PBS - American Experience
“Riveted: The History of Jeans”
Riveted: The History of Jeans reveals the fascinating and surprising story of this iconic American garment. At any given moment, half the people on the planet are wearing them. They have become a staple of clothing the world over, worn by everyone from presidents and supermodels to farmers and artists. More than just an item of apparel, America’s tangled past is woven into the indigo blue fabric. From its roots in slavery to its connection to the Wild West, youth culture, the civil rights movement, rock and roll, hippies, high fashion and hip-hop, jeans are the canvas on which the history of American ideology and politics is writ large.
The Washington Post
“The Chaos Theory of Gen Z Fashion” by Ashley Fetters Maloy
In 2022, as America emerged from the pandemic, we got a glimpse at the wild energy of the next generational aesthetic.
NPR - All Things Considered
“How Denim Evolved to Become an American Wardrobe Staple”
NPR's Michel Martin speaks with fashion historian Emma McClendon about the history of jeans and the new documentary Riveted: The History of Jeans on PBS American Experience.
BBC
“Clothes that Shook the World” by Cath Pound
These are looks that have generally developed within popular movements, though in our politically tumultuous times they are increasingly appearing on the catwalk, inevitably leading to accusations of commodification. But a new exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York, which explores the manifold ways in which fashion can exert power, suggests the relationship is not always so simple. Resistance clothing can be fashionable, and the runway can be an effective tool of protest. “It’s always been in the interest of a movement to have a kind of visual cohesion,” says Emma McClendon, curator of Power Mode: The Force of Fashion, who cites the Suffragettes as an example. “They wore white to bring them together and provide a cohesive identity on marches.”
Vogue
“Defining Power in Fashion: A New Exhibition Explores the Subject Through Pop Culture, Politics, and Sex” by Brooke Bobb
Who or what holds power in fashion? When do clothes stop being clothes and start to become symbols of strength, defiance, and resistance? We’ve long debated the meaning of power dressing in fashion; it’s a complicated subject. The word power in and of itself is complex and multipronged. It can be positive or negative, used to describe a saint or a tyrant. As far as fashion is concerned, power means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, whether they’re wearing a power suit, protest garb, sex-positive lingerie, or high-priced status symbol. The Museum at FIT and its associate curator of costume, Emma McClendon, is tackling this subject in a new exhibition titled “Power Mode: Force of Fashion.” Opening today, the show highlights some of the key ways in which we self-express power through clothing.
The Financial Times
“Strong Suits: The Power of Dress” by Alexander Fury
It’s entirely coincidental that a new exhibition — “Power Mode: The Force of Fashion” — is opening two days before the UK general election and a potential political power shift. It’s coincidental because exhibitions like this, staged at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, are devised months, even years, in advance; plus, it’s in the US, which pays pretty scant attention to Britain’s governmental vagaries.
The New York Times
“The End of The Office Dress Code” by Vanessa Friedman
Over the weekend an exhibition opened at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Entitled “Uniformity,” it displays 71 pieces from the museum’s collection of (surprise) uniforms, divided into four categories — military, work, school, sports — as well as a select group of the fashion looks they influenced, like Geoffrey Beene’s 1967 sequined football jersey gown and Rei Kawakubo’s 1998 military vest and pleated skirt for Comme des Garçons.
The Economist
“The Meaning of Blue Jeans” by David Rennie
Since the second world war, when GIs and sailors took blue jeans to the Old World and Asia, denim has carried ideas of American liberty around the globe, often leaving governments scrambling to catch up. Emma McClendon, a curator at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York, notes in a fine new book, “Denim: Fashion’s Frontier”, that when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, reporters were surprised to see young East Berliners dressed exactly like their cousins from the West—in stonewashed jeans. Ms McClendon’s book accompanies a small but splendid exhibition on denim at the FIT on Seventh Avenue.
CNN
“The history of the ‘ideal woman and where that has left us” by Jacqueline Howard
Hidden in the halls of the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York are historic textiles and glamorous garments, many of which hold secrets from years past. Yet no matter how aesthetically unique or historically significant a particular piece of fashion may be, most visitors to the museum typically ask one question, said Emma McClendon, the museum's associate curator of costume."People come and always want to know what size something is," said McClendon…
Women’s Wear Daily
“The Museum at FIT Unveils ‘Power Mode: The Force of Fashion’” by Rosemary Feitelberg
Clothing can pack a punch, as evidenced in the Museum at FIT’s new exhibition “Power Mode: The Force of Fashion.” While big-shouldered Eighties-friendly power suits might immediately come to mind, that is only one of the emboldening styles that is on view in the Fashion & Textile History gallery through May 9. Visitors are meant to mull over the roles fashion plays in establishing, reinforcing, and challenging power dynamics within society.
New York Magazine / The Cut
“The Museum at FIT Asks What Makes Clothing Powerful” by Cassidy George
It’s immediately clear that curator Emma McClendon is tackling a broader definition of power dressing than what might come to mind. The term is still linked in pop culture to the gray corporate uniforms prescribed in John T. Molloy’s 1975 book Dress for Success and its 1977 counterpart Woman’s Dress for Success… “Putting on [Power Mode] at the cusp of a new decade and presidential election is very purposeful,” McClendon explains. “We’re grappling with questions about ourselves, our national identity, and what power means in society. At the core of that is our bodies and the messages we send with them.”
The Atlantic
“Toward a Universal Theory of ‘Mom Jeans’” by Ashley Fetters
Mom jeans, profoundly uncool and then suddenly very cool, got their revenge: The cyclical nature of fashion (and a mid-2010s shift in the national mood) helped rescue and revive a style that was long overshadowed by reductive stereotypes about moms and motherhood. In the beginning, the mom prefix did to jeans what it does to everything else. Calling a pair of pants “mom jeans” implied that they were frumpy or dowdy—“the absolute antithesis of cool,” according to Emma McClendon, the author of Denim: Fashion’s Frontier and a curator at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
The New York Times
“The Leopard-Print Midi Skirt Is the Summer Trend That Won’t Die” by Ilana Kaplan
That also fits in with the history of leopard print, said Emma McClendon, the associate curator of costume at the Museum at F.I.T. and of the forthcoming exhibit “Power Mode.” The print, she said, has long represented “a connection between power, wealth and a certain type of ostentatious showiness.” “When we’re talking about a body, particularly a female body, sheathed in leopard print, that is something that immediately can bring up a very strong reaction with people along the axes of power, sex and taste,” Ms. McClendon said.
i-D Magazine
“It’s Time to Expose Your Bra” by Erica Euse
As designers sent their spring/summer 2020 collections down the runway, there was one thing that was notably missing — shirts. From Tom Ford’s futuristic bralettes to Mugler’s avant-garde brassieres, it appears tops are the unnecessary garment of the new decade. It’s a trend that has been openly embraced by those like Bella Hadid, who has been spotted around the world sans shirt, and of course, Katie Holmes, who’s cashmere bra sent the internet into a frenzy.
BBC
“What is the “ideal” female body shape?” by Cathy Pound
Fashion has long seen the female body as a malleable entity, something to be moulded according to the dictates of complex social codes or the fickle whims of the fashion industry. By analysing the changing fashionable silhouette from the 18th Century to the present day, a new exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York (FIT) argues that the fashionable body has always been a cultural construct and one that needs to be challenged if we are to reach a greater acceptance of body diversity.
The Wall Street Journal
“Review of ‘Yves Saint Laurent + Halston: Fashioning the 70s’ at the Museum at FIT” by Laura Jacobs
The new exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Technology - “Yves Saint Laurent + Halston: Fashioning the 70s” - is a potent time capsule. The Special Exhibitions Gallery, sheathed in a gleaming white vinyl that scoops the floor up onto walls, seems to float. Down the center of this snow-white realm stand three plexiglass pods, each a mini metropolis of transparent corridors curving within transparent cubes. The visual sensation is simultaneously spartan and swirling: The laboratory meets the disco, the space-age…
CNN
“American Classics: How Seven Everyday Clothing Items Became Style Staples” by Breeanna Hare
Look into your closet or slide open a drawer and you’ll likely spot them: a pair of jeans here; a white T-shirt there; a set of sneakers or a baseball cap tucked into a corner… Regardless of how you wear them, what those items all have in common is that they have a long history in the United States, helping to shape what we think about when we think of American style… It’s impossible (not to mention pointless) to try to think of a single “look” as being representative of an entire nation. Instead, says Emma McClendon, an associate curator of costume at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, American style is less about a particular outfit and more about individualism.
Fortune
“How the Leather Jacket Became the New Power Blazer” by Kristen Bellstrom
So how did the leather jacket—a garment long associated with counterculture—become a staple of boardroom power dressing? Unlike, say, the burnt-orange coat that rose to fame last year after Nancy Pelosi’s memorable White House exit, the leather jacket hasn’t had the kind of iconic moment that would send image consultants scurrying to the outerwear department… “It’s coded in power, strength, resistance. It’s kind of subversive,” says Emma McClendon, associate curator of costume at the Museum at FIT. Yet now that leather is considered a luxury item, it can also “do a bit of the talking as far as your capital and status in the room,” she says.
Vogue
“A New Show at the Museum at FIT Considers the Fashionable Body, Then and Now” by Laird Borrelli-Persson
“The Body: Fashion and Physique” opening today at the Museum at FIT offers a historical and chronological overview of changing silhouettes from the 1800s to the present, at the same time that it takes on two of fashion’s hot topics, body politics and inclusion. “I hope this [show] will add [to the ongoing conversation] by giving the historical perspective,” says curator Emma McClendon.
Women’s Wear Daily
“FIT Museum to Showcase Denim Through the Years” by Arthur Zaczkiewicz
The Museum at Fashion Institute of Technology’s next featured exhibit takes a sweeping, historical look at the ubiquitous denim market from its early 19th-century roots through to the latest styles from Rag & Bone. “Denim: Fashion’s Frontier,” is an exhibition that “explores the multifaceted history of denim and its relationship with high fashion,” the museum said, adding that it will spotlight more than 70 objects from its permanent collection to include items that have never been on view.
Smithsonian Magazine
“Explore 250 Years of What Makes Fashion “Trendy” at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology” by Natasha Geiling
What makes something popular, and how do trends emerge? Visitors to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York can ponder these questions while examining the evolution of trends through 250 years in a new exhibit, "Trend-ology." The show features over 100 objects, including glamorous ensembles by Oscar de la Renta, Chanel, Rodarte, Versace, Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior. "You can think of trends like physics," Emma McClendon, one of the exhibit curators told the New York Daily News. "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."
The New York Times
“Levi’s, Whose Jeans Are a Rugged Symbol of Americana, Prepares to Go Public” by Sapna Maheshwari
In San Francisco, where start-ups dream of populating the world with self-driving cars and robots, another breed of company is aiming for riches this week: Levi Strauss & Company. The maker of denim and Dockers, which traces its roots to the California Gold Rush, Levi’s will start trading on the public markets on Thursday for the second time in its 165-year history. The listing is a milestone for Levi’s, which has experienced a resurgence in the past decade, overhauling its image, operations and the stretch in its jeans to resonate with today’s shoppers who are increasingly disposed to athleisure wear.