alumni notes
what inspires you?
2013 Dan Aronson, Toy Design, opened MKRLAB, a maker space in Montreal with a wide range of offerings: wood, plastic, and metal fabrication; 3D printing; silk screening and letterpress; even bread- and cheesemaking. “It’s holistic by design,” Aronson says. “When you’re in a holistic creative space, you’re able to put things together that you wouldn’t normally.” He previously set up a research and development lab for WowWee, a Montreal electronic toy company, and he still does freelance toy design.
THE KINDNESS OF SHARKS Kaley Young, Interior Design ’18
Diego Corredor/Media Punch/Alamy Live News
Stevie D’Andrea, Advertising and Marketing Communications, runs Jewels for Hope with her mother. The handmade jewelry is sold on Etsy and in stores; a portion of the proceeds is divided among four charities. D’Andrea focuses on promotion, landing placements in publications and shows locally and nationally. Jewels for Hope is a member of the Artisan Group, a consortium that promotes independent designers to the media and Hollywood; when a celebrity wears a piece, D’Andrea alerts the media. Popular items include turquoise and brass earrings worn by Emily Deschanel on Bones, and a black lava stone bracelet worn by country music star Rodney Atkins.
The Sharks, along with Keira, Kaley, and Christian Young, present a check to the FDNY Foundation.
2016 Jewels for Hope’s Unicorn Necklace.
2011 Ilbert Sanchez, Graphic Design, launched Garçon Couture, a bespoke suiting line, in 2016 with Jean Francillion; they operate ateliers in New York and Miami. Francillion oversees the design and manufacturing; Sanchez, a former UX/UI designer, is the spokesperson and branding guru. Sanchez loves brocades and jacquards, wide lapels, and couture detailing. They’ve dressed Omari Hardwick, Stranger Things’ Caleb McLaughlin, and basketball player Joel Embiid— and their clients often take home bestdressed honors. They recently began producing an Italian shoe line with blue soles, representing the Caribbean Sea: Sanchez is from Honduras and Francillion from Haiti.
Mildor Chevalier, Illustration MFA, is a fine art painter who tackles issues of identity and human rights, using figures and fragments, usually painted in acrylic, to assemble a narrative. He grew up in Haiti and spent 10 years in the Dominican Republic before moving to New York, and though he does find inspiration in Haiti, a country that emerged from slavery and rejected colonization, he resists being pigeonholed. “I’m a painter first and Haitian second.”
Threshold 1, acrylic on canvas, 42 by 56 inches, 2017.
David Coy
2018
Left, a red peak lapel cashmere overcoat and tuxedo. Right, a pumpkin spice wool overcoat, blue vest, and brown windowpane pants.
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Joy (Juyeon) Kim, Technical Design, Fashion Design ’15, put on an exhibition of nine upcycled, high-tech garments in Tribeca in August. To make the artworks for the Flydopo exhibition (a dopo is a traditional Korean men’s garment), she used castoff fabric from DKNY and Calvin Klein Suits, where she worked as a technical designer, as well as discarded muslin at FIT. For one piece, she created a zero-waste pattern; for another, she incorporated augmented reality. For a third, she programmed embedded LEDs using skills she learned in FIT’s Maker Minds Space.
Fans of Shark Tank—the reality show in which entrepreneurs pitch their product to a lineup of brutally honest investors—won’t soon forget the episode featuring the Young family. Siblings Kaley, Christian, and Keira lost their mother to breast cancer and their firefighter father to a rare cancer he developed during the Ground Zero cleanup after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Their father had been an avid cook: He’d been the firehouse chef and had appeared on Chopped three times (and won twice). Just three months after his death, the siblings appeared on the show to carry on his dream, that his invention, a cutting board with a tray for food scraps, would one day be in every kitchen in America. In an emotional, almost unprecedented decision, all five Sharks signed on to invest a total of $100,000 in the Cup Board Pro. With the help of the Sharks, the Youngs signed a deal with Williams Sonoma to produce and sell the innovative cutting board. They worked with the gourmet kitchenware retailer to improve the product’s durability, make it The Cup Board Pro. anti-microbial, and manufacture it in the U.S. “I think that people almost think it’s magic: you go on the show and all of a sudden, your product is here,” Kaley Young says. “It is magic in so many ways, but there’s definitely a lot of work involved.” When their father died, Young was in her last year at FIT, and she became guardian to her 14-year-old sister, who is now 16. She also inherited her mother’s Pilates studio, Hot Pilates Secret, in their hometown of Wantagh, New York. Now that the Cup Board Pro has a home at Williams Sonoma, Young is pursuing interior design and leading yoga and pilates retreats around the world. Mainly, she’s taking life one day at a time. “Whenever I make a strict plan for my future, God just laughs,” she says. “You just have to continue to be happy, because life’s too short not to be.” —JONATHAN VATNER
Distefano in her studio.
THE PAST RECAPTURED Donna Distefano Thomas, Jewelry Design ’82
Each garment in Kim’s exhibition offered a different take on sustainability and technology.
Hardy Klahold
The MKRLAB offers a wide variety of equipment and tools.
I’ve always been drawn to antiquity, even as a child. The ancient Egyptian and Roman empires were incredibly inspiring to me. In 1990, I started working in the goldsmithing studio hidden below the Egyptian wing of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Our team reproduced high-karat gold pieces from the Met’s collection and pieces from special exhibitions, which were sold exclusively in the museum shop, the Louvre, and the Vatican’s gift shops. Everything we created was done by hand using the masterful techniques of ancient times.
In order to replicate a fold-over chain necklace, we would carefully study how the Etruscans made it, to honor their method and create pieces that would last. In 1994, the reproduction studio began phasing out goldsmithing in favor of large-scale production of costume jewelry. I started my own business, creating handmade fine jewelry using—and preserving—ancient metalsmithing techniques. Students have access to computer-aided design and mass production: instant jewelry-making.
But if the only thing a young jeweler learns is computer software and 3D printing, they miss out on many techniques used throughout history. The opportunity to see someone respond to touching a handmade piece of jewelry is like seeing someone view an oil painting rather than a print. Once you let go of that history, it’s lost forever. In addition to her own jewelry brand, Distefano creates a line for the Met, Donna Distefano x The Met Store, pieces inspired by museum artworks. hue.fitnyc.edu 35
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