“The Museum at FIT is the only museum dedicated to fashion in the city of New York,” said Troy Richards, the Dean of the School of Art and Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. “It draws people from all around the world. We have people from our competing colleges, that come in and view the exhibitions and the archive. Its something we’re proud of,it’s an incredible resource for our students.”
The Museum at FIT, whose director is Valerie Steele, was founded in 1969, and was specifically designed and built to serve the needs of the college and its students.When this all happened, the Fashion Institute of Technology was part of SUNY, the State University of New York system.
I asked Richards if he could give me some general information, as I feel rather certain that there are people in the world who do not understand exactly what it is students do in fashion school, let alone why a college might believe that a dedicated museum was absolutely essential to the success of its students, before even considering the benefit to any college’s larger community.
“Our faculty will take the students in to see every exhibition,” Richards told me.”They frequently enough create projects around the exhibitions, then they go into the archives where they can see they can touch fabrics, look at patterns from decades ago and then go through old issues of Vogue and other publications. It informs their work as students, their thinking as designers. Really, it’s a powerful, powerful resource for us.”
I asked Richards about Steele, the museum’s director, and her work with students and her curators.
“She has so many great ideas,” Richards said. “She really is interested in engaging the students and in keeping this museum
It’s too long a story to tell now, but Michelle Murphy the most important forgotten innovator in American Design Education, who got the Blum Lab off the ground and made it into a massive success, including the one and only exhibition ever of the haute couture dolls from the Merci Train, died tragically early from cancer in 1954. The wonderful Robert Riley stepped in, though the Blum Design Lab ultimately closed and its collections absorbed into the museum’s larger Education Department.
The fashion Gods must have been happy about something,because it seems like three decades of events resulted in much of that fabulous collection finding its forever home in the place which would need and use it most and best; the newly formed teaching museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
When lauded publications repeatedly give FIT the title of Best Fashion School in the Worldat least part of this is due to the wonderful things the college and museum staff have done, and have been doing, in the decades between that loan with Brooklyn.Today, the Museum at FIT’s collections have grown to now include more that 50,000 pieces of apparel and accessories, material culture which spans the years between the 18th and 21st centuries.And that’s not counting the patterns, textiles, toilets, and thousands of other museum materials related to the history of what people have worn. For those of us who half live in the past, or would like to pretend to, it is the museum equ## From AutoCAD to Clo3D: How Technology is Reshaping Fashion Education at FIT
Aadhya Deshmukh’s midi vinyl coat with a hand painted, molded leather corset and side safety pin trim, from her capsule Collection, PAUSE, modeled by Grace O’Farrell.
Courtesy of FIT
“My own practice for many years was interdisciplinary,” Richards explained, “and frequently enough collaborative. I’ve created video games, worked with VR and guitar playing robots, collaborated with people from computer science and mechanical engineering, created sculptures and installations. My work has in exhibitions at White Columns, PS1, Socrates Sculpture Park, the Bronx Museum, Queens Museum, around the city quiet a bit.”
“I’ve always been very interested in collaboration,” Richards told me. “I’ve always been very idea-driven. The concept has always dictated the form for me.I think that my habit of collaborating led me to administration as, to be honest, I just really enjoyed meeting people from different backgrounds, from different disciplines, hearing their ideas, and doing what I could to help them realize their ambitions.”
The time which has passed between 2017 and today feels like a lifetime to any of us who made it through COVID and years of international turmoil which have seemed to constantly reverberate ever since. And while many of the cultural changes have been immense, it is indeed frequently enough the smaller, more incremental changes which make for the most systemic change. I asked the dean what was most different in the world of arts education between the beginning of his tenure at the world’s best fashion school and today, with 2026 looming ever closer.
“Right when I arrived at FIT,” Richards said to me, “we were really implementing BrowseWare and Clo3D. Now, there’s software that went beyond that, like the Adobe suite of Illustrator and Photoshop. Illustrator used to design flats, and that would be understood as a technology in fashion. But then you bring in something like Browseware and Clo3D, and all of a sudden you can see what the garment you’re designing will look like on a human figure. You can animate that figure.You can change the size of the figure. It really changed design, and that workflow, entirely.”
Khoboso Nale and Margaret Smith, both Critic Award Winners attend the 2025 Future of Fashion runway show presented by Macy’s. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for Fashion Institute of Technology)
Getty Images for Fashion Institu
Though a lady doesn’t always mention such things, when this writer was studying apparel design, much of the digital design was only possible in 2D, in AutoCAD. I remember acutely the feeling of utter despair after not understanding I’d done something terribly wrong, irremediable, a flippant key stroke so incorrect that when a pattern was supposedly being scaled for sizes, I got to watch an (uncomfortably close to animated) illustration of my failures appear. So did my class if it was my giant, candy colored iMac G3 that happened to be connected to the classroom/lab’s projector.
“That was the first one I learned,” Richards replied with a laugh. “And I remember we could do these fly-throughs on the model and all our minds were blown,us looking at AutoCAD,like,wow!”
“I think it’s changed,” the Dean continued. “When I arrived at FIT, we were implementing BrowseWare and Clo3D. Now there’s software that goes beyond, let’s say, the Adobe suite. Illustrator used to design flats,and that would be understood; this is technology and fashion. But then, you bring in something like Browseware and Clo3D, and all of a sudden you can see wha”You’re a writer,” the Dean said to me, ” so you’ve probably seen this already with AI writing.”
I have seen this challenge play out, not in my own AI use, but certainly in a lot of online content, especially on social media, at least on the apps that let a person post whole walls of text. As a person who does a lot of work online, sometimes on social media, sometimes in conversations like this one, I told Dean Richards that what he was telling me resonated with something I already believed; the best, most useful skills that I got from my own fine arts education are the capability to hear critique and the ability to self edit.
“Years ago,” Richards told me, “I presented a paper with a colleague of mine.It was early in the days of social media and we called it ‘visual editing’, right? And the idea was that with social media and the new technologies that were emerging, 15, 20 years ago, we were beginning to see that that creative’s role was as much about curation and selection, as it was about creation. That you need to know what not to include as much as what to include. That’s where I go back to that basic premise that I mentioned about my own practice,which is the idea is always central. And as an artist or designer, you’re asking a question. And the difference between the two is often that the designer is looking for that creative solution, and the artist is just looking for better ways to refine or ask that question.”
Model Helen Albornoz wears an ensemble from “A Moment of Warm Sun,” Srujana Achyutuni’s hand dyed silk charmeuse with organza fluting and sculptural detailing down the back. From the designer’s capsule collection entry at the 2025 Future of Fashion Show, sponsored by Macy’s. MUA: Isabella Diana
This conversation with dean Richards, occurred after I wrote about a couple of FIT’s award-winning graduates from the class of 2025; Khoboso Nale and Margaret Smith.The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) isn’t just a college; it’s a vibrant ecosystem where education and industry converge, fostering a unique sense of community. This isn’t simply about classrooms and curricula, but about a shared passion for fashion and a commitment to nurturing the next generation of designers.”It is amazing how committed people are to the college,” Dean Richards said. “But beyond the faculty, we have these great industry partnerships and we see examples of that through the many contests that are run here. We’ve had contests with Disney, Gucci, we have a wonderful relationship with Michael Kors, an alum and someone who gives back to the college with scholarships every year. Michael does a wonderful thing where he gives a scholarship to a student with financial need that actually includes a year in Italy.”
This dedication extends beyond financial contributions. It’s about individuals investing their time and expertise in the students’ growth, doing work that was already deeply personally meaningful. There’s a real sense of community, a real feeling of belonging, and it’s not just students and faculty. There are a lot of important people who make time in busy schedules to work with the college and its museum.
I told FIT’s Dean of Art and Design how every time I looked through the photos of celebrities coming out to support FIT at one of its events, I always saw Fern Mallis and Douglas Hand there, obviously thrilled to be surrounded by the great designers of tomorrow.
“They are great,” Richards told me. “Fern is just so wonderful and she just gives to the college. She loves to connect with the students and mentor the students. And then she provides free tickets for her talks at the Y. And, I mean, I go for Fern, for the guests, but I always walk away having learned something. And really, that’s what we get at FIT, the people who connect with the college. The people who want to make that difference and who want to work directly with the students.”