The Museum at FIT Presents

About the Event

Join us for a discussion exploring the history of Hip Hop fashion. The panel will be led by Museum at FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) exhibition co-curators Elena Romero & Elizabeth Way, who will be joined by Hip Hop Conscious, Unconscious photographer Ernie Paniccioli.

The Museum at FIT (MFIT) presents Fresh, Fly, and Fabulous: Fifty Years of Hip Hop Style, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the birth of Hip Hop.The largest and most comprehensive exhibition to explore this revolutionary and influential style, this also marks the first time that the museum examines fashion exclusively through one musical genre.

Elena Romero is a Hip Hop fashion journalist, author, and cocurator of theFresh, Fly, andFabulous: 50 Years of Hip Hop Styleexhibition at The Museum of FIT (2023). Covering hip hopstyle since the 1990s, her work has appeared inDNR, WWD,Honey,Savoy,Vibe, Latina, UrbanLatino, Sportswear International,remezcla.com,USA Today,andThe New York Post. Romero’sexpertise has been highlighted in the documentariesFresh Dressed(2015) andThe Remix: HipHop x Fashion(2019). Romero is the author ofFree Stylin: How Hip Hop Changed the FashionIndustry(Praeger, 2012) and is an assistant professor of marketing communications at theFashion Institute of Technology (FIT).

Elizabeth Way is associate curator of costume at The Museum at FIT (MFIT) and cocurator oftheFresh, Fly, and Fabulous: 50 Years of Hip Hop Styleexhibition at MFIT (2023). Her pastexhibitions includeGlobal Fashion Capitals(2015),Black Fashion Designers(2016),Fabric inFashion(2018), andHead to Toe(2021). Way’s personal research focuses on the intersection ofAfrican American culture and fashion. She edited and contributed chapters to the bookBlackDesigners in American Fashion(Bloomsbury, 2021). Way holds a master’s degree in costumestudies from New York University

Ernie Paniccioli has become one of Hip Hop’s most famous and notable photographers in the World, Humanitarian and the bestselling Author of “Hip Hop at the End of the World” and “Who Shot Ya?”. His photography has been preserved for future generations by the Cornell University – Ernie Paniccioli Archives This collection offers digital versions of nearly 20,000 photographs by Ernie Paniccioli, one of Hip Hop’s most prolific and prominent photographers. Presented by Cornell University Library’s Hip Hop archives with the permission of Ernie Paniccioli, these photographs provide an unprecedented visual history of Hip Hop culture of the 1980s, 90s, and early 2000s. Ernie’s photography was on display at The GRAMMY Museum Experience exhibit during his one man show “A Hip Hop Life: Five Decades of Hip Hop Music, Art and Culture featuring Ernie Paniccioli Photography” June 2022 until October 2022, this show is the first of its kind in Grammy Museum History.