The Museum at FIT

The Museum at FIT is one of a select group of specialized fashion museums, including the Musée de la Mode, the Mode Museum, and the Museo de la Moda. For the 100,000 people who visit The Museum at FIT each year, we work to create exhibitions, programs, and publications that are both entertaining and educational. The mission of the Museum is to collect, conserve, document, exhibit, and interpret fashion. Founded in 1969, the Museum was installed in the current building in 1974, and exhibitions began to be presented in 1975. The Museum is best known for its innovative and award winning special exhibitions, including London Fashion, which received the first Richard Martin Award for Excellence in the Exhibition of Costume from the Costume Society of America; The Corset: Fashioning the Body, which explored the most controversial garment in the history of fashion; and Madame Grès: The Sphinx of Fashion, a monographic retrospective that examined the working methodologies and unique aesthetic contributions of a great couturier. Recently, the Museum has been mounting even more ambitious exhibitions, such as Gothic: Dark Glamour and Japan Fashion Now. The Museum’s permanent collection encompasses some 50,000 garments and accessories from the 18th century to the present. Important designers such as Adrian, Balenciaga, Chanel, and Dior are represented. The collecting policy of the Museum focuses on aesthetically and historically significant “directional” clothing, accessories, textiles and visual materials, with emphasis on contemporary avant-garde fashion.