On my daily commute from Penn Station to Baruch I always pass by FIT, a college that specializes in fashion, I never paid to much attention to it until I realized there was a museum. I decided to walk in there and knock out a freshmen blog for attending an NYC museum. Little did I know that I would be only guy there and that I would be surrounded by middle aged women.

Although, boring the exhibits displayed were very informative, it discussed the relations nature has with textiles. For example, during the Renaissance period flowers were commonly found on dresses this was mainly attributed to exotic flowers that were flourishing in Europe-boring. However, there was a section I found interesting, Charles Darwin’s son draws a comparison of dresses to natural selection and how it changes throughout the years, the good ones stay and bad ones go producing new dresses every year.

The exhibition didn’t only focus on fashion but, also textiles, FIT students developed a textile called “AlgiKnit” a biodegradable product that can knitted like yarn. It didn’t go into full detail about how long material would last until it would degrade but, biodegradable clothes a interesting concept.

I also didn’t realize how much inspiration people take from nature and apply it into clothing. For example the latest swimsuits such as Fastskin II developed by Speedo was inspired by sharkskin. The surface design of the suit held similarities to the surface of a shark’s skin which allows reduced drag, allowing swimmers to PR and cut through water. Another, similar cloth is the “Black Magic suit” a recently developed suit which imitates the way water rolls off of leaves and duck feathers.

Before, visiting this museum I always thought that fashion was considered wearing weird outfits and calling it “fashion” . But, the development of cloth is really interesting and I realized its what Nike does with drifit, adidas  does with ultraboost, and what under armour does with its sweat wick fabric.