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.

This is the final episode of the season. View images of our all six guests, and learn more about the Lifestyles podcast series, on our website. 

Lacemaker and textile historian Elena Kanagy-Loux has followed a remarkable path leading to a personal style that beautifully bridges historical research and the handmade arts. She asserts a true individualism: “Wear what you want to wear because, as far as we know, we only have this one life. So we might as well be true to ourselves and our vision for ourselves.”

Elena’s creative journey began in both the United States and Japan. She descends from the Amish and growing up was immersed in traditional Mennonite crafts, as well as the DIY fashion scene in Tokyo's Harajuku neighborhood. In 2007, she moved to New York City to work in fashion, and was hired as the costume designer for the rock musician Courtney Love and worked for the independent fashion brand Electric Feathers.

In 2015, Elena won a grant which funded a four-month trip to study lacemaking in over a dozen European countries. Upon returning to New York, she co-founded Brooklyn Lace Guild, an organization dedicated to the preservation of making lace by hand. 

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 & @erenanaomi

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. 

Using flea market finds, thrifted pieces, and found objects, FIT alum Wren Britton creates truly inventive clothing and accessories under the name PUREVILE! He is influenced by a wide assortment of cultural touchpoints, including: Victorian mourning, comic books, New York underground nightlife, Queer icons and confrontational drag, the Brothers Quay filmmakers, and icons of the ‘80s, such as the British designer Judy Blame and the Blitz Kids. His work can be dark and gothic but also includes camp and humor! 

“You learn to deal with not always getting positive attention from people, but it also teaches you how to then be soft when you need to be and share yourself with people.”

Wren designs windows and visuals for many New York retail establishments and has DJ’ed at goth and new romantic nights around the city. And in his spare time, he enjoys making stained glass!

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 & @purevile

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. 

Cheyney McKnight is an historical interpreter and artist. She founded Not Your Momma’s History, a platform which helps museums and historical sites develop programming about slavery and the African experience. Her YouTube channel of the same name brings to life the day to day lives of Black people throughout American history in fun and interesting ways.   

As an artist, Cheyney envisions a future in which Black descendants shape the interpretation of former sites of mass enslavement. She uses clothing designs that meld 18th and 19th century silhouettes with modern textiles that speak to the Black experience in America.

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 & @notyourmommashistory

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. 

Cynthia Alberto is a multidisciplinary artist and designer and the founder of Weaving Hand, which is a Brooklyn-based weaving and healing art studio and cultural center. Cynthia's interdisciplinary practice engages traditional and contemporary weaving techniques through socially engaged, community centered work. Drawing from textile histories and collective making traditions across Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa, Cynthia approaches weaving not only as a material process, but also as a framework for care, resilience and collective experience.

Her work emphasizes sustainability through a zero waste ethos and spans sculpture, performance and large scale participatory installations that have taken place in cultural institutions, civic organizations and public spaces. Cynthia has received numerous awards and been exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at the Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with the exhibition Woven Histories, Textiles and Modern Abstraction, and she has a forthcoming fellowship at Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens.

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 & @cynthiaalbertostudio

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, 

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

Robin Givhan, the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, presents her new book, Make It Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh. Appointed as head of menswear for Louis Vuitton in 2018, Abloh was the first Black designer to serve as artistic director in the brand's 164-year history and his rise was amid a cultural moment that would upend a century's worth of ideas about luxury and taste. In this conversation with Dr. Elizabeth Way, The Museum at FIT's associate curator of costume and accessories, Givhan discusses Abloh’s disruptive impact on the fashion industry, his controversial design methods, and his legacy as a figure of optimism. She notes that in the current cultural climate, choosing optimism is a "radical" act, and Abloh did so not out of naivety, but as the only way to move forward.

Robin Givhan spent more than 25 years writing about politics, race, and the arts at The Washington Post as a fashion critic and most recently, senior critic-at-large. 

This talk was recorded August 26, 2025.

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