The City Tech Library organized a faculty tour of the PVH Heritage Brands archives, home to the design history of premier fashion labels Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger. The PVH Archives provides an example of collections that are deeply engaged with their user community, who are primarily the designers who rely on this material for research and creative inspiration. Everything about how the archive is set up and how collections are arranged and stored is geared towards the type of access their users need: for product development research and more.
The Business and Technology of Fashion program at City Tech does not, strictly speaking, teach fashion design. However, it is the goal of the program to prepare students for careers in fashion and to that end, every effort is made to provide them with a well-rounded baseline which includes knowledge of art history, design & textiles taken alongside courses in Fashion Forecasting, Social Media & International Retailing.
To support these goals, the BOF program recently opened a Textile Lab which provides an opportunity to incorporate hand skill learning in a classroom setting. The library supports teaching and learning goals through acquisition of print materials and databases like Fashion & Race, and now through connecting faculty with fashion institutions like PVH. Listening to the Tommy Hilfiger archivist explain how specific materials are arranged in order to support research and help current designers understand the history of the company illustrated how much can be learned by interacting directly with archival collections.
The archivists and historians there were so encouraging and welcoming as they shared information not only about the archive and holdings, but also about their career paths and work with fashion history.
We ended our time there with offers to arrange class visits to the archives for our students as well as for the archivists to visit us on campus to impart their knowledge on how one might land one of these coveted career opportunities. These connections will be invaluable as we shepherd our students through the transition from student life to work life.
