMPUTER ANIMATION AND INTERACTIVE MEDIA ’04, BUILDS LIFELIKE COMPUTER-GENERATED IMAGERY FOR HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTERS

Bottom: Ben Kilgore kicks back after long days at Weta Digital.

BY JONATHAN VATNER

© 20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved, courtesy of Everett Collection

To help collect animation data for Caesar, the ape-in-chief in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Andy Serkis donned a motion-capture suit and helmet and acted out the scenes opposite the human characters.

28 hue | spring 2016

Kilgore and his team translated Serkis's movements and expressions into Caesar’s affecting performance.

Performance capture—as opposed to traditional keyframe character animation—became widely known when Andy Serkis played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, films that Weta Digital worked on. Serkis also played Caesar the ape in the recent Planet of the Apes films—and was given top billing in the credits.

“It isn’t a terribly new technology,” Kilgore explains, “but we push it further than ever before. When you see Caesar emoting, you’re actually seeing Andy emoting.”

Weta has developed proprietary software called Tissue that realistically simulates animal muscle tension and movement; the firm won an Academy Award for Technical Achievement for the software in 2013. Weta technicians use it to layer on bones, muscles, fat, skin, and fur, creating animals that breathe and lope and leap as if they were alive.

The process requires not just exhaustive naturalistic precision but also artistic judgment. For example, the apes look like chimps, gorillas, and orangutans, but they are actually humanoid versions of those species. The creatures team had to decide exactly how they might stand and hold their shoulders, down to what their necks might look like when they press their chins forward. “We’re reproducing anatomy that doesn’t exist,” Kilgore says. “We use a combination of art and technology to make it look real.”

Animals have thousands of hair follicles per square inch.

Each one needs to be “grown,” but Kilgore uses a repeating code that speeds up the process. In this way, his job is part illustrator, part computer scientist. Before he can see how it looks, it must “bake” overnight in Weta’s servers. In the morning, he can watch it in high resolution.

The tissue software takes into account the laws of physics—the density and stiffness of objects that hit the animal, as well as the effects of gravity—but the “creature bakes” implode when animals bump into each other, or when the designers need to create movements that aren’t naturally possible, such as when Reed Richards’s arm stretches 20 feet in Fantastic Four. “It turns into a polygon explosion,” Kilgore says.

Even when the technical directors pull off a beautiful shot, the process is far from done. More often than not, the film’s director asks for revisions. Taking into account every step of the visual-effects process, a single shot from Fantastic Four went through about 500 iterations.

When the director signs off on Weta’s work, another team lights the creatures to match the scene, and a separate group composites them into the action. After months of round-the-clock work by Weta specialists, not to mention the years of script revisions and storyboards and shoots, moviegoers consume the film in about two hours. ilgore was 13 when Terminator 2 hit theaters, and the T-1000 robot, a villain that seemed to be made of liquid metal, thrilled him. “I had to know how they did it,” he says. But he bounced around various jobs—landscaper, tattoo artist, construction worker, plumber—until he enrolled at FIT in 2003.

“I don’t think I’ve worked as hard as consistently on any project as I did at FIT,” Kilgore recalls. “I’d sleep there, eat there, and shower at the gym.”

Adjunct Assistant Professor Silvia Feriozzi, the department’s thesis advisor, was impressed by his skill, determination, and sensitivity: “He was able to create the quality of work that we more often see in professional production companies than in the classroom setting.”

After graduation, he started in the film industry as a creature rigger at Blue Sky Studios, known for the Ice Age films. A rigger creates versatile digital puppets that can be manipulated by animators; it’s part of what he does now for live-action films. For Kilgore, Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) was a trial by fire. He had to learn to use Blue Sky’s software suite and write code. “It was my big break, and I couldn’t blow it,” he says. “It was very, very stressful.”

k

20th Century Fox /Photofest

i

n the first few minutes of the 2014 hit Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, not one human appears. A pack of majestic apes hunt deer through a lush rainforest, dense with trees that seem to reach upward forever. Their faces are expressive, their hair ripples in the gentlest breeze, and their muscles tense and relax beneath their skin. When a trigger-happy Homo sapiens finally barges in, it’s hard not to side with the apes—which is a testament to the skill and discipline of Ben Kilgore, Computer Animation and Interactive Media ’04, and his colleagues at Weta Digital, a visual-effects firm based in Wellington, New Zealand. Because, as most everyone knows, these are not animals or even people in animal costumes. They are glorious tangles of ones and zeroes—computer code translated into creatures that couldn’t seem more real.

As a lead creature technical director at Weta, Kilgore is in charge of creating computergenerated beasts for Hollywood films. He gave life to a menagerie of creatures in The Hobbit films, Mr. Fantastic’s rubber limbs in Fantastic Four (2015), and the apes in the recent Planet of the Apes reboots.

Weta, founded by director Peter Jackson and named after a large biting bug endemic to New Zealand, is known for its skill at performance capture: an actor plays an animal, monster, or robot, wearing a bodysuit embedded with motion sensors, as well as face sensors to record every twitch. This animation data—both spatial and facial—is then used to build creatures that appear to move and emote naturally.

From there, he worked for a number of small visual-effects studios in New York and Los Angeles before moving to New Zealand in 2010 to join Weta Digital. When he arrived, the company was almost finished with Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin (2011), a wholly computer-generated feature. Kilgore was assigned to create various animals.

“I worked on a jiggly cow, with all these jiggly cow bits hanging off of it.” As it turned out, Spielberg thought his cow was funny. “That was the highlight of my week!” Kilgore says.

He created a gooey, menacing alien for Prometheus (2012), a herd of horses for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012), and Rondor beasts (“kind of like space cows”) for Man of Steel (2013).

He also fine-tuned the apes’ muscle movements in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011).

But Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was a huge step forward, both for his career and for Weta.

Between the two films, Weta designers had rebuilt all the creature models. The hair contained more, higher-resolution filaments, and it looked muddy and wet when it rained in the film.

The apes’ movements were more natural, too.

Weta is doing the most cutting-edge computer animation work in the industry, and for that reason, Kilgore doesn’t plan on leaving New Zealand anytime soon. “The kind of work that comes to Weta,” he says, “doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world.”

hue.fitnyc.edu 29

Right: Cutting-edge CGI technology allowed intimate scenes between human and ape in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Below right: Kilgore rigged the mayor of Whoville, voiced by Steve Carell, in Horton Hears a Who!

TM and © 2013 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved

HOW BEN KILGORE, COMPUTER ANIMATION AND INTERACTIVE MEDIA ’04, BUILDS LIFELIKE COMPUTER-GENERATED IMAGERY FOR HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTERS

Bottom: Ben Kilgore kicks back after long days at Weta Digital.

BY JONATHAN VATNER

© 20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved, courtesy of Everett Collection

To help collect animation data for Caesar, the ape-in-chief in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Andy Serkis donned a motion-capture suit and helmet and acted out the scenes opposite the human characters.

28 hue | spring 2016

Kilgore and his team translated Serkis's movements and expressions into Caesar’s affecting performance.

Performance capture—as opposed to traditional keyframe character animation—became widely known when Andy Serkis played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, films that Weta Digital worked on. Serkis also played Caesar the ape in the recent Planet of the Apes films—and was given top billing in the credits.

“It isn’t a terribly new technology,” Kilgore explains, “but we push it further than ever before. When you see Caesar emoting, you’re actually seeing Andy emoting.”

Weta has developed proprietary software called Tissue that realistically simulates animal muscle tension and movement; the firm won an Academy Award for Technical Achievement for the software in 2013. Weta technicians use it to layer on bones, muscles, fat, skin, and fur, creating animals that breathe and lope and leap as if they were alive.

The process requires not just exhaustive naturalistic precision but also artistic judgment. For example, the apes look like chimps, gorillas, and orangutans, but they are actually humanoid versions of those species. The creatures team had to decide exactly how they might stand and hold their shoulders, down to what their necks might look like when they press their chins forward. “We’re reproducing anatomy that doesn’t exist,” Kilgore says. “We use a combination of art and technology to make it look real.”

Animals have thousands of hair follicles per square inch.

Each one needs to be “grown,” but Kilgore uses a repeating code that speeds up the process. In this way, his job is part illustrator, part computer scientist. Before he can see how it looks, it must “bake” overnight in Weta’s servers. In the morning, he can watch it in high resolution.

The tissue software takes into account the laws of physics—the density and stiffness of objects that hit the animal, as well as the effects of gravity—but the “creature bakes” implode when animals bump into each other, or when the designers need to create movements that aren’t naturally possible, such as when Reed Richards’s arm stretches 20 feet in Fantastic Four. “It turns into a polygon explosion,” Kilgore says.

Even when the technical directors pull off a beautiful shot, the process is far from done. More often than not, the film’s director asks for revisions. Taking into account every step of the visual-effects process, a single shot from Fantastic Four went through about 500 iterations.

When the director signs off on Weta’s work, another team lights the creatures to match the scene, and a separate group composites them into the action. After months of round-the-clock work by Weta specialists, not to mention the years of script revisions and storyboards and shoots, moviegoers consume the film in about two hours. ilgore was 13 when Terminator 2 hit theaters, and the T-1000 robot, a villain that seemed to be made of liquid metal, thrilled him. “I had to know how they did it,” he says. But he bounced around various jobs—landscaper, tattoo artist, construction worker, plumber—until he enrolled at FIT in 2003.

“I don’t think I’ve worked as hard as consistently on any project as I did at FIT,” Kilgore recalls. “I’d sleep there, eat there, and shower at the gym.”

Adjunct Assistant Professor Silvia Feriozzi, the department’s thesis advisor, was impressed by his skill, determination, and sensitivity: “He was able to create the quality of work that we more often see in professional production companies than in the classroom setting.”

After graduation, he started in the film industry as a creature rigger at Blue Sky Studios, known for the Ice Age films. A rigger creates versatile digital puppets that can be manipulated by animators; it’s part of what he does now for live-action films. For Kilgore, Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) was a trial by fire. He had to learn to use Blue Sky’s software suite and write code. “It was my big break, and I couldn’t blow it,” he says. “It was very, very stressful.”

k

20th Century Fox /Photofest

i

n the first few minutes of the 2014 hit Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, not one human appears. A pack of majestic apes hunt deer through a lush rainforest, dense with trees that seem to reach upward forever. Their faces are expressive, their hair ripples in the gentlest breeze, and their muscles tense and relax beneath their skin. When a trigger-happy Homo sapiens finally barges in, it’s hard not to side with the apes—which is a testament to the skill and discipline of Ben Kilgore, Computer Animation and Interactive Media ’04, and his colleagues at Weta Digital, a visual-effects firm based in Wellington, New Zealand. Because, as most everyone knows, these are not animals or even people in animal costumes. They are glorious tangles of ones and zeroes—computer code translated into creatures that couldn’t seem more real.

As a lead creature technical director at Weta, Kilgore is in charge of creating computergenerated beasts for Hollywood films. He gave life to a menagerie of creatures in The Hobbit films, Mr. Fantastic’s rubber limbs in Fantastic Four (2015), and the apes in the recent Planet of the Apes reboots.

Weta, founded by director Peter Jackson and named after a large biting bug endemic to New Zealand, is known for its skill at performance capture: an actor plays an animal, monster, or robot, wearing a bodysuit embedded with motion sensors, as well as face sensors to record every twitch. This animation data—both spatial and facial—is then used to build creatures that appear to move and emote naturally.

From there, he worked for a number of small visual-effects studios in New York and Los Angeles before moving to New Zealand in 2010 to join Weta Digital. When he arrived, the company was almost finished with Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin (2011), a wholly computer-generated feature. Kilgore was assigned to create various animals.

“I worked on a jiggly cow, with all these jiggly cow bits hanging off of it.” As it turned out, Spielberg thought his cow was funny. “That was the highlight of my week!” Kilgore says.

He created a gooey, menacing alien for Prometheus (2012), a herd of horses for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012), and Rondor beasts (“kind of like space cows”) for Man of Steel (2013).

He also fine-tuned the apes’ muscle movements in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011).

But Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was a huge step forward, both for his career and for Weta.

Between the two films, Weta designers had rebuilt all the creature models. The hair contained more, higher-resolution filaments, and it looked muddy and wet when it rained in the film.

The apes’ movements were more natural, too.

Weta is doing the most cutting-edge computer animation work in the industry, and for that reason, Kilgore doesn’t plan on leaving New Zealand anytime soon. “The kind of work that comes to Weta,” he says, “doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world.”

hue.fitnyc.edu 29

8 ESSENTiAL FiLmS IN THE HISTORY OF COMPUTER ANIMATION

5

Toy Story (1995) “Pixar makes the pop music of movies,” Kilgore says. “People love their work because it strikes a very human chord.” Toy Story was the first fully computer-generated film—but more important, it demonstrated that computer animation wasn’t just beautiful, it was a medium for high-quality storytelling.

30 hue | spring 2016

“The Matrix had groundbreaking ideas told with revelatory visuals, transporting the watcher to another world,” Kilgore says. In particular, the film popularized the “bullet time” shot, super-slow motion created using an array of still cameras. The trick soon became a cliché, but at the time, watching bullets inch past Keanu Reeves was a true pleasure.

4

Terminator 2 was the reason Kilgore went into the industry.

The liquid metal T-1000 was the first realistic computergenerated human in film history. “It felt like it was actually in the shot with the actors,” he says. “It blew my mind.”

© Warner Brothers/Photofest

6

The Matrix (1999)

© Universal/Courtesy of Everett Collection

© TriStar Pictures/Photofest

3

In the most spectacular scene in James Cameron’s film about an aquatic alien species, a face appears on the end of a tentacle made of water. According to Kilgore, that tentacle was the first fully computer-generated character integrated into a live-action scene. “It looks pretty dated now, but for the time, it was a stunning VFX achievement and a clear precursor of Terminator 2.”

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Jurassic Park (1993) To animate the dinosaurs in this modern classic, Steven Spielberg was planning to use “go motion”—like stop motion except less herky-jerky. But when he saw a computer-generated T. rex animated by Industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas’s visual-effects firm, he changed his mind. The film ultimately combined go motion and physical dinosaur models with the new CG technology.

Photo: Mark Fellamn /TM and © 20th Century Fox. All rights reserved/Courtesy of Everett Collection

2

“Tron marked the dawn of the CG era for big-budget films,” Kilgore says. The movie now looks dated, but the special effects wowed audiences whose virtual existence was limited to Atari-era video games like Pac-Man and Frogger. The designers who created the famous Light Cycle sequence went on to found Blue Sky Studios—and when Kilgore worked at Blue Sky, he saw Tron memorabilia on display in the lobby.

The Abyss (1989)

© Walt Disney Pictures/Pixar. Courtesy of Everett Collection

1

Tron (1982)

© New Line/Courtesy of Everett Collection

© Walt Disney Pictures/Photofest

© 20th Century Fox/Courtesy of Everett Collection

Groundbreaking movies that changed the industry and inspired special-effects master Ben Kilgore ’04

7

The Lord of the Rings films (2001-03) These adaptations of Tolkien’s beloved epic were packed with computer-generated wizardry. All the mythical beings—the talking trees, the giant spider, the evil wolves, and of course, Gollum—were digitally drawn. Director Peter Jackson had founded Weta while making his 1994 film Heavenly Creatures, but the Tolkien trilogy grew the company into an industry giant.

In the early aughts, Kilgore was considering dropping out of FIT to take a job at an ad agency, but after getting positive feedback from some of the lead artists on this project through an internet listserv, he decided to stick it out.

PHOTO RESEARCH BY STEVEN BIBB

8

Avatar (2009) “Avatar was, first and foremost, an animated film,” Kilgore says.

“Even the shots with human actors were full of animation.”

Weta Digital did most of the visual effects, and the company made Kilgore an offer right after it came out. “It was the final element that propelled me to move halfway across the world to take the job.”

hue.fitnyc.edu 31

8 ESSENTiAL FiLmS IN THE HISTORY OF COMPUTER ANIMATION

5

Toy Story (1995) “Pixar makes the pop music of movies,” Kilgore says. “People love their work because it strikes a very human chord.” Toy Story was the first fully computer-generated film—but more important, it demonstrated that computer animation wasn’t just beautiful, it was a medium for high-quality storytelling.

30 hue | spring 2016

“The Matrix had groundbreaking ideas told with revelatory visuals, transporting the watcher to another world,” Kilgore says. In particular, the film popularized the “bullet time” shot, super-slow motion created using an array of still cameras. The trick soon became a cliché, but at the time, watching bullets inch past Keanu Reeves was a true pleasure.

4

Terminator 2 was the reason Kilgore went into the industry.

The liquid metal T-1000 was the first realistic computergenerated human in film history. “It felt like it was actually in the shot with the actors,” he says. “It blew my mind.”

© Warner Brothers/Photofest

6

The Matrix (1999)

© Universal/Courtesy of Everett Collection

© TriStar Pictures/Photofest

3

In the most spectacular scene in James Cameron’s film about an aquatic alien species, a face appears on the end of a tentacle made of water. According to Kilgore, that tentacle was the first fully computer-generated character integrated into a live-action scene. “It looks pretty dated now, but for the time, it was a stunning VFX achievement and a clear precursor of Terminator 2.”

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Jurassic Park (1993) To animate the dinosaurs in this modern classic, Steven Spielberg was planning to use “go motion”—like stop motion except less herky-jerky. But when he saw a computer-generated T. rex animated by Industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas’s visual-effects firm, he changed his mind. The film ultimately combined go motion and physical dinosaur models with the new CG technology.

Photo: Mark Fellamn /TM and © 20th Century Fox. All rights reserved/Courtesy of Everett Collection

2

“Tron marked the dawn of the CG era for big-budget films,” Kilgore says. The movie now looks dated, but the special effects wowed audiences whose virtual existence was limited to Atari-era video games like Pac-Man and Frogger. The designers who created the famous Light Cycle sequence went on to found Blue Sky Studios—and when Kilgore worked at Blue Sky, he saw Tron memorabilia on display in the lobby.

The Abyss (1989)

© Walt Disney Pictures/Pixar. Courtesy of Everett Collection

1

Tron (1982)

© New Line/Courtesy of Everett Collection

© Walt Disney Pictures/Photofest

© 20th Century Fox/Courtesy of Everett Collection

Groundbreaking movies that changed the industry and inspired special-effects master Ben Kilgore ’04

7

The Lord of the Rings films (2001-03) These adaptations of Tolkien’s beloved epic were packed with computer-generated wizardry. All the mythical beings—the talking trees, the giant spider, the evil wolves, and of course, Gollum—were digitally drawn. Director Peter Jackson had founded Weta while making his 1994 film Heavenly Creatures, but the Tolkien trilogy grew the company into an industry giant.

In the early aughts, Kilgore was considering dropping out of FIT to take a job at an ad agency, but after getting positive feedback from some of the lead artists on this project through an internet listserv, he decided to stick it out.

PHOTO RESEARCH BY STEVEN BIBB

8

Avatar (2009) “Avatar was, first and foremost, an animated film,” Kilgore says.

“Even the shots with human actors were full of animation.”

Weta Digital did most of the visual effects, and the company made Kilgore an offer right after it came out. “It was the final element that propelled me to move halfway across the world to take the job.”

hue.fitnyc.edu 31

alumni notes

Michelle Risk Chrisman, Illustration (Fashion), paints landscapes, still lifes, and figures in Taos, NM, and is represented by eight galleries in New Mexico and Arizona. She uses a palette knife instead of a brush to sculpt the paint on the canvas, and she creates her landscapes en plein air (outdoors) and alla prima (painting new layers before the previous layer dries), a spontaneous method that lets her complete about 200 paintings a year.

She had a side career in belly dancing, which she picked up from her Lebanese grandmother and refined under the Middle Eastern dance expert Ibrahim Farrah. “I’ve always been a high-energy person,” she explains.

Second Earth I, woodcut, 9 1/4 by 23 3/4 inches, 2000, was inspired by lava in Iceland.

Late Winter Over the Rio Pueblito, oil on panel, 18 by 24 inches.

1973

An argument with Naomi Campbell convinced stylist Philip Shubin to change his focus from people to inanimate objects. For a decade he had been dressing TV personalities (Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric) and actors (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford) for photo shoots, but working with diva models was becoming increasingly fraught.

He told a disgruntled Campbell, “I can make a bed look just as voluptuous as a model, but the bed wouldn’t complain that the skirt’s too tight.”

That was in 1996. Since then, he has created arresting still-life scenes as a prop stylist for L’Oréal, Maybelline, Olay, and Stetson, as well as GQ and Marie Claire magazines. He also teaches styling to precollege students at FIT.

The most important traits of a prop stylist, he says, are resourcefulness and a keen eye for detail. “I have to realize my client’s dreams on time and under budget,” he says. “I have to create something out of nothing.”

1978 Donna Frederick, Patternmaking Technology, owns the Play House, an independent toy store in Durham, NC. She stocks about 200 mostly educational products in the 900-squarefoot space, including Legos and other building toys, high-quality Ravensburger jigsaw puzzles, dolls for girls and boys, ABC blocks in myriad languages, maps, chemistry sets, locally crafted toys such as rattles, and coloring books for children and adults. Frederick took a job at the store in the late ’90s after working in children’s wear in New York.

For a Newsweek cover story about the rising costs of pharmaceuticals, Shubin filled a test tube with 25 cubic zirconia crystals and, with Photoshop magic, married the resulting photo with an image of a cold capsule.

This page from Details epitomizes “things organized neatly,” a trend in prop styling.

In this photographic illustration, Milio’s wife and nephew are heading home from a swimming hole on the Lundy Estate in the Catskills.

32 hue | spring 2016

A display table of Poplocks, a three-dimensional paper building toy.

Jill Lotenberg, Fashion Buying and Merchandising, is a freelance photographer who has shot New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo and mayors Ed Koch and Michael Bloomberg, as well as spreads for Glamour, Gotham, and House Beautiful, among other publications. She got her start from an internship at the Garden State Arts Center (now the PNC Bank Arts Center), photographing U2, Tom Petty, Billy Idol, and other rock acts. In the ’90s, she lived in Los Angeles, photographing toys for Mattel, Inc., where she shot a young Jimmy Fallon before he joined the cast of Saturday Night Live.

Lotenberg has photographed TV chef Sandra Lee since 2008. Lee was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015, and this image, featured on Gotham’s December 2015 cover, was intended to encourage other survivors and their families.

Afraid the paint would stain Lee’s all-white apartment, Lotenberg draped muslin over the furniture and hung it from the mantel, propping it up with Lee’s Emmy Awards.

1988

To make a resin chocolate bar with embossed letters would have cost $4,000, not exactly within Shubin’s $50 budget for a Woman’s Day feature. So he had the photographer shoot the back of a chocolate bar that he bit into; the letters spelling “EAT” were digitally pulled from another photo of a chocolate bar.

Victor Prado

Erika LaPresto

Philip Milio, Photography, has been taking pictures and writing stories since he retired from his job as counselor in FIT’s Department of Student Life in 2015.

The Ellenville Public Library and Museum in Upstate New York presented an exhibition of his photographic illustrations of the Hudson Valley in November 2015, and the Aroma Thyme Bistro in Ellenville exhibited his photographs this spring. Some of his stories about his time in Vietnam and life as a veteran were published in the Veterans Writing Workshop’s anthology series Afterwords, and another piece was published by Stars and Stripes, a media company serving the U.S. military community.

Philip Shubin, Fashion Buying and Merchandising ’78

This glass of “bitters” for Details might look tempting, but it’s mostly plastic. Shubin arranged hand-carved acrylic ice cubes and an acrylic splash shape inside the glass, hung fake droplets from strings, and tinted the water green.

Renée Bavineau, Production Management: Apparel, is president of Raise the Bar, which acts as an “outsourced COO,” helping emerging brands with sourcing, negotiating, fitting, and costing—anything they need to launch their lines. Her company also goes in-house at major fashion brands—for example, Macy’s, Ann Taylor, Calvin Klein, Gap Inc., and PVH—to help discover efficiencies, meet deadlines, and coordinate production calendars. “I call it therapy,” Bavineau says. “The reality is, so many of my clients have the same dysfunctions—a lack of vision, process, and accountability. I help them become better, faster, and stronger.”

1992 Margaret Dudley Ashby, Textile/ Surface Design, is a former Lutheran pastor who came out of retirement in November 2015 to become rector at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church at Lake James in Morganton, NC. She says the work of delivering sermons and comforting the afflicted is related to her previous job as head of consumer products design at Glenoit Mills, which specialized in high-pile fabrics such as faux fur and berber, a curly, nubby fleece. “Textile design involved taking aesthetic concepts and turning them into something concrete, so that people could have beauty and joy in their lives. The same thing is true with our spiritual ideals. How can we practice them in our daily life? How can we connect them with breathing in and out?”

Something Blue

Benedict Turner, Advertising Design ’91, Display and Exhibit Design ’84

Bibiana Huang Matheis

Gloria Lorenz Garfinkel, Apparel Design, is a New York–based artist whose colorful abstract prints, paintings, sculptures, and handmade books derive from her interest in science and world cultures, particularly Japanese. Among her numerous gallery and museum shows, she has had solo exhibitions at the George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum in Springfield, MA, the Ella Sharp Museum in Jackson, MI, and the Anderson Center for the Arts in Anderson, IN; a collection of her prints is on display until June 12, 2016, at the New York Hall of Science in Queens. She realized she wanted to be an artist while taking a life-drawing class at FIT, held at 7:30 in the morning in the basement of FIT, then on West 24th Street. “I can’t tell you how fabulous I felt, taking that course,” she says. “It changed my life.”

1985

MAD PROPS

Victor Prado

1974

Jonathan Kantor

1949

alumni notes

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church at Lake James in Morganton, NC.

2001 Elizabeth Bean Smith, Fashion Merchandising Management, is the founder of Wardrobe Therapy, a fashion consulting firm in Columbus, OH. Smith and her team evaluate wardrobes, help with shopping, and put together outfits for clients who want to evolve their look and feel better in their clothes. They also style editorial and advertising shoots as well as special events and runway shows, and are responsible for putting together an eight-page fashion feature in each issue of Capital Style magazine. Previously, Smith worked as a stylist for Express The Wardrobe Therapy and managed a team: style director high-end fashion Christy Walsh, founder boutique in and owner Elizabeth Columbus.

Bean Smith, and partner Michelle Kerr.

Queens couple Benedict and Valerie Turner are Piedmont Bluz, a band that plays in the Piedmont style of country blues, a musical genre originated by freed slaves that reached its height in the early 20th century. Valerie plays guitar and Benedict plays percussion, using antique washboards that he embellishes; he also sells these customized Darlington Washboards as art. (Darlington is his middle name.) Valerie was taught by John Cephas, the foremost performer of the Piedmont style who died in 2009, and she sees it as her mission to preserve this music for future generations. Benedict has also worked as an art director in advertising, sports branding, and custom publishing, and competes nationally as a semi-professional inline speed skater.

2004 Bunny (Jenny) Yan, Fashion Design, founded The Squirrelz, a Shanghaibased business-to-business company that sells overstock and defective fabrics and trims from China’s factories, thereby keeping them out of landfills.

The e-commerce company also sells a curated selection of recycled, upcycled, and socially responsible products to a wholesale audience. The Squirrelz recently graduated from Chinaccelerator, a well-known startup incubator.

The Squirrelz sells these charming clutches made from recycled Vietnamese fish food bags.

hue.fitnyc.edu 33

alumni notes

Michelle Risk Chrisman, Illustration (Fashion), paints landscapes, still lifes, and figures in Taos, NM, and is represented by eight galleries in New Mexico and Arizona. She uses a palette knife instead of a brush to sculpt the paint on the canvas, and she creates her landscapes en plein air (outdoors) and alla prima (painting new layers before the previous layer dries), a spontaneous method that lets her complete about 200 paintings a year.

She had a side career in belly dancing, which she picked up from her Lebanese grandmother and refined under the Middle Eastern dance expert Ibrahim Farrah. “I’ve always been a high-energy person,” she explains.

Second Earth I, woodcut, 9 1/4 by 23 3/4 inches, 2000, was inspired by lava in Iceland.

Late Winter Over the Rio Pueblito, oil on panel, 18 by 24 inches.

1973

An argument with Naomi Campbell convinced stylist Philip Shubin to change his focus from people to inanimate objects. For a decade he had been dressing TV personalities (Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric) and actors (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford) for photo shoots, but working with diva models was becoming increasingly fraught.

He told a disgruntled Campbell, “I can make a bed look just as voluptuous as a model, but the bed wouldn’t complain that the skirt’s too tight.”

That was in 1996. Since then, he has created arresting still-life scenes as a prop stylist for L’Oréal, Maybelline, Olay, and Stetson, as well as GQ and Marie Claire magazines. He also teaches styling to precollege students at FIT.

The most important traits of a prop stylist, he says, are resourcefulness and a keen eye for detail. “I have to realize my client’s dreams on time and under budget,” he says. “I have to create something out of nothing.”

1978 Donna Frederick, Patternmaking Technology, owns the Play House, an independent toy store in Durham, NC. She stocks about 200 mostly educational products in the 900-squarefoot space, including Legos and other building toys, high-quality Ravensburger jigsaw puzzles, dolls for girls and boys, ABC blocks in myriad languages, maps, chemistry sets, locally crafted toys such as rattles, and coloring books for children and adults. Frederick took a job at the store in the late ’90s after working in children’s wear in New York.

For a Newsweek cover story about the rising costs of pharmaceuticals, Shubin filled a test tube with 25 cubic zirconia crystals and, with Photoshop magic, married the resulting photo with an image of a cold capsule.

This page from Details epitomizes “things organized neatly,” a trend in prop styling.

In this photographic illustration, Milio’s wife and nephew are heading home from a swimming hole on the Lundy Estate in the Catskills.

32 hue | spring 2016

A display table of Poplocks, a three-dimensional paper building toy.

Jill Lotenberg, Fashion Buying and Merchandising, is a freelance photographer who has shot New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo and mayors Ed Koch and Michael Bloomberg, as well as spreads for Glamour, Gotham, and House Beautiful, among other publications. She got her start from an internship at the Garden State Arts Center (now the PNC Bank Arts Center), photographing U2, Tom Petty, Billy Idol, and other rock acts. In the ’90s, she lived in Los Angeles, photographing toys for Mattel, Inc., where she shot a young Jimmy Fallon before he joined the cast of Saturday Night Live.

Lotenberg has photographed TV chef Sandra Lee since 2008. Lee was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015, and this image, featured on Gotham’s December 2015 cover, was intended to encourage other survivors and their families.

Afraid the paint would stain Lee’s all-white apartment, Lotenberg draped muslin over the furniture and hung it from the mantel, propping it up with Lee’s Emmy Awards.

1988

To make a resin chocolate bar with embossed letters would have cost $4,000, not exactly within Shubin’s $50 budget for a Woman’s Day feature. So he had the photographer shoot the back of a chocolate bar that he bit into; the letters spelling “EAT” were digitally pulled from another photo of a chocolate bar.

Victor Prado

Erika LaPresto

Philip Milio, Photography, has been taking pictures and writing stories since he retired from his job as counselor in FIT’s Department of Student Life in 2015.

The Ellenville Public Library and Museum in Upstate New York presented an exhibition of his photographic illustrations of the Hudson Valley in November 2015, and the Aroma Thyme Bistro in Ellenville exhibited his photographs this spring. Some of his stories about his time in Vietnam and life as a veteran were published in the Veterans Writing Workshop’s anthology series Afterwords, and another piece was published by Stars and Stripes, a media company serving the U.S. military community.

Philip Shubin, Fashion Buying and Merchandising ’78

This glass of “bitters” for Details might look tempting, but it’s mostly plastic. Shubin arranged hand-carved acrylic ice cubes and an acrylic splash shape inside the glass, hung fake droplets from strings, and tinted the water green.

Renée Bavineau, Production Management: Apparel, is president of Raise the Bar, which acts as an “outsourced COO,” helping emerging brands with sourcing, negotiating, fitting, and costing—anything they need to launch their lines. Her company also goes in-house at major fashion brands—for example, Macy’s, Ann Taylor, Calvin Klein, Gap Inc., and PVH—to help discover efficiencies, meet deadlines, and coordinate production calendars. “I call it therapy,” Bavineau says. “The reality is, so many of my clients have the same dysfunctions—a lack of vision, process, and accountability. I help them become better, faster, and stronger.”

1992 Margaret Dudley Ashby, Textile/ Surface Design, is a former Lutheran pastor who came out of retirement in November 2015 to become rector at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church at Lake James in Morganton, NC. She says the work of delivering sermons and comforting the afflicted is related to her previous job as head of consumer products design at Glenoit Mills, which specialized in high-pile fabrics such as faux fur and berber, a curly, nubby fleece. “Textile design involved taking aesthetic concepts and turning them into something concrete, so that people could have beauty and joy in their lives. The same thing is true with our spiritual ideals. How can we practice them in our daily life? How can we connect them with breathing in and out?”

Something Blue

Benedict Turner, Advertising Design ’91, Display and Exhibit Design ’84

Bibiana Huang Matheis

Gloria Lorenz Garfinkel, Apparel Design, is a New York–based artist whose colorful abstract prints, paintings, sculptures, and handmade books derive from her interest in science and world cultures, particularly Japanese. Among her numerous gallery and museum shows, she has had solo exhibitions at the George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum in Springfield, MA, the Ella Sharp Museum in Jackson, MI, and the Anderson Center for the Arts in Anderson, IN; a collection of her prints is on display until June 12, 2016, at the New York Hall of Science in Queens. She realized she wanted to be an artist while taking a life-drawing class at FIT, held at 7:30 in the morning in the basement of FIT, then on West 24th Street. “I can’t tell you how fabulous I felt, taking that course,” she says. “It changed my life.”

1985

MAD PROPS

Victor Prado

1974

Jonathan Kantor

1949

alumni notes

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church at Lake James in Morganton, NC.

2001 Elizabeth Bean Smith, Fashion Merchandising Management, is the founder of Wardrobe Therapy, a fashion consulting firm in Columbus, OH. Smith and her team evaluate wardrobes, help with shopping, and put together outfits for clients who want to evolve their look and feel better in their clothes. They also style editorial and advertising shoots as well as special events and runway shows, and are responsible for putting together an eight-page fashion feature in each issue of Capital Style magazine. Previously, Smith worked as a stylist for Express The Wardrobe Therapy and managed a team: style director high-end fashion Christy Walsh, founder boutique in and owner Elizabeth Columbus.

Bean Smith, and partner Michelle Kerr.

Queens couple Benedict and Valerie Turner are Piedmont Bluz, a band that plays in the Piedmont style of country blues, a musical genre originated by freed slaves that reached its height in the early 20th century. Valerie plays guitar and Benedict plays percussion, using antique washboards that he embellishes; he also sells these customized Darlington Washboards as art. (Darlington is his middle name.) Valerie was taught by John Cephas, the foremost performer of the Piedmont style who died in 2009, and she sees it as her mission to preserve this music for future generations. Benedict has also worked as an art director in advertising, sports branding, and custom publishing, and competes nationally as a semi-professional inline speed skater.

2004 Bunny (Jenny) Yan, Fashion Design, founded The Squirrelz, a Shanghaibased business-to-business company that sells overstock and defective fabrics and trims from China’s factories, thereby keeping them out of landfills.

The e-commerce company also sells a curated selection of recycled, upcycled, and socially responsible products to a wholesale audience. The Squirrelz recently graduated from Chinaccelerator, a well-known startup incubator.

The Squirrelz sells these charming clutches made from recycled Vietnamese fish food bags.

hue.fitnyc.edu 33

alumni notes

what inspires you?

2007

MAGICAL MYSTERY STORE Leslie Ann Chiu, Exhibition Design ’11, Interior Design ’09

Justin Duplantis

Hadas Rubinovich Saar, Fashion Design, is creative director of Naadam, a company that sources fine white cashmere from Mongolian goatherds and incorporates it into timeless, durable knitwear for men and women. Part of Naadam’s proceeds goes toward vaccinating the goats and providing clean water for the herders’ families. Saar joined the company in 2014 after years as a sweater designer and strategist, having run a sweater design department at Li & Fung that launched 12 lines for designers and celebrities including Vera Wang, Narciso Rodriguez, and Sofia Vergara. Previously she created the ready-to-wear sweater department at Badgley Mischka.

Irvin Rodriguez, Illustration, paints lifelike nudes in natural settings. He photographs his models in parks in Brooklyn and Staten Island, then sketches and paints from the most evocative image. He is inspired by portrait painters of the 19th century— including John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn, and Joaquín Sorolla—but includes more people of color in his canvases to make a statement. “If I don’t convey these subjects, who will?” he says.

Rodriguez has won L. Ron Hubbard’s Illustrators of the Future contest, and his work has appeared in Spectrum 17, Creative Quarterly, 3x3, CMYK Magazine, and other publications.

The travel wrap dress from Naadam’s spring/ summer 2016 collection.

Megan Kothari, International Trade and Marketing for the Fashion Industries, founded Aaryah, a jewelry line that fuses Indian techniques with contemporary design. She was inspired by a statement cuff that her mother handed down to her. Her designs, mostly plated cuffs and rings, are handmade by artisans in Jaipur, India, a city known for its jewelry and diamond industry. Kothari previously worked in marketing for the consumer products division of L’Oréal and comes from a long line of jewelers.

Kajal gunmetal cuff and Naima gunmetal rings, black-plated with moonstones.

34 hue | spring 2016

A Clean Slate, Ode to Private Gordon 1863, oil on linen, 32 by 24 inches, 2016.

2014 Laura Novich, Sustainable Interior Environments, is an operations manager at ReuseNYC, a network of 30 nonprofit reuse organizations in New York, including Goodwill, Housing Works, and the Lower East Side Ecology Center. Based at the City College of New York and funded by the Department of Sanitation, ReuseNYC hosts an annual conference and compiles data on the industry; for example, the partner organizations diverted 25 million pounds of products from landfills in 2014. “And that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” she says. “We know it’s bigger, but a lot of reuse goes unseen.” Novich wrote her master’s thesis at FIT about alternative methods of demolition—a project she has continued in her job.

Top: Watches of Switzerland’s ground floor houses the main showrooms geared toward the aspirational customer. Above: The elegant stairway and elevator are in keeping with the store’s futuristic design.

Holy wrist candy, Batman! Watches of Switzerland, a luxury timepiece showroom that opened on London’s Regent Street in 2014, was designed to feel like the home of the world’s best-known superhero tycoon.

“We realized through research that each of their three customer types aims to live an exciting, adventurous, and aspirational lifestyle—much like Batman’s Bruce Wayne,” explains Leslie Ann Chiu, an associate principal of the global design firm Callison and the lead designer on the project. “We asked, what if Watches of Switzerland were Bruce Wayne’s vacation home?”

From there, the design process was a matter of adhering to that vision.

The main floor was appointed with Calacatta marble flooring and steel and walnut fixtures; flat-panel displays and touchscreens make the sumptuous space feel high-tech. With Wayne’s butler, Alfred, in mind, Chiu’s team designed a hidden passageway that runs throughout the store, allowing sales associates to move discreetly. And for the wealthiest tier of customers, they created a VIP room accessible via a stunning glass elevator, bringing an air of exclusivity to the shopping experience.

The design won three major industry awards, and Chiu was named one of 12 top retail designers under 35 by VMSD, an industry magazine.

“Following through on a story, from start to finish, is what really holds a design together,” Chiu says. “It’s also the most exciting part about my work.”

“August” from American Primitive. Copyright © 1983 by Mary Oliver. Used by permission of Little, Brown, and Company.

2013

Reader’s Digest Myra Kornfeld, Fashion Design ’85 Poems and recipes both celebrate the glories of nature,

inspired us to present a luscious blackberry parfait. The

ingredients at the peak of ripeness in the optimal environ-

recipe is so simple: The macerated blackberries make their

ment. And the outcome of each, whether through language

own sauce, which swirls into the pillowy, ambrosial cream.

or ingredients, is something that’s magically blended. My

husband, Stephen Massimilla, is a poet, and I’m a chef, and

both to how we taste food and to language (as when we

we wrote Cooking with the Muse, a cookbook about the synergy between poetry and food. Sometimes we chose recipes because they paired well with poems we loved; other times, Stephen wrote a poem to complement a recipe of mine.

The book opens at the liminal moment between summer

and autumn when the blackberry muse is at the height of her powers. The two poems we featured here, “Blackberry Eating” by Galway Kinnell and “August” by Mary Oliver,

MONIKA MANIECKI, ILLUSTRATION MA ’07

In the last line of “August,” “this happy tongue” refers

speak in our own tongue). The poems and the recipe hit the same inspired and inspiring note, a celebration of both words and fruit, the secret to a “happy tongue.”

Kornfeld is a culinary educator, cookbook author, and natural chef. Her first book, The Voluptuous Vegan, has gone into eight printings. Cooking with the Muse: A Sumptuous Gathering of Seasonal Recipes, Culinary Poetry, and Literary Fare (Tupelo Press, 2016) by Kornfeld and Massimilla contains 150 recipes, hundreds of poems, and essays, too.

hue.fitnyc.edu 35

alumni notes

what inspires you?

2007

MAGICAL MYSTERY STORE Leslie Ann Chiu, Exhibition Design ’11, Interior Design ’09

Justin Duplantis

Hadas Rubinovich Saar, Fashion Design, is creative director of Naadam, a company that sources fine white cashmere from Mongolian goatherds and incorporates it into timeless, durable knitwear for men and women. Part of Naadam’s proceeds goes toward vaccinating the goats and providing clean water for the herders’ families. Saar joined the company in 2014 after years as a sweater designer and strategist, having run a sweater design department at Li & Fung that launched 12 lines for designers and celebrities including Vera Wang, Narciso Rodriguez, and Sofia Vergara. Previously she created the ready-to-wear sweater department at Badgley Mischka.

Irvin Rodriguez, Illustration, paints lifelike nudes in natural settings. He photographs his models in parks in Brooklyn and Staten Island, then sketches and paints from the most evocative image. He is inspired by portrait painters of the 19th century— including John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn, and Joaquín Sorolla—but includes more people of color in his canvases to make a statement. “If I don’t convey these subjects, who will?” he says.

Rodriguez has won L. Ron Hubbard’s Illustrators of the Future contest, and his work has appeared in Spectrum 17, Creative Quarterly, 3x3, CMYK Magazine, and other publications.

The travel wrap dress from Naadam’s spring/ summer 2016 collection.

Megan Kothari, International Trade and Marketing for the Fashion Industries, founded Aaryah, a jewelry line that fuses Indian techniques with contemporary design. She was inspired by a statement cuff that her mother handed down to her. Her designs, mostly plated cuffs and rings, are handmade by artisans in Jaipur, India, a city known for its jewelry and diamond industry. Kothari previously worked in marketing for the consumer products division of L’Oréal and comes from a long line of jewelers.

Kajal gunmetal cuff and Naima gunmetal rings, black-plated with moonstones.

34 hue | spring 2016

A Clean Slate, Ode to Private Gordon 1863, oil on linen, 32 by 24 inches, 2016.

2014 Laura Novich, Sustainable Interior Environments, is an operations manager at ReuseNYC, a network of 30 nonprofit reuse organizations in New York, including Goodwill, Housing Works, and the Lower East Side Ecology Center. Based at the City College of New York and funded by the Department of Sanitation, ReuseNYC hosts an annual conference and compiles data on the industry; for example, the partner organizations diverted 25 million pounds of products from landfills in 2014. “And that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” she says. “We know it’s bigger, but a lot of reuse goes unseen.” Novich wrote her master’s thesis at FIT about alternative methods of demolition—a project she has continued in her job.

Top: Watches of Switzerland’s ground floor houses the main showrooms geared toward the aspirational customer. Above: The elegant stairway and elevator are in keeping with the store’s futuristic design.

Holy wrist candy, Batman! Watches of Switzerland, a luxury timepiece showroom that opened on London’s Regent Street in 2014, was designed to feel like the home of the world’s best-known superhero tycoon.

“We realized through research that each of their three customer types aims to live an exciting, adventurous, and aspirational lifestyle—much like Batman’s Bruce Wayne,” explains Leslie Ann Chiu, an associate principal of the global design firm Callison and the lead designer on the project. “We asked, what if Watches of Switzerland were Bruce Wayne’s vacation home?”

From there, the design process was a matter of adhering to that vision.

The main floor was appointed with Calacatta marble flooring and steel and walnut fixtures; flat-panel displays and touchscreens make the sumptuous space feel high-tech. With Wayne’s butler, Alfred, in mind, Chiu’s team designed a hidden passageway that runs throughout the store, allowing sales associates to move discreetly. And for the wealthiest tier of customers, they created a VIP room accessible via a stunning glass elevator, bringing an air of exclusivity to the shopping experience.

The design won three major industry awards, and Chiu was named one of 12 top retail designers under 35 by VMSD, an industry magazine.

“Following through on a story, from start to finish, is what really holds a design together,” Chiu says. “It’s also the most exciting part about my work.”

“August” from American Primitive. Copyright © 1983 by Mary Oliver. Used by permission of Little, Brown, and Company.

2013

Reader’s Digest Myra Kornfeld, Fashion Design ’85 Poems and recipes both celebrate the glories of nature,

inspired us to present a luscious blackberry parfait. The

ingredients at the peak of ripeness in the optimal environ-

recipe is so simple: The macerated blackberries make their

ment. And the outcome of each, whether through language

own sauce, which swirls into the pillowy, ambrosial cream.

or ingredients, is something that’s magically blended. My

husband, Stephen Massimilla, is a poet, and I’m a chef, and

both to how we taste food and to language (as when we

we wrote Cooking with the Muse, a cookbook about the synergy between poetry and food. Sometimes we chose recipes because they paired well with poems we loved; other times, Stephen wrote a poem to complement a recipe of mine.

The book opens at the liminal moment between summer

and autumn when the blackberry muse is at the height of her powers. The two poems we featured here, “Blackberry Eating” by Galway Kinnell and “August” by Mary Oliver,

MONIKA MANIECKI, ILLUSTRATION MA ’07

In the last line of “August,” “this happy tongue” refers

speak in our own tongue). The poems and the recipe hit the same inspired and inspiring note, a celebration of both words and fruit, the secret to a “happy tongue.”

Kornfeld is a culinary educator, cookbook author, and natural chef. Her first book, The Voluptuous Vegan, has gone into eight printings. Cooking with the Muse: A Sumptuous Gathering of Seasonal Recipes, Culinary Poetry, and Literary Fare (Tupelo Press, 2016) by Kornfeld and Massimilla contains 150 recipes, hundreds of poems, and essays, too.

hue.fitnyc.edu 35

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

PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY This photo of Coney Island carnival workers leaving their shift appears in Never Seeing Nothing (InkBooks, 2015), the 14th book

by Dan Wagner, Photography ’80. In 95 photographs taken over five years of constant exploration, the former FIT adjunct captures the humanity of outcasts and the accidental humor of urban alienation. He shoots black-and-white film with ’60s Rolleiflex cameras, often using vintage flashbulbs for contrast, adjusting the exposure without a light meter.

The doughnuts were prizes for a carnival game; because the workers’ hands were full with bags of little doughnuts, they put the big ones on their heads. “I like shots that were clearly taken when somebody is moving,” Wagner says. “If someone’s heels are up, you know that’s a genuine moment.”