Fashion Projects began in New York in 2004, with the aim to create a platform to highlight the importance of fashion — especially “experimental” fashion — within current critical discourses. Through interviews with a range of artists, designers, writers and curators, as well as through other planned projects and exhibits, we hope to foster a dialogue between theory and practice across disciplines. 

We are primarily a print journal, however we also publish web-based updates and interviews (a “digest” version of which you can receive by signing up to our mailing list or via our RSS feed) and are currently working on exhibits based on past and future issues. To order any of our issues visit our ordering page. 

We are a nonprofit organization, which has previously received grants from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. 

We are currently a sponsored project by the New York Foundation of the Arts, a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization. Contributions on behalf of Fashion Projects can be made directly on the New York Foundation of the Arts website and are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by the law. For more information please don’t hesitate to contact us. 

Editor and Founder: 

Francesca Granata is Associate Professor of Fashion Studies in the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons School of Design, the New School. She holds a PhD from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. She has published widely on twentieth century and contemporary fashion and greater visual culture, and lectured at institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Benaki Museum in Athens, MoMA PS1, Cornell University, and Università IUAV di Venezia. She has been a Research Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Costume Institute and has received grants from the Coby Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Her monograph, Experimental Fashion: Performance Art, Carnival and the Grotesque Body (London and New York: Bloomsbury/I.B. Tauris, 2017) examines the way experimental fashion at the turn of the twenty-first century mediated shifting gender norms and the AIDS crisis.  

Contributors

Mae Colburn is a part-time lecturer in the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons School of Design. She holds an MA in the History of Design and Curatorial Studies from Parsons School of Design and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. She completed her thesis on production aspects of contemporary tapestry, a medium she also engages in practice.

Alessandro Esculapio is a fashion writer and PhD student at the University of Brighton, UK. He holds an MA in Fashion Studies from Parsons the New School for Design. He co-authored the books Just Fashion: Critical Cases On Social Justice In Fashion (2012) and The Fashion Condition (2014). His current research looks at contemporary fashion practices that articulate the mnemonic function of clothing

Michelle Labrague is a doctoral candidate at the Center for Fashion Studies, Stockholm University. Her dissertation research examines “slow” in sustainability and fashion.  She is a part time lecturer and visiting scholar in the Department of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons, the New School for Design. She has worked in the education and curatorial departments of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum and the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,  New York and in different capacities at Christie’s Inc., Peter Freeman, Inc., Artforum International and Phaidon Press.

Roberto Filippello is a fashion editor and writer whose academic expertise lies at the intersection of fashion studies and queer theory. He is an alumn of the Master of Arts in Fashion Studies at Parsons The New School, where he has taught courses on the history of fashion and critical analysis of fashion photography. His current research focuses on the articulation of queer affectivity in fashion and pornography.

Ingrid Mida is a curator, dress historian and contract lecturer. She is lead author of The Dress Detective: The Practical Guide to Object-based Research in Fashion (Bloomsbury 2015) and is responsible for the 2012 revival of the Fashion Research Collection at Ryerson University in Toronto. She is a PhD candidate in art history and visual culture at York University and her dissertation is a philosophical analysis of the role of aesthetics in exhibiting fashion in the museum. 

Marco Pecorari is Program Director of the MA in Fashion Studies at Parsons The New School Paris, where he teaches fashion theory & history. He holds a PhD in Fashion Studies, obtained at Stockholm University (Department of Media Studies), with a thesis on the epistemic potentials of fashion ephemera.

Jay Ruttenberg is the editor of the long-running print comedy journal The Lowbrow Reader and of its book, The Lowbrow Reader Reader (Drag City, 2012). His work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Village Voice, The Boston Globe, and MAD magazine. He lives in New York.

Lisa Santandrea is a writer, editor and part-time assistant professor at Parsons School of Design/The New School. She holds an MA in Costume Studies from NYU and has worked for the Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of art. As a representative of Vogue magazine, Lisa traveled the United States for a lecture series on Christian Dior’s New Look. She is a regular contributor to the 1st Dibs blog, The Study, and her work has appeared in the Encyclopedia of American Fashion, published by ABC-CLIO.

Sarah Scaturro is the Head Conservator of the Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art.   Previously, she was the Assistant Curator of Fashion and Textile Conservator for the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.  She is currently pursuing a PhD at Bard Graduate Center on the history of fashion conservation.  Sarah has been a contributor to Fashion Projects since 2007 and co-curated with Francesca Granata the 2009 exhibition "Ethics + Aesthetics = Sustainable Fashion" at Pratt Manhattan Gallery.

Dr Philip Warkander is currently working as senior lecturer in Fashion Studies at Lund University (Sweden). Philip also collaborates on a regular basis with cultural institutions, fashion brands and ad agencies on fashion-related projects. His main area of interest is contemporary fashion, in particular from a perspective of communication and marketing. At the moment, he is working on an ethnographic research project on the contemporary Swedish fashion system, aiming to explore the driving forces behind choosing a career in the creative industries.  

Tamsen Young is head of the Department of Museum Digital Media & Strategic Initiatives for The Museum at FIT where she oversees web development, online collections, video production, in-gallery media, digital marketing, and social media engagement. In 2014, the online presence for the exhibition A Queer History of Fashion won an American Alliance of Museums Silver Muse Award in recognition of the highest standards of excellence in the use of media & technology for Digital Communities. Recently, Tamsen was keynote speaker at the Digital Fashion Futures conference organized at MoMU by Europeana Fashion and presented at the Museum Computer Network conference.