From Function to Fashion: The Enduring Legacy of Utilitarian Design
A lecture at the Museum at FIT exploring how utilitarian and workwear design shaped modern fashion and the aesthetics of everyday objects.
Why we picked this
This traces how workwear and military uniforms migrated into fashion — the design history behind why we all wear cargo pockets and flight jackets now.
The Museum at FIT hosts a lecture on the long arc of utilitarian design — how garments and objects built for function have been absorbed into fashion, from military surplus to workwear to the normcore aesthetic. The talk examines the mechanisms by which practical design crosses over into style.
What makes this subject worth a dedicated lecture is the counterintuitive dynamic at its core: fashion, which trades on novelty and status, keeps returning to designs that were created with no aesthetic intent whatsoever. The lecture explores why utility carries its own form of visual authority, and how that authority gets repurposed and diluted as it moves from factory floor to runway.
Free and open to the public.