Museum Costume Notes: Textiles and Dress, 2025–2026
At The Museum at FIT, Art X Fashion challenged the traditional hierarchies of visual culture. The exhibition presented fashion and fine art as parallel expressions of social, intellectual and creative life. It examined how designers could draw on art's aesthetics and themes while developing ideas beyond their starting points.
Glitter and synthetic surfaces
All That Glitters… ran in FIT's Museum Lobby from February 26 to March 23, 2025. Its garments came from specialized study collections maintained by the museum and the MA Fashion and Textile Studies program. Normally available only to students and researchers, the selected objects went on public display for the first time.
The exhibition had three thematic sections. One, Thread, examined developments in textile technology after the Second World War, including synthetic metallics such as Lurex. These offered more widely accessible alternatives to threads made with precious metals. A Dior Boutique evening gown illustrated the label's contribution to the revival of metallic-thread embroidery in the 1950s.
Among the dated objects were a white polyester qipao made by an unknown maker around 1990 in the United States, with gold beads and sequins, and an iridescent blue vinyl ensemble dated 1996, also from the United States. The qipao belonged to the FIT Graduate Study Collection; the ensemble came from The Museum at FIT Study Collection. The blue vinyl ensemble carried the museum's study-collection reference number SC96.43.1.
An online companion launched on March 20, 2025, alongside the physical presentation.
How glittering materials change
FIT's companion conservation account described metal threads made from thin strips of metal used directly as yarn or wound around a fiber core. Scanning Electron Microscopy showed the wrapped threads at close range. The metal's abrasive surface, and corrosion developing over time, could make these threads difficult to conserve.
Technological innovation also made shiny fashion more accessible through a wider variety of materials. Coatings such as polyurethane and polyvinyl chloride could produce an extensive range of colors and finishes. The conservation account reported that they could become cracked, hard or discolored with age, and could give off gases, including acetic acid, during degradation.
Condition reports recorded an object's stability, damage and weak areas, often with proposed treatments. Curators and later conservators consulted them for the object's history and its suitability for display. Fashion and Textile Studies students prepared reports for glittering study-collection objects used in the exhibition.
Color blocking in wool jersey
Art X Fashion ran in FIT's Special Exhibitions Gallery from February 18 to April 19, 2026. It featured more than 140 objects from the museum's permanent collection, ranging from garments, accessories and textiles to photographs and original artworks.
One dress was identified as Yves Saint Laurent, fall 1965, France: wool jersey in off-white, black and red. In discussing the relationship between art and fashion, the museum described how Saint Laurent recreated Piet Mondrian's color blocks on a garment. A flat motif was translated into a design for the three-dimensional body.
A Lanvin dress in a historical revival exhibition
Marie Antoinette Style ran at V&A South Kensington from September 20, 2025, to March 22, 2026. The exhibition examined Marie Antoinette's lasting influence across more than 250 years of fashion, design, film and art. Its subject was a fashion icon whose appeal the museum associated with style, youth and notoriety.
A highlight was Jeanne Lanvin's dress titled "Robe de Style", dated 1922–23 and identified with Paris, France. The exhibition also included a beaded pink silk slipper belonging to Marie Antoinette.