CURRENT STUDENTS
Scarlett:
Scarlett is a first year student at the Graduate Center, CUNY pursuing an M.A. in the Fashion Studies track. She received her B.A. at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte in International Studies with a minor in journalism. There, she worked as a writer and editor at The University Times, UNCC’s bi-weekly student publication. Prior to this program, she never received any formal education in fashion, but it’s been an interest of hers from a very young age, prompting her to start a fashion and lifestyle blog. Her interests include Fashion Activism, pop culture and traveling. After she completes her MALS degree, she hopes to pursue a career in Fashion Journalism.
Tessa Maffucci:
Tessa Maffucci is a Master’s Candidate pursuing a dual track in Fashion Studies and Digital Humanities. She received her B.A., magna cum laude, from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU in 2011 with a concentration on the role of fashion in crafting Italian national identity. She has worked in publishing at art and fashion magazines and in costuming for film. Her current research focuses on the intersection of fashion and digital media, with an interest in material culture and identity.
Natasha IIyas:
Natasha Ilyas is a first year fashion studies student with a background in art. She received her BA in studio art at Brooklyn College. She spends her days easily inspired, working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She enjoys studying fashion as an art form and hopes to enter the fashion industry some day.
Chrislande Dorcilus:
Chrislande Dorcilus is a writer, and first year Fashion Studies MA, living in Brooklyn, and ever proud of the cliché. She loves and is intellectually interested in fashion, feminism, humor, sustainable architecture, and poetry. She hates to love to hate New York, compares bathrooms around the city, avoids the Six train, and misses the ocean. She has written for various fashion and media sources online, and is more than excited to delve into the eco-world with “y’all.”
MALS STUDENTS WHO HAVE COMPLETED THEIR MASTER THESIS IN FASHION STUDIES:
Milly Contreras and Luisina Silva, Lincoln Center, June 3rd 2014
Mileska Contreras: The Bronx: Creating Fashion Identity Through Race, Class, Hip hop Culture and JLO, (Spring, 2014). Abstract:
Luisina Silva (combined with Digital Humanities): New York Fashion Industry goes to the Fair (1939-1940), (Spring, 2014). Abstract:
At the beginning of the twentieth century New York City was the garment manufacturing capital of the United States of America, but it was not considered a fashion reference for the world. This study examines the role of the New York World’s Fair of 1939/1940 as the first event where the New York fashion industry presented itself as a consolidated enterprise. To capture this important moment in fashion history, I examine the overlooked New York World’s Fair archives from the New York Public Library and engage them with secondary research on American fashion history. With the use of digital tools like Voyant and Many Eyes, I aim to visualize the network of the fashion industry actors that joined forces to organize the fashion exhibits at the New York World’s Fair of 1939/ 1940 and the changes between the two seasons. By centering my study on the Hall of Fashion and World of Fashion exhibitions at the New York World’s Fair of 1939/1940, I explore a disregarded story of the consolidation of the American fashion industry.
Soohyun Park: Flapper Fashion in the Context of Cultural Changes in America in the 1920s (2014)
This study aimed to analyze the key characteristics of flapper fashion, which shaped the American fashion scene in the 1920s, and to review how this trend reflected the society at that time, which was changing fast in terms of the society, economy, and culture. Towards this end, comprehensive scanning of flapper-related images found in a variety of media at the time was done, and it was revealed that flapper fashion indeed reflected the prominent changes in women’s role in the society in compliance with the early-20th-century modernity, which was a far cry from the traditions, while at the same time differentiating the images of new women as opposed to those found in the 19th-century conservative women from the Victorian Age.
MALS STUDENTS in FASHION STUDIES WHO ARE IN PhD PROGRAMS:
Dicky Yangzom has started in the PhD Program in Sociology at Yale University and has written her thesis on: “Clothing and Social Movements. The Politics of Dressing in Colonized Tibet”
Students who have completed the Fashion Studies Concentration:
Michael Skafidas: (Comparative Literature, PhD Candidate)
Anne Brownstein (Urban Education) Dissertation:
PhD Candidates who have published papers on fashion:
Jill Cole (PhD candidate, Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center):
Grant Johnson (PhD candidate, Art History transferred to USC, Los Angeles):
“Citing the Sun: Marc Jacobs, Olafur Eliason and the Fashion Show”
in Fashion Theory, June 2015, Issue 19. 3 (Forthcoming).
Michael Skafidas, (Comparative Literature)
Visiting Scholar from Belgium, Dr. Dirk Reynders
He will conduct empirical research related to visual communication with a focus on fashion films. He believes that the empirical research and study at the heart of his project would be best carried out at the inspiring area of NY at the graduate center of CUNY. His greatest interests lie in the study and research of the technical, creative, philosophical and aesthetic aspects of design and other images. In this way he hopes to develop thorough skills and insights of fashion films as significant forms of art and communication. (2014)
Past Visiting Scholars:
Dr. Patrik Steorn, University of Stockholm, Fashion Studies and Art History, Fullbright researching on Swedish Fashion in New York (Spring 2010)
Jessica Conrah, University of Stockholm, PhD Candidate, (Fall 2009)
Morgan Wiklund, University of Stockholm, MA Program in Fashion Studies (Spring 2009)
