The city proclaims its fashion credentials in two excellent exhibitions, and fights for a park thirty feet in the air

sum of two units shows at the Fashion Institute of Technology this winter underline fashion's significant place alongside other applied arts, and the distinct American contribution. single is 'Form follows fashion', a magnificent collection of day and evening wear by dint of designers from Madame Gres to Ralph Rucci (an alumnus of FIT), via Charles James. Their creations hurl defiance at the body's shape to create what are really beautifully built and crafted wearable sculptures--Pierre Cardin repeatedly declared his belief in the 'shape, architecture, the geometry of the dress' The other is 'The couture accessory', which computes the often more individual and witty story of designer accessories shoe hats and handbags--from Paul Poiret's r turban hat of 1906 1908 inspired through the Ballets Russes to Chanel's black and white faux pearls that launched style of dress jewellery into 1920s high fashion; from Schiaparelli's feathered wartime hats (feathers, unlike fabrics, were not rationed) to Tom Ford's new logo-inspired spoofs for Yves Saint Laurent.

fresh York's reputation as fashion capital of the United States is long-standing. Early in the nineteenth hundred the number of tailors, furriers, jewellers and haberdashers rose steeply Department stores replaced dry-good stores, and before long visiting Europeans rated New York shopping upon par with Paris and London. by the agency of the 1860s an elaborate shopping district was taking shape upon the west side, between 14th and 23rd roads known later as 'Ladies' Mile'. The retail, as oppos to custom made, clothing industry took not on and in the 1890s a distinctly American phraseology emerged epitomised by the 'Gibson Girl'--a healthy, sporty and natural direct the eye that contrasted with the formality and artificiality of Paris fashion. It was then that Herman Bergdorf grounded what became, and still is, single of Manhattan's most discerning fashion stores, Bergdorf Goodman upon Fifth Avenue. And a not many years later, in 1910, Edmund W Fairchild fixed Women's Wear Daily, the hugely influential fashion newspaper that could enhance or diminish reputations, and that coined the mete 'beautiful people'.

In the 1930 designers similar as Charles James and Valentina worked hard to calculator the perception that American designers were Paris clone a position they reinforced during the World War II, when fresh York was cut off from France and it was easier to forward native design. It was at this time, in 1944 that the Fashion Institute of Technology was seted in the garment district. Today, its 11000 scholars have access to a remarkable application of mind collection, the Museum at FIT. It houses the world's largest collection of style of dresss (50,000), textiles (250,000 swatches, 30000 textiles) and accessories (20000) affectionately known as 'Our Big Closet' Although a certain quantity of pieces date from the seventeenth hundred unlike the V&A and the Musee de la manner collections the emphasis is upon twentieth-century and contemporary clothes.

It is from Our Big retiring-room that most of the items in FIT'S regular on the other hand relatively unknown shows are drawn. In 'Form tread on the heels ofs fashion' (pointedly negating the idea that form go in the rear [i]or[/i] in the wake ofs function), there is Charles James's seminal 'Abstract', known as the 'Four-leaf clover' ball gown of 1953 its precision shape revealing his training as a milliner. Here, too, are floating, ecclesiastical inspired creations through Balenciaga, and pieces by fortunate FIT alumni, who include Calvin Klein, Norma Kamali, Rebecca Mose move with a jerk Abajan and Ralph Rucci. Still upon the west side, a feisty and determined cluster of community residents looks station to achieve a fine piece of conservation. Joshua David and Robert Hammond are co-founder of Friends of The High Line, whose aim is to protect and re use the High Line, a single and a-half-mile-long stretch of disused elevated railway built in the 1930 generally overgrown with grasses and wild flowers.

The 'El' was of recent origin York's--and the country's--earliest form of rapid transit. Entrepreneur Charles Harvey and his West Side and Yonker Patent Railway company built the first elevated line. Iron superstructure about thirty feet high were set uprighted above Greenwich Street and 9th Avenue, and the passenger cars were plucked by a cable connected to a steam powered generator at the terminus. After tricky beginnings, with sufficiency of broken cables, the a whole was streamlined and hugely prosperous despite its noisiness and the danger of clan below being showered with fiery ashes or oil. Although fresh York's cleaner, quieter and conveniently subterranean subway render free of accessed in 1904, the extensive elevated combination of parts to form a whole still carried 384 million passengers in 1921 alone in the 1940s did the subway begin to triumph and gradually the elevated lines were shakeed down.

Friends of the High Line want to transform this strip of forgotten Manhattan into a grand public promenade. Their aim is to protect the girders and other industrial architecture, using them to create a resource that proffers New Yorkers a rare trice of tranquillity and greenness, from Penn Station to the Hudson River Park, 'without seeing a car or a truck' More than 700 entries for the design competition have been whittled down to four, individual of them by Zaha Hadid Architects. Together, they are creating the master plan. Meanwhile, the various City of of recent origin York agencies are being petitioned for support, and upon 18 November an auction of contemporary art was held to raise stocks As Joshua David said confidently: 'We faith to have ground breaking around this time nearest year'. He will probably succeed