Design Membership

The design membership at The Museum at FIT offers designers and other industry professionals unique access to the museum’s holdings for the purposes of research and inspiration. The Museum at FIT has one of the world’s most important permanent collections of fashion, accessories, and textiles. Current members include apparel and home furnishing designers, manufacturers, merchandisers, and forecasters. Hours: Monday - Friday, 9am to 5pm Individual and corporate memberships are available at $425 or $1,250 respectively. Individual memberships are for freelance designers only. Corporate memberships allow three designers access to the collections. For more information, call 212.217.4578 or email museuminfo@fitnyc.edu.

• Unlimited visits to the costume, accessory, and textile collections throughout the year. These assisted appointments last approximately one hour.
• The opportunity for each member to borrow up to 30 textile swatch cards at a time from a collection of over 300,000 catalogued textile swatches. There is no annual limit to the number of swatch cards that may be borrowed.
• Access to the Francoise de la Renta Color Room – an archive of colored fabric swatches and yarn samples from which members can take cuttings. Notification about museum programs.
• Use of text and periodical collections at the FIT Gladys Marcus Library without borrowing privileges.

Collection Highlights

The textiles collection includes:

• Apparel and home furnishing fabrics, laces, embroideries, quilts, and shawls.
• Over 300,000 textile swatches, indexed and grouped thematically for visual reference.
• 1,300 fabric sample books dating from the mid-19th century to the 1960s.
• Works on paper, including 14,000 jacquard point papers and painted textile designs.
• The Francoise de la Renta Color Room, a color archive with early forecast material and an extensive palette of fabric samples.
• The J.B. Martin Velvet Room, an archive of handwoven and production velvets spanning a 125-year period

• Fashion by designers such as Cristobal Balenciaga, Chanel, Comme des Garçons, Christian Dior, Halston, Claire McCardell, Issey Miyake, Yves Saint Laurent, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Vivienne Westwood
• The Halston Archives and Study Room that holds designs, patterns, and related records documenting this important designer's life work.
• A menswear collection featuring some 2,000 garments ranging from formal to activewear, including suits, coats, vests, and uniforms.
• Swimwear, lingerie, outerwear, knitwear, and children's clothing.

• More than 4,000 pairs of shoes, boots and sandals, with examples by designers such as Manolo Blahnik, Salavatore Ferragamo, Herbert Levine, and Roger Vivier
• A millinery selection of more than 3,000 hats by famous milliners such as Lilly Daché, Caroline Reboux, and Philip Treacy, as well as many examples from designers such as Christian Dior, Balenciaga and Jacques Fath
• Handbags with examples by luxury houses such as Hermès and Gucci as well as examples by Roberta di Camerino, Judith Leiber and Bonnie Cashin for Coach
• Other accessories such as fans, gloves, belts, hosiery and costume jewelry.