This past spring semester (2019), APH student Allie Gallo interned at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Special Collections and College Archives in New York City. Below you’ll find Allie’s blog post about her experience.
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Over the course of this past semester, I was lucky enough to experience the ins and outs of working in the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Special Collections and College Archives. I was not assigned one huge project that would take all semester to finish, but rather many smaller projects, which allowed me to experience many types of tasks and duties expected of one working in the archives. It also enabled me to interact with an array of exciting materials, such as original Chanel sketches from 1912, student notebooks and final projects from 1953, and the brochures from every Museum at FIT exhibition beginning in the 1970s.
Selection of books from FIT collection (photo courtesy Allie Gallo)
One of the bigger projects I worked on was processing the Corduroy Council of America’s collection. This collection had many different types of materials to work with, so it remained interesting. The press materials included a nursery rhyme book with fabric swatches adhered onto the sketches to display the upcoming trends in children’s wear, many newspaper clippings, and over-sized scrapbooks. This was fun to work with because I got to see what fashion they thought would catch on and it was interesting to see how far and wide fashion as a whole had spread. I came across a Press Release meant for ABC News that highlighted “Soviet Women Becoming Fashion Conscious.” I have come across a few instances in other collections where travel was necessary to learn the fashion of other cultures. One was an FIT employee who traveled to Japan and wrote a report about what she had learned.
ABC News press release, “Soviet Women Becoming Fashion Conscious.” (photo courtesy Allie Gallo)
FIT was an exciting place to complete my internship. The small team made for a comfortable atmosphere, while also presenting more varied opportunities for me. Whether I wanted to practice acquisitions, cataloging, or fully process a collection, I was able to ask for what piqued my interest that day. I think having options in learning environments allows for exciting opportunities and chances to step out of the box.