The Museum at FIT Fashion Institute of Technology Seventh Avenue at 27th Street, Manhattan Through Dec. 16 Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of the Museum at FIT, has a knack for setting up polar opposites and then following them over the course of scores of carefully selected, beautifully displayed garments and accessories until they meet.
In addition to theatrical costumes, the gallery displays garments worn between the 18th century and the present day.
Part of the trick to wearing a formal sari is displaying the garment's palla, where much of the needlework is concentrated.
"I call this Desert Kors," she announced, displaying the garment, which, with its easy fit and cosmetic hues, would indeed have looked smart in Michael Kors's Madison Avenue windows.
It displays 50 garments on mannequins (by Beyond Design) whose ovoid faces and cryptic features evoke Brancusi and Modigliani.
Opened this spring by a former Manhattan real estate developer, Michael Krupp, and a local fashion veteran, Shaka Ramsay, the Achilles Project displays its garments — which sport global brand names like Opening Ceremony, Rachel Roy and Rogues Gallery — in mobile racks made from frosted-glass panels and blackened steel beams suspended from the ceiling above.
Certainly, there has been no move to stop the inflow of foreigners who display the garments that are increasingly being imported to the U.S. from abroad, as distinct from foreigners who sew them.
Many of these dealers also clean, repair (when needed) and lovingly display their garments.
In March 2004 school staff were banned from wearing insignia or garments displaying a religious allegiance.
Sometimes boxes arrive with garments displaying a fancy designer label, or in such pristine condition that they choose to leave them untouched.
