The Fashion Institute of Technology announced today it will open a Social Justice Center at the college to integrate Black, Indigenous, and POC students into fashion’s educational system as early as middle school and high school, exposing them to fashion-led or adjacent careers and providing hands-on support through college-level courses with the help of workshops and seminars with professionals, professors, and students. With generous donations from Capri Holdings, the parent company of Michael Kors, Versace, and Jimmy Choo, PVH, and Tapestry Inc., the initiative has acquired about $4 million in funding. President of F.I.T. Dr. Joyce F. Brown describes the project as building “a pipeline of diverse fashion talent from middle school to the C-Suite.”
For college students, scholarships from Ralph Lauren, alumni Carolina Herrera, Prada, and Capri Holdings will be available, alongside opportunities for paid internships with the brands. Traditionally, unpaid fashion industry internships are often only accessible to students from privileged backgrounds, who can afford to work for free, therefore limiting the pool of applications to a specific demographic.
The Fashion Institute of Technology is the alma mater of Calvin Klein, Stephen Burrows, Michael Kors, Nina Garcia, Schiaparelli Creative Director Daniel Roseberry, Norma Kamali, Orange Is The New Black actress Laverne Cox, and me. It’s an establishment easy to have great pride in—and a dream school for many. Recently, a series of events forced the institution to take a good look in the mirror and really examine a need to change. While it goes without saying that the fashion industry has infamously underrepresented its Black creatives, F.I.T. has also failed to be the exception.
While specifics around the Social Justice Center are still being worked out, and the plan still in progress, President Brown told the New York Times, “When you talk about building a pipeline, you’re not talking about immediate gratification.” As the first African American and first woman to be president of the institution, Brown intends to see this initiative through, as well as effectively tracking diversity data in the wider fashion industry, hopefully resulting in more accountability and more inclusivity.
