Fashion and Textile Studies Symposium: Negotiating Femininity: Constructing Ideals

We are pleased to invite you to the annual student symposium of FIT’s Master of Arts degree program in Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice.

This year’s theme is “Negotiating Femininity: Constructing Ideals” and will be held from 1 to 5 pm, on Saturday, May 2, in the Katie Murphy Amphitheatre at FIT, at Seventh Avenue and West 27th Street.

This year’s symposium explores how femininity is shaped, interpreted, and lived through the intersections of body, dress, fashion, and materiality. By considering the gap between ideals and lived perspectives, the speakers ask: Who defines femininity? How are these identities created and maintained? These presentations examine the socio-cultural pressures and power dynamics embedded in ideas of femininity, alongside the ongoing tensions inherent within constructions of feminine aesthetics.

The papers establish femininity as a concept shaped by enduring structures, yet one open to constant reinterpretation and challenge. Collectively, they address how the pluralities of feminine ideals are disseminated, enforced, and subverted. The program spans contemporary Tumblr feminism; mannequins and the body; Tang dynasty cross-dressing; post-human feather couture; delicate sylphs; and the objectification of eyes. The areas of influence encompass technology and online cultures, media, retail environments, beauty, the fashion system, and performance.

Femininity is approached as historically and culturally contingent, but simultaneously as an eternal ideal. Across a broad temporal scope, gender is shown to emerge from the negotiated relationships between experience, presentation, and identity. Ultimately, the symposium offers critical reflections on how the perception and reception of feminine identity has been negotiated across time and space by engaging with diverse standards, ideals, and perspectives

Program:

• 1 pm: Welcoming remarks by Fashion and Textile Studies Chair Dr. Hilary Davidson
• 1:10 pm: Guest speaker panel
• 1:30 pm: Light break
• 1:40 pm: “Posthuman Plumage and Feminine Masquerade: Schiaparelli’s The Agony and the Ecstasy (Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2026),” by Abigail Adams
• 2:10 pm: “The Sylph: Etherealizing The Female Form,” by Thomasina Sanders
• 2:40 pm: “The Sweet Subversion of 2010s Tumblr Feminism,” by Andy Salzer
• 3:10 pm: Refreshment break
• 3:30 pm: “Surface Vision: Looking at Eyes, Race, and Cosmetic Aesthetics,” by Vivian Yip
• 4 pm: “Women’s Cross-Dressing in Tang (618–907) China: Hybridity, Gender and Fashion,” by Xiaoye Du
• 4:30 pm: “The Mannequin as a Mirror: the Feminine Body, Desire, and Consumer Culture in the Twentieth Century,” by Chloe Johnson
• 5 pm Closing remarks by Dr. Hilary Davidson

This event is free and open to the public.