The Magazine of the Fashion Institute of Technology of Institute Fashion The Magazine the of VOLUME 12 | NUMBER 3 | SUMMER/FALL 2019 On the Cover Take a second look at our cover image: it’s embroi- dered! When the School of Art and Design received The Magazine of the Fashion a state-of-the-art digital embroidery machine as Institute of Technology part of a major 25-machine donation from Brother International Corporation, we had to test it out. We Hue is for alumni and friends of FIT, a college of art and design, business and sent a photo to the Brother team (at right), and they technology. It is published three times made the magic happen. The final result, stitched a year by the Division of Communications on the Brother PR1050X, has 29 colors and 155,183 and External Relations, 227 West stitches, and it took five hours of continuous sewing 27th Street, Room B905, New York, to create. Bet your granny can’t do that! NY 10001-5992, (212) 217-4700. The embroidery machine will be used mainly by Fashion Design students looking for innovative Above: Melissa Heinz, a senior project manager in Brother’s embellishments. The detail (below left) shows the Home Appliance Division, and Cindy Hogan, digital embroidery expert and Brother brand ambassador, created stitches up close. the embroidery for our cover. Below: The machine at work. Vice President for Communications Our cover model is Anna Forde, International and External Relations Trade and Marketing, wearing her commencement Loretta Lawrence Keane robe and an ecstatic expression. Hue found Forde Assistant Vice President on Instagram via the hashtag for Communications #fitgrad. The photo captured a Carol Leven significant instant, she writes. Editor “The joy I felt when I waved Linda Angrilli my diploma in the air in Managing Editor the middle of Manhat- Alex Joseph MA ’15 tan…. It’s probably the Sta Writer best moment I had this Jonathan Vatner year: ‘Hello world! Here Editorial Assistant I come!’” She landed Laura Hatmaker a job as a customer Photography Coordinator service and e-commerce Smiljana Peros associate at the global Website Production Julianna Rose Dow skincare company AHAVA: Dead Sea Laboratories. Art Direction and Design Cover photo: Alessandro Casagli. Gary Tooth/Empire Design Studio Hue online: hue.fitnyc.edu Email: hue@fitnyc.edu Get Dressed With FIT Hot O the Presses FIT Newsroom: news.fitnyc.edu Like the FIT Alumni page on Facebook Dressed: The History of Fashion, a Hue Sta Writer Jonathan and follow @FITAlumni on Twitter and popular podcast hosted by Fashion Vatner’s Carnegie Hill was Instagram. Use #FITAlumni when posting. and Textile Studies alumnae April published by Thomas Dunne Email the Oce of Alumni Engagement Calahan ’10 and Cassidy Zachary ’13, Books on August 20. The novel and Giving at alumnirelations@fitnyc.edu explores the rich and complex history follows the members of a co-op and let us know what you’ve been up to. behind the clothes we wear. Recent board and the sta in a wealthy episodes investigate the history New York City building. Town of penny loafers and the genius of Country named it a summer Printed by Maar Printing Service on Charles James. The hosts also “must-read,” Booklist gave it a Rolland Enviro Print. This paper is: Ancient Forest Friendly interviewed Michele Tolini Finamore ’98, starred review, and People called Made with 100 percent post-consumer whose exhibition about gender and fashion at Boston’s Museum of it “entertaining and profound.” waste fiber Fine Arts is featured in this issue. Vatner will read from the novel Processed Chlorine Free at the Barnes and Noble at FIT Produced using biogas energy on September 17 at 5 p.m. Environmental savings as compared Connect With Us on Instagram to paper using 100 percent virgin fiber: This image of James McNamara, 136 trees preserved 131,195 gallons of water saved the alumnus who sewed the original 13,422 lbs of waste not generated Gay Pride flag, was one of the year’s 44,099 lbs of CO2 not generated most popular posts on @FITAlumni, 113 MMBTUs of energy not consumed the Instagram account of the O¥ ce 57 lbs of nitrous oxide gas prevented of Alumni Engagement and Giving. Please recycle or share this magazine. Follow it to see posts about alumni accomplishments, campus events, and other major news. (We also recom- mend @FITNYC, the college’s o¥ cial account, and @MuseumatFIT, the museum’s page.) Features Departments 8 Uncommon Design 24 Conserving a Chanel 4 Hue’s News FIT’s new MFA in Fashion Design graduates Saving a couture garment from 25 Counter Culture its first class of creative rebels “inherent vice” 32 Alumni Notes 14 Vital Threads 26 You Better Work! Alumni turn fiber into fine art Zaldy ’90 is the designer behind 35 What Inspires You? RuPaul’s fab looks 20 Take Five An unscientific sampling of the 30 Fashion Out of Bounds class of 2019 Style that transcends the gender binary Above: Utkarsh Shukla’s gossamer pieces blend historical Indian dress and Western tailoring, addressing a fraught combination of cultural identities. Shukla was a member of the Fashion Design MFA program’s first graduating class. Photo by Shukla. Story on page . hue’s news Using Biodesign, Students Invent Sustainable Textiles Anna Blume Elastin is a protein that allows for stretch This bannerstone, made of banded slate and recovery in skin, connective tissue, and in a knobbed lunate shape, was found in blood vessels. It’s also present in high concen- Elbridge, New York, and dates to , BCE. tration in the (inedible) adductor muscles of (AMNH /) oysters. Team EcoLastane ground up those muscles and, using a common enzyme, creat- WHAT’S A ed strands of elastin. Unfortunately, it wasn’t BANNERSTONE? very strong. Next, they purified the elastin Bannerstones are complex carved and using sodium hydroxide and were able to polished stones created by Native isolate a small amount, which they will use Americans during the Archaic period to create a durable spandex-like fiber. (8000–1000 BC). The holes drilled Team Flora Fur was troubled by the envi- through their centers led early–20th ronmental costs of faux fur, which is gener- century archaeologists to believe that ally made from petroleum products and is they were meant to be placed on stas therefore not biodegradable. as banners or emblems, hence their Valery Rizzo “The fact that it’s not biodegradable is the name, but more recent scholarship Students Isabella Bruski and Noah Silva of Flora Fur with Stella last argument used against faux fur by the casts doubt on that hypothesis. History McCartney Sustainability Manager Debra Guo. fur industry,” Advertising and Marketing of Art Professor Anna Blume and Communications student Isabella Bruski Joseph Anderson, assistant professor What if our world’s most pressing environmental crises could be solved said. “We wanted to create a faux fur that and Digital Initiatives librarian, have by looking to nature? The Biodesign Challenge, now in its fourth year, biodegrades.” created an open-source website at is an intercollegiate competition founded by Daniel Grushkin, bannerstone.fitnyc.edu to aid in the co-founder of the community laboratory Genspace. Its purpose is to study of these remarkable and mysteri- encourage undergraduate research into biologically inspired fibers “What’s unique about ous objects. The site contains photog- and other materials. An FIT team won the first Biodesign Challenge, Flora Fur is they’re using raphy and information for 61 banner- in 2016; that team, now a company called AlgiKnit, recently final - this common, weedy plant stones in the archives of the American ized a round of venture capital funding totaling $2.2 million. Museum of Natural History. On June 20 and 21 in New York, student teams from 34 colleges to make a luxury item.” and universities around the world, including Harvard and the Univer- —Evelyn Rynkiewicz, Assistant Professor, sity of Pennsylvania, presented concepts and research that could pave Science and Math Department the way to a more sustainable future. Two FIT teams presented their work. Team EcoLastane, They experimented with using the flu¨ which is developing a biodegradable alternative to spandex, was from milkweed seeds, combined with flax a finalist for the top prize and a competitor for the ORTA Prize for fibers, to create a sustainable fur-like textile. Bioinspired Textile Processes. Team Flora Fur took home the Stella As an added benefit, planting milkweed to McCartney Prize for Sustainable Fashion for its petroleum-free vegan produce this fiber would provide food for fur made from milkweed flu¨ and other natural materials. monarch butterflies, which feed on it as Team EcoLastane came up with the idea for a sustainable span- caterpillars. dex alternative in an interdisciplinary course called Designing with “What’s unique about Flora Fur is they’re Kim Byung Min Emerging Materials. The course, team-taught by Susanne Goetz, using this common, weedy plant to make a associate professor of Textile/Surface Design, and Theanne Schiros, luxury item,” said Assistant Professor Evelyn FIT in Korea Graduates assistant professor of Science and Math, teaches students materials Rynkiewicz, an ecologist in the Science and First Class science and encourages them to undertake original research to devel- Math Department, and advisor for the Biode- FIT at SUNY Korea’s first commence- op new materials. When Fashion Design student Monica Palucci sign Challenge. “They call it a weed because ment took place June 20 on the learned that any fabric containing spandex is not recyclable, and that it can grow anywhere—which is a good thing state-of-the-art campus in Songdo, the fiber is present in 80 percent of clothing, she and her team members in this case.” South Korea.