Hue Magazine: Spring 2023

DISCLAIMER: Everything in this issue was correct at press time, but five minutes later, who knows? That’s because we wrote about NFTs, cryptocurrency, and the metaverse. We keep hearing they’re about to transform our lives. Our alums, faculty, and students —being into transformation and innovation—are exploring them, so we thought we’d do some fun, uncomplicated, FIT-centric stories about these technologies. Then things got…complicated. Crypto crashed, the value of NFTs plunged, blockchains were maybe not ironclad. Facebook had become Meta, but the world hadn’t changed. FTX vaporized and its founder was indicted. Some pundits claimed Web3 had fizzled.

We echoed our cartoon character, Huey, asking: Are we nuts to be doing this now? But we went ahead with our stories, because if our readers are interested, so are we. We know the tech is evolving and its eventual impact is unknown, so we maintained a healthy skepticism. But we still had some fun.

Very cool thing: We minted an NFT of our cover art, created by gifted alum John P. Dessereau. To benefit the college, we gave it to the FIT Foundation to promote their Entrepreneurship Summit in March.

As always, we’re interested in your thoughts. And your NFTs. Show and tell at hue@fitnyc.edu.

Amy Sperber, assistant professor of Fashion Design, created this NFT of dirty socks as a tongue-in-cheek way to practice with Web3 technology. Read more about how NFTs are shaking up the art world on p. 14.

linda angrilli

WE’LL BREAK IT DOWN FOR YOU

BY JONATHAN VATNER AND ALEX JOSEPH

Illustrations by Carlos Miranda ’23

READY FOR A TRIP?

Strap on a virtual reality headset and jump into the metaverse. There you can catch a Beyoncé concert from the front row, parachute past the Eiffel Tower, or chat up distant friends you haven’t seen in years. Trade some Bitcoin for an NFT of a Gucci gown, slide it on your avatar, and head to the bar for a (virtual) drink while taking in a TED talk by your favorite TikTok influencer. And don’t worry: No one can steal your identity or cash because blockchain is keeping all transactions secure. This is the promise, at any rate, of a host of technological innovations known as Web3—including the metaverse, blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs—that futurists say are about to radically change our lives. In recent months, as the crypto markets have imploded, many detractors have voiced serious skepticism about Web3 innovations. Still, some experts maintain that Web3 holds the potential to transform a range of business and creative enterprises that are extremely relevant to the FIT community. William Reinisch, chair of the Entrepreneurship Department and an investor in Web3 technologies, says, “It will fundamentally shift the creative industries.”

Confused? Worried?

You’re not alone. Prize-winning economists, journalists, and educators are struggling to articulate the meaning and implications of Web3. But if you’re turning to Google to learn more, you already have a small sense of one big problem these technologies are trying to solve. “A lot of Web3 is looking at how we can move away from the behemoths that control so much of our lives and make these things more seamless and fair for individuals,” says Franklin Boyd, an attorney who has helped her art-world clients navigate this technology for over a decade. So whether you’re an early adopter or a petrified Luddite, get ready to surf the internet in a whole new way—in a virtual body, on a virtual surfboard NFT. We can’t promise this sea change won’t leave you seasick, but we do promise to lay it out as clearly as we can. Proceed with caution, though; at press time, much of this information remained in flux.

THE METAVERSE ( S )

One of these metaverses is called The Sandbox. It’s a two-dimensional sandbox game, meaning there’s no goal to win anything. Instead, like children build sandcastles in an actual sandbox, gamers construct virtual island environments, which can be bought and sold with cryptocurrency.

You don’t need a headset to enter, just a computer or your phone. Once you’re in, you can go to a concert by a hot DJ the Warner Music Group has space there. The TV show The Walking Dead owns an island where you can play a game that, as the online publication VentureBeat reported, “encourages players to unite with friends and other players as they overcome the day-to-day requirements of surviving a zombie-infested habitat: scavenging for food, gathering resources, … making alliances, and more.” Built on the Ethereum blockchain, The Sandbox has plenty to buy from outfits to artworks and if you purchase a plot of land, you can host a game, throw a party, build an art gallery, or do anything else you want.

In December, the CFDA mounted its first-ever metaverse fashion exhibition in The Sandbox. FIT alum Darnell-Jamal Lisby* curated the show, which featured digital versions of outfits by Fashion Design alumni Stephen Burrows ’66, Norma Kamali ’65, and Calvin Klein ’63. Lisby created the narrative and chose the garments. Sandbox technicians digitally rendered the styles and simulated museum galleries. A virtual world that promises infinite freedom: That’s one kind of metaverse. Online gamers have been building and exploring these environments for years in Second Life (founded in 2003) and in the games Fortnite and Roblox, among others. But games are just the beginning. Double A Labs is a custom metaverse platform for businesses, a choose-your-own-adventure landscape of information to explore, conversations and collaborators to engage with all designed to improve relations with your employees, connect with clients, and build an audience for your brand.

“Everybody keeps saying the metaverse is going to happen in five years,” says Double A Labs CEO and founder Amber Allen, an FIT Foundation board member.

“We’re there now. Our platform is ready.” There’s even a metaverse of sorts right on FIT’s campus, constructed by the DTech Lab. Download an app called Membit and stroll down 27th Street, and you can see, through your phone, digital avatars of faculty and staff members who

have devoted their careers to protecting the environment. DTech used a sophisticated scanner with 36 cameras to create the holograms in augmented reality and turn the street into something like a sustainability-themed version of the Pokemon GO mobile game. So “the metaverse” is actually a hypothetical synthesis of all metaverses: A visitor to The Sandbox should be able to seamlessly enter Fortnite without having to log out, log in, or switch browsers. In 2021, Facebook staked a claim to this putative space by changing its name to Meta. But while Meta may yet construct an all-encompassing virtual environment (their first version, Horizon Worlds, launched a year ago), the very idea of Facebook at the center of the metaverse goes against the principles of Web3. Web2 was defined by social media users uploaded content that would be owned by the tech giants. But Web3 is about decentralization users own their stuff. “No one’s going to own the metaverse,” says Dan Shefelman, chair of Illustration and Interactive Media, “though they’ll try.”

Better Tech for a Better Metaverse Web3 aims to take immersive online experiences to the next level. That may mean more lifelike virtual environments and VR headsets. Or not. The Sandbox is visually arresting but not particularly realistic. Allen says in testing the technology for Double A Labs, she found that executives wouldn’t wear headsets for more than a few minutes. “I honestly thought the platform would be more 3D, but the adoption rate [of VR headsets] wasn’t there,” Allen says. Avatars in Double A Labs appear not as animated characters but as the users’ headshots, which provide “a human connection.”

Improving the metaverse presents a far greater challenge than just developing better wearables. Generating enough computing power to allow hundreds of millions of avatars to interact in real time also presents a significant hurdle. The full realization of the metaverse’s potential is a way off, says Corey Moran, Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing and Management MPS ’15, head of industry, fashion and luxury at Google. “There are a lot of buzzwords and very little application yet that is meaningful and has proven sticky,” he says.

Lisby,

curator of fashion at the Cleveland Museum of Art, earned three degrees at FIT: Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice MA ’18, Art History and Museum Professions ’16, and Fashion Merchandising Management ’14.

*

assistant

eople talk about “the metaverse” as if it’s one gigantic, immersive world, but there are actually many, many metaverses that look wildly different. “I don’t see it as a single metaverse but as a multiverse of microverses,” says Michael Ferraro, executive director of FIT’s DTech Lab, an innovation space that connects students and faculty with industry. “These microverses will be branded entertainment experiences, bubbles in a cluster of environments.”

SYNCHRONOUS INTERNET

“I don’t see it as a single metaverse but as a multiverse of microverses.”

Michael Ferraro, executive director of the DTech Lab

“No one’s going to own the metaverse, though they’ll try.”

Dan Shefelman, chair, Illustration and Interactive Media

BLOCKCHAIN

Blockchain, first employed in 2008 as the basis for the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, is a decentralized way to record transactions—the perfect tool, in other words, to underpin the decentralized metaverse. In the future, our avatars will pass instantly from one environment to another, using a blockchain-supported digital “wallet.”

“We know what a pain it is to log on to so many websites and remember your passwords,” says Renee Leibler, a longtime Web3 investor and educator who co-teaches two courses on the topic with Assistant Professor William Reinisch. “That’s where information gets hacked— it’s a really big problem that Web3 is going after.”

The security of blockchain has other applications, too. Seatz, a startup aimed at preventing counterfeit tickets for concerts and other events, is the recent invention of Leyla Arcasoy, Fashion Business Management’24, and Sarah Marina Thompson, International Trade and Marketing ’24. One 2018 poll found that 12% of online ticket purchases turned out to be a scam. “I’ve had friends lose hundreds of dollars on inauthentic tickets,” Thompson says. “They can appear valid and be stored on your Apple Wallet, but when you get to the venue, you realize they’re fake.” Blockchains store the entire history of transactions for an asset—in this case, tickets. Tickets purchased on Seatz will be linked to a digital version of the purchaser’s driver’s license or passport and stored in a blockchain, so that only the ticket buyer can attend the event; the

ticket cannot be duplicated and can be resold only through the Seatz platform. The technology could also prevent bots from buying tickets, which is one reason Ticketmaster crashed when sales opened for Taylor Swift’s tour in November 2022.

Blockchain technology could also iron out one of fashion’s stickiest challenges: supply chain management. The process of creating a garment from raw materials is extremely complex, usually taking place in multiple countries. Brands often don’t know where their fibers were grown or even which factory is sewing their clothes—a major problem, since some countries tolerate child labor, forced labor, unsafe conditions, and environmentally harmful practices.

Lauren Breuer and Joshua Choi, both Production Management majors in Leibler’s and Reinisch’s Web3 classes, are attempting to track clothing and jewelry along the supply chain using blockchain. Choi, who works in production for a small jewelry company, logs details about each step—such as where the precious metals came from and which artisan crafted the piece—in a blockchain, thereby creating an unchangeable public record. If they are successful, the consumer will be able to scan a QR code and learn everything about what went into the product. “Throughout every step of the process, if there’s an authenticity issue, a quality issue, or a data issue, it would show,” Choi says.

Beanstalk, a crypto investment platform, failed in April 2022 when a hacker exploited a flaw in its setup to drain almost $200 million from users. Over the year, Bitcoin and Ethereum lost almost two-thirds of their value. Some question whether they will ever recover.

Regardless of whether crypto can become a trustworthy investment, experts say it is essential to the workings of Web3. Want to create an NFT of your artwork or sell it? You need a small amount of crypto.

Crypto is also accepted for many purchases in the metaverse … but usually you can use traditional currency, too. Advocates promise that crypto will one day facilitate

speedier purchases with no credit card company or tech giant charging exorbitant fees.

A major criticism of cryptocurrencies is their high carbon footprint. Mining Bitcoin—which requires warehouses full of computers to be running day and night, competing to solve progressively more complicated math problems—is incredibly energy-intensive. According to Digiconomist.net, which tracks Bitcoin energy consumption, it consumed as much energy as Austria in January 2023.

Ethereum used to require comparable amounts of electricity, but in September 2022, in an event forebodingly named The Merge, it became much more energy efficient. Now the computers no longer compete, and as a result, artists looking to mint NFTs of their artwork on the Ethereum blockchain don’t have to worry as much about exacerbating climate change.

hough the grand vision for Web3 remains elusive, technology that lays the foundation for this monumental shift is already in use.

THE LOCKBOX THAT

MAKES WEB3 POSSIBLE

ryptocurrency had a terrible 2022. FTX, the third largest crypto trading platform, went bankrupt last November due to a gross mismanagement of funds.

A major criticism of cryptocurrencies is their high carbon footprint.

WEB3 IS COMING:

NFT s

Purchasers of NFTs may be rewarded with perks. Bored Ape owners have access to chats and live events with the community of other owners. Owners of the LFC Heroes Club, an NFT collection created by the Liverpool Football Club and sold through Sotheby’s, can meet players and get discounts on merchandise.

Nathan Yu, Fashion Business Management ’18, created limited editions of NFT trading cards featuring K-pop stars, with a tiered system of perks. Yu is chief strategy officer of KStarLive, a South Korea-based media company producing K-pop news for a global audience. The NFTs featured short videos of K-pop stars from a KStarLive music TV series called The Show The digital cards were sold as mystery boxes for about $20 each in crypto, so fans didn’t know which star they would get. Also, the cards were classified according to rarity and came with perks that scaled from “common” to “legendary.” Fans who won one of 40 “epic” cards could attend The Show tapings for life; one “legendary” winner also got a free trip to Seoul, South Korea. Yu used NFTs for a few reasons. First, in the K-pop world, there are a lot of scalped tickets and unlicensed merchandise, so bringing authenticity to the trading cards cut down on fraud. Second, many K-pop fans live in places without sophisticated banking systems, so cryptocurrency could make international purchases easier.

Next, KStarLive will roll out profile picture NFTs images of K-pop icons that fans can use on their social media profiles. Having a valuable profile picture “is a new way of flexing with this generation,” Yu says.

NFTs vs. the Art World

like making a copy of a Van Gogh and selling it as if it were real. If you buy a plagiarized NFT, you’ve wasted your money. Even in the seemingly ephemeral world of digital art, provenance matters.

Melton notes that NFTs raise questions for museums, too. “How is a digital artwork cared for, both in terms of conservation and questions of deaccessioning?”

Despite these concerns, artists are still exploring the medium. C.J. Yeh, professor of Communication Design Pathways, minted his first NFT in February 2022. Without gallery representation for his NFTs, it has been a challenge to develop an audience, but he is excited by the technology. “I see this being an interesting channel for artists, designers, and brands,” he says.

Carlos Miranda, Illustration ’23, who created the art for this story, was intrigued by NFTs as a way to sell his predominantly digital art. “I’m always thinking about how I can sell my work if it’s not something physically painted,” Miranda says. “It’s hard for a digital artist like me. People don’t see that work made on a computer has much value.”

Miranda was selected to list his NFTs on SuperRare, an NFT marketplace that resembles a gallery in that it presents curated collections to buyers. The site even hosted a physical pop-up in a Soho gallery in 2022, with the artworks displayed on monitors. So far, he has sold just one.

The Future of NFTs

That March, an NFT artwork by famed digital artist Beeple sold for $69 million at a Christie’s auction—the most expensive NFT acquisition to date. But what is an NFT?

Because digital artworks like Beeple’s JPG can be copied endlessly, they have traditionally been challenging to sell. That’s where the NFT, or non-fungible token, comes in. An NFT is a digital asset, logged permanently in a blockchain or other type of digital ledger, that provides proof of ownership of something a digital artwork or collectible, a physical artwork, a club membership, a tweet, or even a house. The image file can still be copied, but the NFT establishes ownership. It’s an electronic certificate of authenticity.

CryptoPunks, a collection of 10,000 illustrations of faces minted in 2017, are some of the first NFTs and among the most valuable. They

were originally given away for free; in February 2022, one resold for $23.7 million.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of ape illustrations, minted by a group of creative technologists in April 2021. Celebrities like Paris Hilton and Justin Bieber bought them, helping to drive prices up, and a few months later, a Bored Ape resold for $3.4 million. For a while, all the cool kids wanted NFTs.

Major artists Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami, Frank Stella have also created NFT collections. And museums have minted and sold NFT editions of their masterworks as a fundraising tool. According to The New York Times a series of NFTs created from Klimt’s “The Kiss” netted the Belvedere Museum in Vienna 4.3 million euros. So far, it does not seem to have affected the price of the physical artwork.

NFTs raise a host of ethical and legal questions for art dealers and scholars. The ability of artists to sell directly to buyers online has caused consternation among gallerists, worried that “it could make the art world obsolete,” according to Natasha Degen, chair of the MA program in Art Market Studies. Galleries serve an important purpose, she explains: They assign artwork value and keep prices steady, and without them, the value of artworks could skyrocket or plunge based on the whims of the market.

“On the one hand, NFTs offer the possibility of forging your own path as an artist,” Degen says. “But there are reasons why gatekeepers exist and why the gallery system doesn’t just show work but also offers exhibitions where artwork can be contextualized in history.”

Additionally, galleries offer consumer protections not available in the Wild West of the internet, says Paul Melton, associate professor of Art Market Studies. And most of the traditional galleries also curate NFTs. Without the help of a gallery, naive buyers could lose staggering sums—on a digital artwork that drops precipitously in value, for example.

Legally, NFTs raise even more issues. Degen points out that bad actors can mint and sell NFTs out of artworks that are not their own. It’d be

In 2022, NFT sales slowed considerably, and many questioned whether there was a future in digital art. A Bored Ape that Justin Bieber bought in January 2022 for $1.3 million was worth only $69,000 by November.

Remember those Klimt NFTs? At press time, they were listed on OpenSea for as low as 0.56 ether (about $870), less than half of the original price. And an NFT of Jack Dorsey’s first tweet, which sold for $2.9 million in 2021, was pulled from auction in 2022 after the top bid came in at a paltry $280.

“The market got overheated, and there was a lot of excitement,” Degen explains. “There’s definitely been a correction, and we probably won’t see prices go quite as high as they have been.”

Still, Degen sees a future in this method of digital authenticity. “We live in a digital world, and digital art is going to be important going forward,” she says. “All major businesses in the art world have incorporated blockchain, cryptocurrency, and/or NFTs.”

Renee Leibler, who teaches Web3 technologies in the Entrepreneurship Department, doesn’t know if people will be minting and buying NFTs in the future, but she believes the underlying concept remains important. “Whether or not you think NFTs are going to be a bubble, you cannot discount the fact that you now have digital authenticity, which can relate to art, domain names, scientific papers, or music. We’ve never had that before.”

THE FUTURE OF ASSET AUTHENTICATION

n 2021, Collins Dictionary named “NFT” word of the year (beating out “crypto” and “metaverse”), and ArtReview magazine awarded it the top spot in its ranking of the most powerful entities in the art world.

“All major businesses in the art world have incorporated blockchain, cryptocurrency, and/or NFTs.”

Natasha Degen, chair of Art Market Studies

DIGITAL FASHION

spearheaded by Stefano Rosso, International Trade and Marketing ’03, who is CEO of BVX, the new Web3 arm of Diesel’s parent company, OTB group. In his previous role as CEO of Diesel North America, Rosso fell in love with gaming culture and recognized its growing importance. “I realized that gaming was going to change everything, from the entertainment system to the way we interact online,” he says.

Creating the first D:Verse collection was a learning experience. Rosso’s initial target audience the traditional Diesel consumer wasn’t interested, so he switched to Web3 natives, people who are already spending money sometimes large sums in the metaverse.

Rosso emphasizes the importance of making NFT ownership a continued benefit. “When you drop an NFT, you should not think the game is over that’s where the game starts. The community is investing in you, and they expect opportunities to come from it.”

D:Verse NFTs come with perks galore. Buyers get access to a private chat room for connecting with other fans, and to discounted NFT pre-sales, raffles, and additional digital wearables. Other benefits have included invitations to a Diesel fashion show in Milan and an event at the flagship in New York City, more digital wearables for their avatars and Snapchat filters, physical versions of the NFT fashions, and the ability to vote on the colors of a limited-edition sneaker.

Yet metaverse fashion is still in its infancy, says Jamie Pallot, an executive producer for Sensorium, a VR platform that creates large-scale immersive media experiences. He says brands that successfully market digital fashion are rare. “For every two or three examples of a creatively inspired, well-managed, and seamlessly handled project, there are tens if not hundreds of washout attempts where some brand says, ‘Hey, we made 100 NFTs of blah blah,’ and nobody buys them.”

Virtual Fashion Shows

in a desert, and on a sailboat.

“It was the first foray into using 3D virtual prototyping to create a new vision of the fashion exhibition that’s narrative but is situated in a metaverse,” says Michael Ferraro, executive director of the DTech Lab.

Democratizing Design

Digital design isn’t just for major brands; it’s creating new career possibilities for those who want to launch collections without a huge cash inflow. By day, Kevin Tung, Fashion Design ’16, works as an associate designer at White House Black Market; by night, he is building a career in digital fashion. His aha moment came in 2020, when a virtual pair of sneakers sold for $15,000. Those “Cybersneakers” were created by RTFKT (pronounced “artifact”), a digital fashion company that Nike acquired in 2021. RTFKT’s sneaker NFTs can now be worn in select metaverses and video games.

Tung joined a designer network called Digitalax and participated in Digital Fashion Week New York, which offers virtual runway shows, discussions, and a metaverse trade show. Many digital fashions are pure fantasy they defy gravity or look like they’re on fire, but Tung’s body-conscious pieces, accented with metallics, could be translated into fabric.

He believes digital fashion will be the breeding ground for future designers. “Every designer wants their own label, but you need a lot of money and time,” he says. “Digital fashion levels the playing field. In 10 years, I think you’re going to see a lot of creative directors getting their start in digital fashion.”

Metaverse Skeptics

Those who make the metaverse a part of their lives and a 2022 report by Citi predicts 5 billion users by 2030 will want to express their personality through fashion via their avatar. Fashion designers and brands are working to ensure consumers have plenty of options.

Nike, Gucci, and Balenciaga have spaces in the multiplayer online video games Fortnite and Roblox, where players can interact with digital fashions and even buy them. Luxury brands like Balenciaga and Prada staged virtual runway shows to present both digital versions

of real garments and fantastical digital-only creations.

Some of these garments are sold as NFTs, which allows owners to wear them in multiple games and metaverses; others are less expensive copies, wearable only in the game where they’re purchased. In 2021, a digital Gucci bag on Roblox sold for $4,115, more than the retail price of the physical bag. And that wasn’t even an NFT.

Diesel launched its NFT brand D:Verse in February 2022, offering digital versions of four of the season’s runway fashions. The effort was

Most brands are still figuring out how and whether to present fashion shows in the metaverse. FIT’s DTech Lab is experimenting in this space. Since its founding in 2017, the innovation lab has helped apparel companies embrace digital fashion design. Recently, a partnership with Cotton Incorporated pioneered virtual fashion shows that tell a story. A team of students and faculty created narrative videos that put digital versions of studentdesigned cotton garments into 3D environments to demonstrate high-tech finishes and inspire designers to use them. The three dramatic videos show avatars in a snowscape,

To many, interacting in the metaverse sounds exciting, a peak experience and a demonstration of the wonders of technology. To others, it sounds depressing. “I am in no way sold on the metaverse,” says curator Danielle Paterson, Art Market Studies MA ’22, Photography and the Digital Image ’20. “I don’t want to go to a party from my couch.”

But the metaverse era does seem to be happening, whether we like it or not. Double A Labs founder Amber Allen compares it with the adoption of the internet. “In ’94, Katie Couric was like, I don’t want this internet. And now it’s everything. If I told you 20 years ago that we’re going to find our lovers, our community, our shopping online, would you have believed me? I promise this new shift will be the same.”

hat will we wear in the metaverse? That’s a $6.61 billion question the amount the market for digital fashion is expected to grow by 2026, according to a November 2022 report by market-research firm Technavio.

THE POWER OF VIRTUAL GARMENTS

“When you drop an NFT, you should not think the game is over— that’s where the game starts.”

—Stefano Rosso ’03, CEO of BVX

“In 10 years, I think you’re going to see a lot of creative directors getting their start in digital fashion.”

—Kevin Tung ’16, associate designer, White House Black Market

Big Moments In Marketing History

BY ALEX JOSEPH

The pandemonium of this TV sale in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2018, illustrates the power of Black Friday.

ARKETING is an ancient practice. As early as 2500 BCE, Mesopotamian bakers stamped bread with logos to identify the maker and assert quality. In Pompeii, mosaic advertisements for a certain manufacturer’s fish sauce date from the first century BCE. Over millennia, the field has transformed immeasurably, producing thousands of groundbreaking moments. Neil Brownlee, a 40-year veteran of the advertising industry who has created campaigns for ESPN, MTV, and Reebok, discussed six of his favorites.

Brownlee, who teaches advertising and direct marketing, says it’s all about enhancing the relationship between the customer and the promoted item. “Don’t make a promise with your marketing message that your product can’t live up to,” he says. “It’s a relationship built on trust.”

Sometimes honoring that trust requires an adjustment in tactics or the choice to scrap a new product altogether. Once, for example, Brownlee was working with a major soft drink company that planned to introduce flavored root beer. “We did focus groups all over the country. An older guy in one group asked, ‘Why are you messing with root beer? It’s perfectly good.’” The criticism resonated with others, and the new sodas never materialized.

Today’s marketer faces formidable challenges. Ancient bakers never had to contend with callouts on social media if a loaf was soggy. Netflix and other streaming services offer commercial-free upgrades, while digital platforms like Facebook allow users to block ads they dislike. Audiences are

atomized and attention spans are shrinking. “We’re dealing with a cluttered world,” Brownlee acknowledges, yet he says certain fundamentals still apply. “To succeed in marketing, you have to understand two things: One, the product itself. What does it do? Where and how was it made? And two, the consumer. Who are they? We are trying to motivate consumer behavior, so what problem are they trying to solve?”

That’s not to say good marketing necessarily targets logic. Coca-Cola, for example, attained legendary status in the ad world with its 1993 campaign featuring cuddly polar bears. “Pepsi is about the individual experience ‘Be cool’ but Coke’s premise has always been about sharing,” Brownlee says. The bears were inducted into the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame in 2011. Then there’s “Make America Great Again,” a slogan that helped catapult an unlikely candidate into the White House. “That line was stolen from Ronald Reagan,” Brownlee says, “but it spoke a language Trump’s audience could understand.”

In American history, the term “Black Friday” originally referred to the panic of 1869, in which the stock market crashed and ruined many investors. The phrase’s association with shopping evolved over time. Until 1939, Thanksgiving was celebrated the last Thursday of November, but that year it fell on the last day of the month. President Franklin Roosevelt, hoping to jump-start an economic recovery to end the Great Depression (and placate retailers who wanted a longer holiday shopping season), issued a Presidential Proclamation moving Thanksgiving to the second-to-last Thursday. Congress ratified the change in 1941. In the 1960s, Brownlee says, the Philadelphia Inquirer began referring to the day after Thanksgiving as Black

Friday because that’s when stores would get “in the black,” i.e., turn a profit, by advertising huge sales that bargain hunters couldn’t resist. Some sources, however, claim the term was negative, invented by Philly police overwhelmed by a wild influx of shoppers. Many retailers didn’t want to be associated with black because, Brownlee says, “it sounded like mourning or something depressing.” Either way, by 2005, Black Friday was officially the biggest shopping day of the year, accompanied by nowlegendary scenes of frenzied hordes grabbing

1 Black Friday 2 Carvel

merch. “People died, got trampled by mobs, trying to get a deal,” Brownlee says. Since then, the rise of online shopping has led to fewer crowds. In the 21st century, the phenomenon became global, with New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Saudi Arabia, among other countries, implementing their own versions.

Tom Carvel founder of his namesake soft ice cream franchise (as of 2018, there were 371 franchises worldwide), pioneered a DIY marketing approach starting in the 1950s. Dissatisfied with existing Carvel radio spots, he wrote and performed his own in his distinctive gravelly voice. When he began appearing in TV ads for the company in 1971, audiences were startled, Brownlee says. “He was not a beauty by any stretch of the imagination. Most ads at that time featured women in glamorous gowns,” or blandly handsome TV actors. “Tom came off as an average guy,” and his down-home, honest approach was appealing. Customers ate it up, along with Carvel’s Fudgie the Whale and Cookie Puss cakes. With Tom on camera, the company saved money on talent, but the real benefit came from his plainspoken

owners of companies would take the microphone as a way of saying, ‘If something goes wrong with the product, you know who to blame.’” Imitators followed: Dave Thomas of Wendy’s, Orville Redenbacher of popcorn fame, and Frank Perdue, touting his “tender chicken.” Of the latter, as Brownlee tells it, “Frank asked the marketers, ‘Why me? I’m bald and I have a high voice.’ ‘Because you look like a chicken, Frank.’” Tom Carvel made the spots through the 1980s; he sold the company in 1989 and died a year later.

The black board in the New York Gold Room for Sept. 24, 1869, shows the collapse of the price of gold.

Tom Carvel appealed to customers because he was an average guy.

Time Magazine

Today, when the 24-hour news cycle seems to have accelerated to 24 milliseconds, it’s easy to forget that weekly magazines once broke news. Brownlee helped create the 1992 campaign “ Make Time for TIME.” “Time magazine was our account,” he says. “USA Today was adopting new technologies. They had stories from all over the world beamed in via satellite and printed around the country with full-color photos. We wanted the audience to see the newsstand appearance of Time as something special.” The multichannel campaign (print, radio, TV) placed special emphasis on TV ads, which aired Saturday and Sunday to promote the Monday arrival of Time. It was the early days of the internet, and the new technology was essential in making the spots,

which prominently featured the magazine’s cover. “We put a lot of pressure on the editors,” Brownlee says, “because they tended to delay decisions about the cover to the last minute, and we needed them early to make the ads.” Covers were emailed to Brownlee’s team late Thursday so the ads could be finished over the weekend. Like the famous “Perception vs. Reality” campaign for Rolling Stone the Time campaign communicated to advertisers that its audience was on the cutting edge of a new, speed-addicted world.

Brownlee helped stage this image, which ran in print publications. “The fellow reading the magazine was the agency account exec for Time The African American woman was the agency receptionist. The ad shows busy commuters who, in spite of their hectic schedule, made time for Time because they didn’t want to miss out on the latest news.”

“The first time I heard of Amazon was back in the ’90s,” Brownlee says. “I knew this fellow in Brooklyn who said, ‘You should go to Amazon and get books for one-tenth of the price.’” The retailer that needs no introduction showed marketing genius from the get-go, he says. In the beginning, “Jeff Bezos chose to sell textbooks because he could get them for pennies on the dollar.” Often heavy, expensive to store, and prone to becoming outdated, textbooks were a liability for publishers, but Bezos saw an opportunity to reach his target market. “Who buys textbooks? Smart people! And who has the most influence in the world? Smart people! That’s what marketing is all about,” Brownlee says. He has his students scrutinize TV ads during specific programs for clues about whom the marketers are trying to reach. Bezos had in mind the same audience as the

“When I teach my Direct Marketing class, I tell my students to watch half an hour of QVC ,” Brownlee says. “Many of them will say, ‘I don’t have a TV.’ ‘You can watch it online,’ I say. They come back fascinated.” Growing to reach 350 million households in seven countries since its 1986 launch, “the 24-hour, live department store,” as Brownlee calls it, might look like a series of bland infomercials to the uninitiated, but to a marketer, the home shopping channel represents real opportunity. Fashion, technology, tools, jewelry, back-to-school offers: Endless categories of merchandise are hawked, with experienced, telegenic salespeople broadcast

directly into consumers’ homes. Viewers feel personally connected with their favorite hosts and company reps (and thus their products), and are excited to talk to them on air. Among other pluses, it allows the consumer to avoid actual, poorly organized department stores, with the added bait of a quicksilver return process. “Not only is it convenient, it’s hassle free. That’s great marketing,” Brownlee says. QVC does take part of the profits, he notes, “but QVC is more than just a way to sell something; it’s an investment. Your products get exposure, and you also have a new crop of customers that you can add to your database. Everything now is data, data, data.”

TV advertisers tend to jam as much information as they can into 30-second spots, often to unintentionally humorous or, worse, bewildering effect. On YouTube, marketers have as long as they want (the maximum upload is 12 hours, according to the site), assuming they can keep the viewer’s interest, but there’s another factor working in their favor on the popular video streaming site. Marketing, Brownlee explains, falls into two categories: outbound, in which advertisers send messages to the consumer; and inbound, in which the consumer seeks out the brand and that’s where YouTube comes in. “It’s the ultimate place for how-to: how to put siding on a house, sew a blouse, or bake a cake,” he says. Top YouTube advertisers for 2021–22 included Hulu and Expedia, which makes sense, Brownlee says. “People go to YouTube searching for new shows to watch, and Hulu is there; or they want to find out about what’s going on in Mexico,” they click on a video guide to Mexico City (made by Expedia, with conveniently embedded

5Amazon YouTube

classic news programs

Meet the Press and Face the Nation. “Because of their intellectual status, viewers of those shows were the people who make decisions: Washington lobbyists, congresspeople, industrial leaders. Opinion makers the influencers of the ’90s.” Word of mouth helped publicize Amazon at first, but Brownlee says Bezos was also an early adopter of computer algorithms that recommended items based on users’ buying and browsing history. The site also made use of direct marketing through targeted emails that alerted shoppers to sales in their favorite merchandise categories. Today, of course, Amazon isn’t just for smart people; it’s for everyone and that was always the intention, Brownlee says. “Bezos didn’t call it Amazon as a reference to Greek mythology; he was referring to the river that spans a continent and has a seemingly infinite number of tributaries.”

links to the travel site) and wind up booking a trip. Anyone can have a YouTube channel (uploads are free), and apparently anyone can create addictive content. “It’s the perfect place to tell your story and your product’s story.” Audiences come for simple information or entertainment, but wind up sucked into the feed of related videos. YouTube’s algorithm fuels obsessive attention, and the more attention your video gets, the higher your content gets ranked on the list of related videos. The site’s best channels are cannily curated and designed to whittle away randos and attract the marketer’s ideal niche. “A YouTube channel should be designed for a specific market segment,” Brownlee says. “When I ask students who their market is for any given product, they’ll always say, ‘Everyone.’ And I say, ‘You don’t have enough budget for that.’”

“Everything now is data, data, data.”

—Neil Brownlee, adjunct assistant professor, Marketing Communications

Jeff Bezos at the Amazon warehouse in 1997, back when the company only sold books.

QVC host Lisa Robertson and Dennis Basso, Fashion Buying and Merchandising ’73, at a Super Saturday benefit in 2007. Basso sells affordable fashion and home decor through QVC.

S A DESIGN STUDENT

living in New York City, Sarah Flint faced a classic fashion conundrum. She loved beautiful shoes but also craved comfort. Abandoning designer styles because of aching arches was not an option for Flint, who’d been fashion-obsessed since a pair of gleaming tap shoes with tiny stacked heels captivated her five-year-old self. So with help from a cobbler who stretched toe boxes and added rubber soles and extra padding she hacked her favorite luxury designs to suit her busy life. Problem solved. Or was it?

“It just seemed crazy to me there wasn’t a brand with all that built into the shoes,” says Flint, Accessories Design ’10. The opportunity was obvious and irresistible. The realization sparked a career-defining mission to merge luxury and function for the modern shoe consumer. No hacks needed.

A decade later, Flint’s namesake brand is beloved by working women with regular commutes, and also by those whose red-carpet glamour makes headlines, from Lady Gaga to Gabrielle Union to Meghan Markle. The dizzying success of the company launched in 2013 when Flint was just 25 years old is no surprise; Flint’s determined pursuit of a design career was rooted in a lifelong love of fashion. From a young

age, she was confident in her sense of style; in one early phase, she embraced dresses, even on the most unexpected occasions.

“When we went skiing, my mom would have to stuff my dress into my snowsuit,” she says. “I had a big tube around me essentially.”

Flint grew up sketching her own shoe designs and cultivating an eye for beauty while visiting ateliers with her grandmother, an artist who lived in Paris.

“I think people who love fashion are kind of born with it,” she says, adding, “I always knew what I wanted to do.”

She understood if she promised comfort alongside luxury, she needed to deliver. Immediately after graduating from FIT, she went to

BY LIZ LEYDEN

Sarah Flint built her beloved shoe brand on a foundation of comfort

All images courtesy of Sarah Flint Leslie Andrews Photo/Courtesy of Sarah Flint

Italy for a three-month immer sion program in patternmaking and prototyping at the Arsutoria School in Milan.

“This was really intense construc tion-type stuff,” she says with a laugh.

The granular details she encoun tered in class, along with visits to tanneries and artisan factories used by luxury brands like Chanel, helped shape Flint’s vision for her company.

She returned to New York, brimming with ideas. While working as a nanny, she created a business plan, took a class in fashion law at New York University, and began a collection that attended to the less glamorous, but critical, aspects of shoe design durable heel caps, padded foot beds along with the elegant styles she conjured in her sketchbook.

After lining up investors, she persuaded a former teacher at Arsutoria to become her production manager and, with his help, began manufacturing her designs in a traditional factory in Vigevano, a town outside Milan renowned for shoemaking.

So far, so good but after launching the brand, Flint faced a challenge familiar to new designers: endlessly knocking on doors to establish a foothold in a fiercely competitive industry. Again and again, the big department stores turned her down.

Her first season, Flint managed to place the shoes in two boutiques on consignment “which no one should ever do, but I did because I needed to get in” and tried to remain positive.

“I was super frustrated and upset and anxious,” Flint says. “But I knew that the shoes were really good, and I knew from trunk shows that women loved them. I just needed to get them in front of more people. And so I kept going and going.”

Barneys New York finally bit, featuring her collection in the fall of 2015.

“I was really excited and happy but also nervous,” she says, thinking at the time, “‘What if the sell-through isn’t amazing and then they don’t reorder?’”

But it was, and they did. Other venues followed: Bloomingdale’s; popular online sites like Shopbop and Moda Operandi; and Mitchells and Richards, two luxury stalwarts in Greenwich, Connecticut. Flint continued to expand her brand through social media and some exposure from a growing faction of celebrity fans. The arrival of the 2017 Invictus Games marked the kind of unforeseen moment that designers dream about. The international competition for wounded veterans was founded by Prince Harry; at that year’s event in Toronto, he and Meghan Markle made their first public appearance. Markle’s

instantly iconic outfit, chronicled in fashion magazines throughout the world, featured ripped jeans, a white button-up shirt, and a pair of tan, pointed-toe flats with an asymmetrical bow the Natalie flats by Sarah Flint.

The frenzied response culminated in a waiting list of 25,000 besotted customers and invaluable name recognition. Yet, even in the event’s aftermath, a sense of unease nagged at Flint.

When she first launched the company, luxury brands seemed to need department stores for validation; now, she wasn’t so sure. Flint felt frustrated by a lack of control over in-store issues like assortment and markdown.

One season her shoes might be displayed at the top of the escalator and fly off shelves; in another, they’d be hidden in a dim corner and barely move. Moreover, the arrival of directto-consumer brands like Everlane and Naadam was changing the

When asked earlier that year what she would do if she were starting over, she replied, “I would start as a direct-to-consumer brand and offer the shoes at half the price.”

The question and her quick response stuck with her. Flint talked to members of her company’s board of directors and approached supermodel Cindy Crawford, a longtime fan of the shoes, with a pitch to join the venture as an investor and marketing partner. Flint told Crawford she wanted her own friends to be able to purchase the shoes, but the price point (roughly $750) made that impossible. Crawford, who launched the skin-care brand Meaningful Beauty with hopes of broadening access to luxury products, came onboard.

“And then I did something crazy,” Flint says.

She canceled the spring and summer orders and, in November 2017, announced the company’s immediate pivot to direct-to-consumer. The brand’s website went offline for a week, reemerging

with a message to customers that the quality of the handcrafted shoes would remain the same, but by streamlining the design process and removing a 25% to 30% markup added by wholesalers the price for a typical pair would drop to about $365.

Flint held her breath and the customers followed: The overall business grew 200% in 2018. Though the pandemic stalled sales in 2020, the company’s growth has remained on track ever since. The reboot gave Flint more control over her brand while putting her in closer touch with her customers.

In 2022, after running successful pop-up shops in major cities, she opened three permanent stores, in Nashville, Dallas, and Atlanta, to connect with the brand’s loyal customer base and reach a new audience. She worked with women-founded and -run vendors to furnish the boutiques. More locations are in the works. She often seeks feedback at stores and among the brand’s 101,000 Instagram followers. Flint designed the Rosie loafer because women requested something between a flat and a heel, with just the right amount of lift.

“I think a lot of times, old school designers would be like ‘I’m the

designer; I do what I want,’” Flint says. But for her, the designer’s vision isn’t the only consideration. “I know that I want to create what women actually want to wear. That doesn’t take away from my creativity.”

Instagram introduces customers to the brand and also gives them a glimpse of Flint herself— visiting Venice, baking a raspberry galette, and fielding customer Q&As ranging from where to buy tea sets (answer: go vintage) to the best part of living with her parents during lockdown (answer: her mom’s chocolate chip cookies and happy hour “quarantinis”).

Flint is convinced that modern consumers want luxury brands to change their approach. “They want value,” she says. “They’re not going to overpay. They care about sustainability. They care about who is behind a brand, not just how fancy it is.”

Once again, Flint sees an irresistible opportunity on the horizon.

“I think it’s time for that next great American lifestyle brand, and I think that brand really needs to be built for this generation of consumers,” she says. And with a range of new products scarves, headbands, table linens, and more introduced over the past year, Flint has already started.

“I’m always looking to the next thing,” she says. “Right now, I think it’s the ability to take the best of luxury and the best of direct-to-consumer and create that lifestyle brand. That is really very exciting to me.” ■

Store: Leslie Andrews Photo

Liz Leyden is a freelance writer based in New Jersey. Her work has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times , The Washington Post, and The Globe and Mail

“I know that I want to create what women actually want to wear. That doesn’t take away from my creativity.”

OPPOSITE: The pointed-toe Sylvia flat features laser-cut leather trim and a decorative buckle.

BELOW: Sarah Flint’s Atlanta boutique opened in November 2022. Her stores provide complimentary tea and cookies to shoppers.

27& 7

THE VIEW FROM OUR CORNER

New Rankings

Highlight Online Learning and Social Mobility

ANewsweek ranking of “America’s Top Online Colleges 2023” placed FIT 22nd in the nation, and first in New York State, for its extensive online learning offerings: more than 700 online course sections per year and four online degree programs. Newsweek’s list of 200 colleges is based on a survey of 9,000 online learners and additional research about institutions that offer undergraduate and graduate programs online.

FIT also ranked in the top 20 among 1,414 U.S. institutions based on the 2022 Social Mobility Index, which measures the extent to which a college or university educates lowincome students and enables them to get well-paying jobs. Rankings are based on six variables, including the percentage of the student body whose families earn below $48,000, graduation rate, and median salary five years after graduation.

Coloring Book Teaches Kids About Water Conservation

FashionForward Looks on Karma’s World

Dolls

Through a project in the DTech Lab, Fashion Design students and recent grads designed colorful streetwear for Karma’s World Netflix animated series based on a concept by multi-hyphenate rapper Chris “Ludacris” Bridges.

Six of the looks are in a collection of Karma’s World dolls, created by Mattel and released in August 2022. Additionally, the designs eventually may be produced as children’s wear and footwear.

To create the outfits, the students were assisted by Sarah Mullins, chair of Footwear and Accessories Design; Gregg Woodcock, adjunct instructor of Footwear and Accessories Design; and Lauren Zodel, assistant professor of Fashion Design. Brandice Daniel ’12, founder of Harlem’s Fashion Row, also advised the students and served as a fashion consultant for the TV series.

FOUR UNDERGRADUATE AND TWO GRADUATE ILLUSTRATION STUDENTS created a lively coloring book, published by New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection, to educate elementary school students about the city’s water system. The story follows Drippy, a water droplet, on a journey from upstate watersheds through New York City’s homes and wastewater treatment plants.

The collaboration was initiated by Town+Gown, a division of the New York City Department of Design and Construction that connects city agencies with colleges and universities to work on research and creative projects. Dan Shefelman and Brendan Leach, chairs of FIT’s undergraduate and graduate Illustration programs, respectively, oversaw the students.

Shefelman believes one page in particular will appeal to young children: the “four Ps” of what can be flushed (pee, poop, puke, and paper). “The students are gonna love finding that,” he says. “That’s what’s going to make this a hit.”

Making Avatars in the DTech Lab

Anyone entering the metaverse needs an avatar— and the white tent inside the DTech Lab, known as Little Alice, can assist. It’s a sophisticated 3D capture studio with 36 DSLR cameras that create a lifelike digital rendering of any brave soul who steps inside.

Recently, DTech created avatars of FIT “sustainability heroes”—faculty and staff who have devoted their careers to helping the earth— and positioned them along 27th Street. The augmentedreality avatars can be viewed by downloading the Membit app and looking at the streetscape through a phone.

A First-of-Its-Kind Alumni Art Show

Creative Industry: The Alumni Journey , held Nov. 16, 2022–Jan. 29, 2023, in FIT’s Art and Design Gallery, offered a look at works by 17 alumni artists in textiles, fine art, jewelry, graphic design, photography, illustration, and fashion design. The exhibition, presented jointly by Alumni Relations and the School of Art and Design, opened with the first on-campus donor recognition event since 2019. The exhibition included a Hue magazine retrospective, celebrating 15 years of collaboration with alumni, as well as the publication’s recent redesign.

Alumni art show: Lorenzo Ciniglio; Courtesy of DTech

Students designed the outfit for the Rap Star Karma doll.

Suzanne Tick ’82 with one of her artworks in the show, “Woven Neon in 5 Strands,” 2022.

ABOVE An avatar of President Joyce F. Brown, shot in the DTech Lab. LEFT Sustainability hero Theanne Schiros, associate professor of Science.

We asked a librarian: What’s one magazine everyone should know about?

BranD is absolutely a delight. I love the layout; I love the design; I love the variation. It’s a bimonthly publication from Hong Kong geared toward art directors, creative directors, anyone in communication or graphic design. Each issue takes on a different topic, like sketching, typography, paper, or futurism. Each issue is vastly different from the others, especially the covers, which often have special paper stocks or interactive elements—like a food-themed issue with a grocery bag on its cover full of cut-out paper vegetables. BranD is an idea generator, whether students are doing a mood board or looking for interesting fonts.

I CONTACT

A STUDENT IN FIRST PERSON

Tejeshwar Singh

Fashion Business Management ’24

Q: Tell us about your experience with modeling. And what’s next for you?

A: Being young and heavily influenced by media, found it discouraging not seeing people who looked like me on the big screen and in fashion. I also found it very annoying to see Indian people misrepresented in media. For example, on the Disney Channel, we’d often see Indian people represented as nerdy, weird kids with thick accents and lizards as pets. It was a big goal of mine to help depict South Asians properly.

I began making YouTube videos and posting outfits on Instagram, and Nike reached out to me to take part in their holiday 2021 Tech Pack Collection campaign and lookbook. This was a dream come true, as I’ve always been obsessed with the swoosh brand, and it was the first time a turban-wearing Sikh has modeled for Nike. A week later, independent of that, Converse asked me to be in their holiday 2021 campaign, and became the first turban-wearing Sikh to model for Converse as well.

In September, I walked in Vogue’s first-of-its-kind, globally live-streamed fashion show, Vogue World, alongside Serena Williams, Kendall

ARTIFACT

A CAMPUS TREASURE REVEALED

Arsenic and Old Hats

Why The Museum at FIT’s top hats must be handled with care

Abraham

Lincoln hardly needed to make himself more imposing; at 6-foot-4, he towered over most people, especially since in the 1850s, 5-foot-6 was the average. Still, he often wore a top hat, adding seven or eight inches to his stature. From the late 18th through the 19th centuries, the top hat was the height of fashion for bigwigs on important occasions, and political cartoons often show the robber barons as bloated figures in high hats. JFK donned a top hat for his 1961 inauguration, but it’s hard to imagine a U.S. politician wearing one today. The topper has faded into history, but lives on as an icon of men’s formal dress. The Museum at FIT has 33 in its collection, dating from 1850 to 1960.

Surprisingly, tests showed that most of MFIT’s hats contained a different but just as toxic heavy metal arsenic. Another surprise: Only one hat was animal fur (possibly beaver) and contained mercury; most were made of silk. By the 1830s, beavers had been hunted nearly to extinction, and a silk plush fabric replaced beaver fur. Little is known about the fabric. (It was made in only one factory, in France, owned by two brothers. After a

falling out, one reportedly burned down the factory to spite the other.) Ann Coppinger, Museum Sudies: Costume and Textiles MA ’06, senior conservator at MFIT, who presented the research at an International Council of Museums conference in Prague in 2022, says, “It’s not clear what the arsenic was used for. Maybe it was a mordant, to fix the dye on the fabric.”

Based on the study, the information on the hats’ fabrication was corrected, and the museum’s handling protocols were updated. The tested hats have been labeled as toxic and are now handled with gloves.

—Linda Angrilli

ABOVE Brooks Brothers black silk plush top hat, circa 1890s, acquired by MFIT in 1981.

BELOW “History Repeats Itself—The Robber Barons of the Middle Ages, and the Robber Barons of To-day,” a cartoon by S. D. Ehrhart, published in the humor magazine Puck in 1889.

Jenner, Lil Nas X, and Bella and Gigi Hadid. Most recently, I was featured in Nike’s fall 2022 collegiate campaign. People always ask me what’s next, and I am anxious for the answer. I hope to continue to make history, work on projects with the greatest companies, build an even larger audience, and develop a brand of my own.

In December 2019, MFIT received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to test for hazardous materials in its objects. MFIT lacks the conservation science resources of many larger museums, and the grant enabled them to hire an expert and rent analytical equipment. Suspect objects were tested for the presence of heavy metals using X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy.

It’s well known that mercury, a toxic heavy metal, was used to prepare the animal fur, often beaver, used to make top hats. Historically, many hatmakers suffered neurological symptoms, including dementia, irritability, and tremors, giving rise to the phrase “mad as a hatter” and the eccentric Hatter character in Alice in Wonderland

Monica Williamson: Smiljana Peros; Courtesy of Converse

Williamson at the periodicals desk. In fall 2022, the library created a browsing collection of 40-plus periodicals that don’t need to be checked out. The collection includes Hue, along with Vogue, House Beautiful, and The New Yorker and it appeals to a range of interests, from news to trend forecasting to celebrity style.

Singh’s ad for the Converse holiday 2021 collection.

Monica Williamson, Visual Presentation and Exhibition Design ’01, library clerk, Periodicals and Electronic Resource Services, Gladys Marcus Library

RETAIL SPOTLIGHT

Style Oasis

Laure Hériard Dubreuil,

Advertising and Marketing Communications ’01, created a designer boutique empire

Most kids play dressup for fun. But it’s how Laure Hériard Dubreuil, founder and CEO of luxury boutique The Webster, found her calling. “Since I was very little, I liked to dress my siblings—I enjoyed the process of putting looks together,” says the eldest of four, raised in Paris and part of the storied family that produces Rémy Martin cognac. She originally studied economics and Mandarin at the Paris Dauphine University but was drawn to the editing and curation aspects of fashion.

After graduating from FIT, Hériard Dubreuil worked in merchandising for Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent. During an autumn trip to New York, she took a last-minute jaunt to Art Basel Miami Beach with only winter clothes in her luggage— nothing appropriate for parties in balmy weather. Though the city was “bubbling,” the aughts shopping scene was “sleepy,” she says. “There was nothing fashion-forward or edgy.”

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relaxes the eye,” she says.

She spotted an opportunity. “Art Basel was bringing this ultra-sophisticated international crowd … it was the right time.” In 2007, she moved to Miami, buying and renovating a historic South Beach building (once a hotel called The Webster) that was originally designed by Art Deco architect Henry Hohauser. In 2009, Hériard Dubreuil opened her first store in that building and named it for the hotel. It still has a hotel facade, so passersby can’t tell it’s a store at first glance. But “this ‘secret’ location brings some of the magic,” she says. The store, “meant to feel like a safe haven where you can express yourself,” is luxurious (of course) with an eclectic yet comforting aesthetic. There’s vintage wallpaper, contemporary art, terrazzo floors, furniture from a mix of decades, and a fireplace mantel. Hériard Dubreuil also included nods to Miami—flamingo-pink accents and the store’s signature tropical orange-blossom scent, which shoppers can bring home as a candle or room spray.

The Webster is stocked with must-have labels for those who crave “timeless pieces, but

who are also daring and want to make an entrance,” Hériard Dubreuil says. Since opening, she’s expanded from women’s, men’s, and children’s wear to include home and beauty.

Alongside Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent live more contemporary brands like Amina Muaddi, Jacquemus, and Off-White. But Hériard Dubreuil doesn’t merchandise by brand label. “Every brand is here for a reason, and no brand is put above another.”

Instead, she mixes them together, often sorted by color story. “It’s exciting but also

As of early 2023, The Webster has 10 stores, including in Los Angeles (where Hériard Dubreuil now lives), New York, and Toronto—her first international location. Though the assortments vary based on the locale, each store shares design DNA with the South Beach flagship. For example, the LA location, opened in 2020 and designed by architect David Adjaye, is constructed in striking pink concrete. The Webster also has an online store, which accounts for about 30% of sales.

With a roster of exclusive brand names and desirable locations, it’s no surprise celebrities flock to The Webster.

Once, Rihanna stopped by the South Beach flagship between flights and ended up staying the whole day. “We celebrated her bodyguard’s birthday,” Hériard Dubreuil says.

The Webster has collaborated with other stores (Lane Crawford, Target)—and brands (Diesel for spring 2023 New York Fashion Week). But Hériard Dubreuil has also influenced fashion’s biggest night out. Upon viewing the mostly black fall 2013 collection by another collaborator, Anthony Vaccarello, she suggested he make a few dresses in red. “He could have thrown me out the window, but he loved the idea,” she says. A few months later, model Anja Rubik sported one of those red dresses at the Met Gala. Vanessa Machir

Literary Star Angie Cruz, Fashion Design ’94, discusses her new novel

Angie Cruz’s acclaimed fourth novel, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water (Flatiron Books, 2022), is narrated by Cara Romero, a 56-year-old Dominican woman who lives in Washington Heights and was downsized from her factory job during the Great Recession. “Write this down,” she tells an employment counselor, “Cara Romero wants to work.” Cruz chatted with us about the novel, her career, and how studying fashion helped her writing.

thought I might do more good as an immigration lawyer. I was thinking of all the women in my family who worked in factories, and suddenly Cara Romero just appeared and spoke to me, and I listened to her. I did the first draft of the book on my phone.

What does the title mean?

There’s a saying in Spanish, “Don’t drown in a glass of water,” which means, essentially, “Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.” I thought it was a good way of referring to this character, who has such a distinctive way of speaking and telling stories and of how, in the course of the book, she gets to the other side of things.

What’s your writing process like?

I did many drafts. A lot of young writers are afraid to revise, but as a Fashion Design major, I actually received a lot of training in revision. One professor made us do 100 different sketches for a single outfit, and when we were done, she said, “This is the beginning of the design process.” Revision is about digging in and seeing all the possibilities.

How did you pivot from fashion to fiction writing?

University of Pittsburgh. I tell my students, “You never know how the thing you’re doing now will affect what you’ll do in the future.” —Alex Joseph

Trust the Process

Foad Faridzadeh, Computer Animation and Interactive Media ’04, talks secrets, helicopters, and Lady Gaga

a secret.” It was part of a series of three spots created with “a 90-person team, a $4.5 million budget, helicopters” and filmed in just a few weeks.

Several shots of a couple cavorting in water drew on Faridzadeh’s experience using underwater camera setups for his short film The Lake “Filming shorts, I did all kinds of experiments,” he says, “so I let my imagination go wild filming this commercial.”

Though Faridzadeh loves Steven Spielberg, he was inspired to become a director by his father, who had been a film producer in Tehran, Iran. Faridzadeh’s father also encouraged him to learn about editing, from initial concept to post-production. “Most directors don’t know the postproduction process,” Faridzadeh says. “Understanding it prior to shooting gives you so much more of an advantage. Even if plan A or plan B doesn’t work out, you’ve already done your homework.”

How did you create your protagonist, Cara Romero?

In 2017, I was on a New York subway platform on my way to visit my mother. I was having a hard time selling my last novel, Dominicana in the end, it took four years. Trump was president, and I was full of despair and considering a career change. I

It’s all interconnected; I have a deep love for art and design. I put myself through FIT by working as an assistant manager and window designer for a cashmere store on Madison Avenue. But from a young age, I was always told I was a good storyteller, and eventually I got an MFA in fiction writing. Since 2013, I’ve taught writing at the

“If you don’t become the next Spielberg, you’ll make a very good porno director,” Mehdi Faridzadeh told his son director, writer, and visual effects expert Foad Faridzadeh upon seeing his commercial for Secrets Resorts & Spas, which aired during the 2017 Golden Globes Awards. Though Faridzadeh’s résumé definitely does not include pornography, his sultry commercial is full of steamy encounters set to breathy music, encouraging viewers to “make

After graduating from FIT, he apprenticed at the visual effects and animation studio Rhythm & Hues in Los Angeles before returning to New York to attend NYU’s graduate film program and intern (fetching coffee and cleaning bathrooms) at the production company Quietman.

Eventually, Faridzadeh got the chance to provide technical direction for an anti-steroid public service announcement produced with ad agency BBDO, Major League Baseball, and the Partnership for a DrugFree America. This led to a

The Webster’s original South Beach location features homey touches amid brightly colored fashions.

In 2022, Hériard Dubreuil spoke at commencement and received the President’s Award for Creative Excellence.

The Amina Muaddi Begum slingback pump

How hot sauce entrepreneur Sufia Hossain, Production Management ’06, spiced up her career

job as a technical director at Quietman, and “right after that, I got a call the PSA had been nominated for an Emmy.”

Since then, he’s worked on movies (like 2013’s Shadow People), commercials for well-known brands (Dior, Alka-Seltzer), docuseries (like Refinery29’s Tehran Unveiled), and short films. In 2019–20, he even directed an opera, Giovanni Bottesini’s Ali Baba, performed by Opera Southwest in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

As creative director and visual effects supervisor for Lady Gaga’s 2011 Marry the Night extended music video (which the multi-hyphenate icon herself directed), Faridzadeh worked on storyboards, planned the production, and “created a marriage between visual effects and what’s happening on screen.”

During one scene, several cars were supposed to burst into flames, but not all of them did. “Lady Gaga was so in character we just continued.

I’m a huge fan of filming as much as possible on camera and only using [visual effects] to further enhance the picture,” Faridzadeh says. “Our eyes are so used to recognizing what’s augmented, it makes good post work even more important.” —V.M.

S

Drawn to the vibrant colors of hot peppers at one of the farmers market stalls, Hossain impulsively scooped some up. “They just talked to me.”

Experimentation with hot sauce recipes in her home kitchen produced mixed results.

“I was horrible when I first started, but for some reason, I still enjoyed that process.”

Hossain persisted, dumping multiple batches down the sink until she found the perfect formula. Encouraged by a Gap colleague’s request to buy a bottle, Hossain soon began selling her hot sauce at flea markets and farmers markets.

“It was a lot of hustle,” she says. But she always kept her sense of humor. “I’m a very silly person; my coping mechanism is to joke and laugh.” Thus her brand, Silly Chilly Hot Sauce, was born.

In 2017, Hossain moved her production to a shared commercial kitchen, and Silly Chilly Hot Sauce achieved placement in NYC gourmet and specialty stores. By 2019, it had expanded to factory production and national

And Silly Chilly’s branding reflects her sensibility: Instead of the skulls, devils, and flames emblazoning many hot sauce bottles, Hossain’s labels show a stylish woman walking a dog.

Nora Maynard

that she then tests in Newell’s state-of-the-art R&D facility.

Social Contracts

ufia Hossain was working as a merchandiser at Gap’s New York office and felt stuck, until a 2016 trip to Union Square Greenmarket shifted her career in a surprising direction.distribution, offering a range of flavors from mild and sweet to assertively hot. One of her happiest moments was seeing the spark in a farmer’s eye as she placed an order for 400 pounds of peppers.

While many entrepreneurs launch their businesses with meticulous plans, Hossain’s took shape gradually and intuitively.

“I had no vision of running a hot sauce brand, but slowly I realized how much I enjoyed that whole journey, the process of it. It’s like we love who we love, but we don’t know why.”

Although the move from fashion merchandiser to hot sauce entrepreneur might seem a sharp pivot, Hossain considers it a smooth turn.

“The fashion industry really shaped me. It trained me for everything that I’m doing right now from visual, to marketing, to creating a brand from nothing on my own.”

Whhat does autumn smell like? What about tweed or cashmere? What fragrance evokes a “daybreak rave”? Or the color purple? Does pride have a scent? Does gay pride?

Taylor Perlis puzzles over these kinds of questions. As a fragrance evaluator for Newell Brands, she works with perfumers to bring her ideas for new scents into the world.

“Candles are my life,” she says. “I burn them all year long for different moods.”

This year alone she has introduced a Pride fragrance for Yankee Candle (fruity with a musky vanilla base), launched a Gen Z–targeted candle brand called Friday Collective (including the citrusy “Sunset Disco” and the sagey “Star Lust”), and generated a slew of other scents for Newell’s more sophisticated line, WoodWick.

“I launch probably over 100 fragrances a year,” Perlis says, with breezy nonchalance, as if churning out new smells

were as easy as breathing. She finds inspiration everywhere on a hike near her home in South Deerfield, Massachusetts, breathing the crisp air; or at a farmers market, noshing on a doughnut. “That’s the fun part about my job,” she says. “There are so many different types of people out there looking for different types of fragrances. So I really try to create something for everybody.”

Perlis initially went to nursing school, but a retail job at Bath & Body Works changed her plan. She recalls standing on the sales floor thinking: “There’s gotta be people who design these fragrances, people who design the displays and the marketing that’d be such a cool job.”

When she gets an idea for a scent whether something specific like “sakura blossom festival” or a vague feeling like “pride” she sends a brief to the perfume houses that work with Newell. These memos include logistics like price, type of wax blend, the project (whether WoodWick’s new fall line or Yankee’s “scent of the year”), as well as inspirations and market research data. Then, after some back and forth with the perfumers, she gets a sample

“We have these fragrance booths, all glass, and we can play with the airflow inside to mimic different environments,” she says. “So we’ll put candles and room sprays and wax melts in the big booths, and depending on what airflow we choose, we can mimic a living room or a kitchen to see how our products will work once they get into the house.”

Even after the perfumers have concocted the perfect candle fragrance, they need to create a separate formula for the corresponding room spray or car plug-in. “When I first started working here, I thought we could just dump the candle formulation into any form, but that doesn’t work,” she admits. “It’s not easy.”

LaToya Shambo, Advertising and Marketing Communications ’07, helps Black women influencers find brand partnerships

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135 Black influencers, many more than a traditional agent, who might represent just five or six.

“Why are people basing value on color, race, or ethnicity? Value should be based on quality,” she says. “Fairness is not complicated.”

n her decade working in advertising, LaToya Shambo noticed that the campaigns almost exclusively featured white talent. That disparity continued with the rise of bloggers and then influencers. “I saw a void in the industry. Who’s out there brokering brand partnerships for Black females? There wasn’t anything specifically for Black women,” she says.For a three-month Disneyland project to promote the theme park to Black and brown consumers, Shambo developed a vision, strategy, and storyline that asked: How do you break up the day-to-day monotony of life in a pandemic? Her answer: Go to Disneyland!

So Shambo took on the mission herself, founding Black Girl Digital (originally Brooklyn Brand Lab) in 2016. “How can I get more people of color, more women of color, paid to do what they love? From a community perspective, I’m spreading the wealth through brand partnerships,” she says.

Yet Perlis says all the testing, the failing, and the tweaking is worth it when she receives the flint jar with the finished candle inside. “Seeing this fragrance come to life is the most magical moment.”

Raquel Laneri

Black Girl Digital connects brands like Disney and the city of Boston—with influencers to market products and services through social media. In brokering these agreements, Shambo fights to ensure that Black influencers are paid fairly. While Black Girl Digital targets diverse audiences and works with Latinx, Asian, and LGBTQ influencers, 80% of the business is focused on Black women. Her impact is significant: In 2022, the company worked with over

Local California-based influencers captured their own “day in the life” experience, from home to park, sharing stories on Instagram and TikTok. The centerpiece of the marketing strategy, a custom video overseen by Shambo, featured an influencer from out of town, capturing their flight, Airbnb accommodations, and an epic park experience including the reservation process, a park escort, food, and a playful day of adventure.

The social media images and clips were authentic, fostering genuine interest. And thanks to Black Girl Digital’s campaign management tool, Disney could access metrics data in real time. “Because the influencers truly enjoyed the experience, their audience was captivated,” Shambo says. “It drove action, and that’s really what we want to do.” —Diana

McClure

35 hue.fitnyc.edu HUE 34 HUE SPRING 2023

Smell

Wonder

Feeling the Heat

A Symphony of Softness

Fern Clausius, Fashion Design ’19

“I’m a very interdisciplinary artist,” says Fern Clausius, an intimate apparel designer whose first collection debuts this year.

Myriad art forms, from photography to burlesque, inspire her intricately tailored pieces, but she is most nourished by music. Her mother is a pianist, and Clausius grew up playing violin and piano. While sketching, she listens to Bach, Shostakovich, Philip Glass, and her other favorite composers, matching textiles to the color and texture the music evokes.

“Music carries me on an emotional path,” she says, “and my hand captures that emotion.”

The pandemic spurred Clausius to start her line, Fern New York.

Furloughed from her design job at luxury intimates house Kiki de Montparnasse, she didn’t find any openings at high-end ateliers and didn’t want to jump to a brand that would “be mass-producing a bunch

of clothing that I didn’t feel proud to put out into the world.”

Though she hadn’t planned to start her own brand so soon, she decided the time was right. Her first pieces were custom boudoir basics crafted from remnant textiles, sewn in her home studio and sold to individual clients. She is working with New York factories to produce her first

collection, for pre-fall ’23, which she hopes to sell at upscale retailers like Bergdorf Goodman. Her pieces are feminine “lots of laces and silks and anything that oozes luxury and softness” but not just for women. “I want people to be able to explore their feminine side with pieces that fit, whatever their gender might be.”

Jonathan Vatner

Courtesy of Fern Clausius

Constructed from netting, hand-cut Chantilly lace, and silk taffeta, this bustier took more than 70 hours to complete.

Background: jvphoto/Alamy Stock Photo; Cookie Puss courtesy of Carvel