Melissa Marra-Alvarez, curator of education and research, and Elizabeth Way, associate curator of costume, both with the Museum at The Fashion Institute of Technology, joined Cheddar News to discuss how food and food culture impact fashion.

<div class="block">Melissa Marra-Alvarez, curator of education and research, and Elizabeth Way, associate curator of costume, both with the Museum at The Fashion Institute of Technology, joined Cheddar News to discuss how food and food culture impact fashion.</div>

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Exhibit Explores Food's Impact on Fashion

Our senior reporter Michelle Castillo is at the Fashion Institute of Technology this morning, talking to the curators of the exhibit food and fashion to find out how food and food culture impact what we wear. Good morning, Michelle. Hi, I'm actually here with Melissa Mara Alvarez and Liz who helped curate this amazing exhibit on food and fashion here at um the Museum at Fit, which is gonna open tomorrow, but they're open it up graciously to us for a sneak peek. So tell us a little bit more about why food and fashion actually go hand in hand. We've been seeing this trend dominate the runways for at least the last five years. But in this exhibition, we really look at this relationship going back to the 18th century. So through different themes, we explore how foods impact on fashion, culture, express things like identity through culture, through class, as well as really important ideas that affect us every day, for example, sustainability. Ok. So this is a huge exhibit. There's hundreds of dresses here, but I wanted to point out a couple that already caught my eye, including this Chanel. No, sorry, this tomato dress. So tell me a little bit more about it. The tomato dress is by Cynthia Rowley. It's a 19 nineties design at a time when she was doing fun. Whimsical con conversation prints. Um, and this whole section in general is looking at produce inspired fashion and accessories and the whimsy and joy that they spark. Yeah, I saw there's a corn dress too. Is this from the same collection? They're both from the same collection. And in fact, Cynthia Rowley loved to, um, walk through uh Farmers Markets. And so it's very likely that kind of these dresses were inspired by, um walks through New York's markets. Now, as I understand it, the exhibit is actually divided into periods but not traditional historic periods. You might have things like breakfast, lunch and dinner. Can you tell me a little bit more about how you curated it? Well, we begin the exhibition through a day of food and fashion. We really want to explore all the different ways that we see food in fashion impact us on a daily basis. So we start in our kitchen for breakfast. We go early morning into the market where we have our rally uh tomato dress and then we go through a lunch at a fast food diner as well as dinner in a fine restaurant. Let's talk a little bit more about, let's walk a little bit through and see. So I see this mosquito mcdonald's outfit. Tell me a little bit more about this. Um this is uh designed by Jeremy Scott from Mosquito. And here this was his first collection for the House of Mosquito. And he's playing with the iconography of mcdonald's and combining that with the mosquito logo. It was a, the collection itself was a commentary on consumerism in the fashion industry. You know, it's really interesting. Did he partner with the mcdonald's reach out to him or was it just something he did organically? I mcdonald's, um he did contact mcdonald's about, you know, the logo and using it, but it was not like an official partnership. No, I guess it just shows how inspired we are by food in our everyday lives. Now, right next to it, is this White Castle um uh outfit? Now, is this uh a fashion item that someone designed or is it actually what workers wear? This is a White Castle uniform designed by Clemens who is a very influential designer right now working in Brooklyn and you know, his brand is all about fashion for everyone. And so partnering with a brand like White Castle that's very accessible, really shows how um these high low collaborations are really relevant for fashion right now. You know, there's so many other things that I wouldn't exactly scream um food to me that are included. So can you tell me a little bit more about these two dresses here? These dresses are part of our high fashion restaurant. So now we've moved into dinner time. Um, and they celebrate kind of the pageantry and the social conviviality of going out to dine. Um, the white or the silver tope dress is by Carolina Herrera. Um, and you see it has really full, um, leaves and she did this intentionally actually thinking about women going out to dinner, seated at a restaurant because normally they're seen from the waist up. So this is the most visible part of the dress. So, so what's on the dress? On the right over here? The are these forks? This is a mosquito piece um, in which we do see this surrealist bent where he's taking the idea of the dinner jacket and making a little bit fun of it by adding kind of silverware. Um Franco Moschino was such a whimsical, um humorous designer. He loved to incorporate different kind of jokes into his collections. And so here we see our dinner jacket. This is so interesting and I love the plates purse. Um So this is I think a Chanel plates purse. Uh Tell me a little bit more about it. Um This is a collection from 2014 by Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel. And the whole collection was set. Actually, the collection was called Chanel Brass. So the idea was a French brasserie models paraded through this crazy um elaborate set that was set up like a restaurant. And so here the design is playing also on her waiters uniform, the jacket. And then of course, the plates that she's carrying as her purse. You know, as I mentioned, there's hundreds of dresses here. How do you even choose what goes into an exhibition of the size? Well, this exhibition is company by a book and we wrote the book first in which we were able to explore a lot of different themes, both historical and contemporary. So working from that, we were able to create the themes of the exhibition. And from there, we drew from our permanent collection here at Mfit, but also the looks that were really popular on the runways um reaching out to designers and borrowing from their archives. Um So in the end, it really boiled down to what was available. Now, we're in the middle of fashion week right now. Is there any food trends that you're starting to notice with what people are wearing on the runway right now? I think food prints in general are just really a trendy right now. I think one popular trend over the summer was the Tomato Girl look. So that is something that's in people's consciousness. But we're really at a moment where we're seeing um food and fashion or food in fashion um being really culturally relevant. Well, that's just one room in this multi room exhibit on food and fashion. So you're definitely gonna have to stop by the museum here at Fit and see more. It opens tomorrow at noon and will run through November. So stay tuned.