08/06/2026
We are incredibly grateful to philanthropist Ruth Ann Harnisch via The Harnisch Foundation, for this generous gift in supporting two very important initiatives: the Department of Special Collections and FIT Archives and the Fashion History Timeline, a hub for fashion research: https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/. Learn more at FIT's Newsroom: https://fitnyc.pub/harnischgift
We're proud to share a $400,000 gift to the Fashion Institute of Technology, split between two projects we believe in.
$300,000 goes to FIT's Special Collections, funding an archivist to process 400 linear feet of materials — including the fashion illustration archives of Gladys Perint Palmer, Kenneth Paul Block, Robert Passantino, and Robert Melendez, plus the papers of hair journalist Helen Oppenheim and visual merchandising designer Lucy Bouwman. Their work will finally be searchable and accessible to researchers, students, and historians.
$100,000 goes to FIT's Fashion History Timeline, a free, open-access resource that already reaches nearly 7,000 people a day during the school year. This funding takes it global — commissioning new scholarship on dress history across Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania, and recording oral histories with Indigenous and underrepresented designers.
Two different investments, one goal: making sure fashion history gets preserved, is accessible, and is told by more than one perspective.
Learn more about the gift at the link in the comments.
Fashion Institute of Technology Library