NYU Costume Studies students examine the relationship between fashion and fantasy in a new exhibition at 80WSE’s Broadway Windows gallery.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Framing Fashion Fantasies: Windows Into … January 18th, 2025 – March 9th, 2025 Closing Reception: March 7th, 2025 80WSE Broadway Windows gallery, Broadway and E. 10th Street
Press Contact:
Marissa Motley Mjm9768@nyu.edu
New York, New York January 9th, 2025 Framing Fashion Fantasies: Windows Into … NYU students unveil a critical exploration of fashion’s fantasies through the windows of 80WSE Gallery on Broadway and E. 10th Street.
Students of New York University’s Steinhardt Art & Art Professions Costume Studies program are excited to announce Framing Fashion Fantasies: Windows Into … , a group-curated exhibition that critically engages with the fantasies constructed by the fashion industry, its designers, and its consumers. On view at the 80WSE Broadway Windows gallery from January 18th, 2025 - March 9th, 2025, Framing Fashion Fantasies: Windows Into … critiques and celebrates how fashion creates aspirational dreams and unsettling realities, simultaneously producing and deconstructing the notion of an idealized fantasy. The exhibition is structured around six central themes: Nostalgia, Otherness, Escapism, The American Dream, The Myth and The Monster. Each window allows viewers to peek into the world of fashion from a new perspective, inviting them to reflect on fashion’s role in shaping cultural narratives, personal identity, and societal values. Works on display range from archival objects, to contemporary runway ensembles, to mass-produced, quotidian garments and span almost a century, with the earliest object dating to circa 1935.
Framing Fashion Fantasies: Windows Into … is free and open to the public, and will be supported by free educational programming. A panel discussion titled “The State of Independent Fashion Retail” will be held on Monday, February 24th at NYU’s Barney Building (34 Stuyvesant Street), and an interactive, multimedia discussion with the exhibition curators will be held on Monday, March 3, also at the Barney Building. Event details will be shared in the coming weeks.
Framing Fashion Fantasies: Windows Into … is curated by New York University Costume Studies Master’s Candidates: Zoé Berteloot, Haley Brown, Kelly Flynn, Marissa Motley, Gillani Peets, and Erin Shaw, under the direction of Stephanie Kramer, Senior Research Associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.
Exhibition Details:
Dates: January 18th, 2025 - March 9th, 2025 Location: 80WSE’s Broadway Windows gallery Website: www.framingfashionfantasies.com Instagram: @nyufashionfantasy
About 80WSE Gallery:
Founded in 1974, 80 Washington Square East, NYU is a not-for-profit gallery presenting contemporary and historical exhibitions. The gallery exhibits in two further locations, at Broadway Windows at Broadway and East 10th Street, and Washington Square Windows, next to the gallery.
Each spring, the gallery hosts MFA Thesis exhibitions from students of the Department of Art and Art Professions in New York University’s Steinhardt School. 80 Washington Square East resides in the historic Benedick Building (below, c. 1925) at Washington Square Park, originally commissioned in 1879 by iron manufacturer and Metropolitan Museum trustee, Lucius Tuckerman. The building once contained the studios of painters Winslow Homer and Albert Pinkham
Broadway Windows gallery is a series of five street-level display windows located at the corner of Broadway and East 10th Street. The installations can be viewed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
About New York University Steinhardt:
Located in the heart of New York City’s Greenwich Village, NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development prepares students for careers in the arts, education, health, media, and psychology. Since its founding in 1890, the Steinhardt School's mission has been to expand human capacity through public service, global collaboration, research, scholarship, and practice. To learn more about NYU Steinhardt, visit steinhardt.nyu.edu.