Exhibitions

Black sleeveless mini dress with pleated top and skirt with thin belt buckle peeking through

The Roaring Twenties and The Swinging Sixties

Virtual Exhibition

The Roaring Twenties and The Swinging Sixties explores the similarities in women’s fashion across these two decades. Object pairings with direct visual connections highlight the parallels in high fashion that were inspired by the revolutionary spirits of modernity during the 1920s and 1960s. The exhibition examines these similarities through six thematic sections: Twenties Nostalgia, Dreams and Discontent, Obsession with Youth, Music Mania, Cultural Appropriation, and Mode and Modernity. Like both eras, movements for social justice and racial and gender equality have characterized 2020. The exhibition invites the audience to contemplate the effects of today’s events on fashion and how the resulting designs might compare to those of the 1920s and 1960s.

The Roaring Twenties and The Swinging Sixties is the first virtual exhibition coproduced by The Museum at FIT and the School of Graduate Studies that was curated especially for an online audience. The exhibition features twenty-six objects from The Museum at FIT, fashion illustrations from FIT’s Gladys Marcus Library Special Collections and College Archives (SPARC), and additional archival photographs and films that further demonstrate the parallels between the fashion of the 1920s and 1960s.

Read more about The Roaring Twenties and The Swinging Sixties.

Image: Norell, wool crepe dress, circa 1965, USA, Gift of Lauren Bacall. 70.43.21

Curator’s Favorites

With more than 50,000 objects in our collection, MFIT curator’s are bound to have a few favorites! Visit the pages below to see each curator’s selections.

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