FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology)

Fashion School (New York) / Twinned with the Higher National School of Industrial Creation (ENSCI-Studios) as part of the Foundation’s Franco-US exchange programme.

An MIT for the fashion industry.  That was the idea launched at the start of the 1940s by Mortimer C. Ritter,  an educator specialising in youth employment programmes,  along with Max Meyer, a retired creator of men’s prêt-a-porter.  Back then setting up a fashion school was not an obvious plan of action.   Few people had ambitions to be a designer or a stylist, and at the start the insititute had only 100 or so students.  Sixty years later,  there are more than 10,000 people studying in the nine separate buildings that comprise the institute’s campus, at the crossroads of 27th street and 7th avenue.   The institute, which counts Calvin Klein among its alumni, provides practical and theoretical courses, training students in all the trades of design, fashion and management.  It offers degrees in male prêt-a-porter, cosmetics and perfume – basically all the elements of the business from creation to the market-place.  Since 1967 the Fashion Institute of Technology has had its own museum dedicated to design and textile, inspiring new generations to careers in fashion.