The Museum at FIT Fashion Culture Podcast

Lifestyles is a six-episode original short podcast series from The Museum at FIT. Join MFIT Digital Media Manager Tamsen Young as she sits down with people whose distinct expression of style is outside conventional fashion trends. Discover how they use clothing to define themselves on their own terms.

View images of our guests, and learn more about the Lifestyles podcast series, on our website. 

New episodes drop twice a month. Subscribe and listen to find your own style inspiration. 

Dandy Wellington, born and raised in Harlem, New York, is a bandleader, entertainer, event producer, and creative consultant. He has performed with his jazz band all around the world and, as a vintage menswear savant, 
he has consulted on events throughout the United States, including the fashion exhibition “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Dandy’s look epitomizes the undeniable cool of the Jazz Age. He is an impeccably dressed man-about-town whose signature style has earned him features in outlets such as The Financial Times and Vogue magazine. Dandy’s appreciation for the swinging big bands, elegant parties, and beautifully tailored clothing of the 1920s and '30s makes him a certifiable Renaissance man and a true modern dandy.

Transcript (pdf)

The Museum at FIT (MFIT) is the only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of fashion in New York City. https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum

Instagram: @museumatfit & @dandywellington

Lifestyles is a six-episode original short podcast series from The Museum at FIT. Join MFIT Digital Media Manager Tamsen Young as she sits down with people whose distinct expression of style is outside conventional fashion trends. Discover how they use clothing to define themselves on their own terms.

Learn more about the Lifestyles podcast series, and view more images of our guests, on our website. 

New episodes drop twice a month. Subscribe and listen to find your own style inspiration. 

The artist and maker Debra Rapoport brings a playful exploration of beauty and ingenuity to both her fashion and her life. Her style, a blend of making and thrifting, reflects a lifelong commitment to sustainability. Debra studied weaving in Stockholm, Sweden, holds a BFA from Carnegie Melon University and an MA from UC Berkeley where she graduated in 1970. She taught throughout the 1970s at UC Davis and continued teaching here in New York City, including at the Museum of Modern Art, MAD Museum, and NYU, just to name a few. Debra's work has been featured in numerous art museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the National Museum of Sweden. Debra was featured in Advanced Style, a film about the style of people over the age of 60, as well as in the three Advanced Style books that followed.

Transcript (pdf)

The Museum at FIT (MFIT) is the only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of fashion in New York City. https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum

From the 19th-century corset to the modern waist trainer, the fashion industry has long held that most bodies require correction. In this episode, Dr. Valerie Steele and Tim Gunn trace the historical arc of body ideals in Western fashion, from the voluptuous Venus of the Victorian era to the increasingly narrow and homogeneous standards that dominate runways today.

Drawing on decades of curatorial scholarship and industry experience, Dr. Steele and Gunn examine the persistent reluctance among designers to create beyond a narrow range of sizes, the structural barriers facing fashion students seeking education in plus-size design, and the enduring interplay between clothing, sexuality, and self-presentation. Gunn reflects on his own encounters with industry exclusion while Dr. Steele situates these conversations within a longer history of medical, cultural, and commercial pressures on the female body.

This episode was recorded live on Friday, February 23, 2018, as part of The Museum at FIT's 19th Annual Fashion Symposium, Fashion and Phsyique.

Watch the full video with captions on YouTube.

The Museum at FIT (MFIT) is the only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of fashion in New York City. https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum

Norma Kamali studied fashion illustration at FIT before taking a job at Northwest Orient Airlines. From 1964 to 1968, she traveled to Britain every weekend, where she immersed herself in the culture of 1960s London. In 1967, she and her husband opened a boutique in NYC and filled it with items purchased in London. She supplemented her stock with her own designs and eventually began to focus primarily on her original creations. Among her most celebrated creations is the “sleeping bag coat" and a swimsuit worn by Farah Fawcett in one of the most memorable photographs of the 1970s. However, she also designed high heel sneakers, adjustable dress from parachute silk, created a suit from sweatshirt fabric, and is renown as a pioneer in athleisure. In this conversation, Norma Kamali and MFIT's Patricia Mears speak at the museum's fashion symposium, Fashion, Science, and Exploration, held on October 10, 2017.

Watch the full video with captions on YouTube.

The Museum at FIT (MFIT) is the only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of fashion in New York City. https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum

Piet Mondrian's abstract paintings were appropriated by various aspects of popular culture throughout the 1960s, notably by Yves Saint Laurent in his 1965 dress series. Co-authors Nancy J. Troy and Ann Marguerite Tartsinis join MFIT's senior curator of costume Dr. Colleen Hill to discuss the wildly popular dress series and how art, commerce, and fashion became intertwined in the postwar period. 

This talk was recorded March 6, 2024.

Watch the full video with captions on YouTube.

The Museum at FIT (MFIT) is the only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of fashion in New York City. https://www.fitnyc.edu/museum