From 1941 to 2014, Ruth Finley published the Fashion Calendar, an independent, weekly periodical that served as the official scheduling clearinghouse for the American fashion industry. Digitized by the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Fashion Calendar is now searchable, graphable and mappable.
Browse Issues
Over 39,000 pages from three periodicals published by Ruth Finley have been digitized and made available online for browsing: Fashion Calendar (1941-2014), Home Furnishings Calendar (1947-1951), and Fashion International (1972-2008). For researchers, this method is the closest to handling the material directly. Each issue is directly searchable and can be freely downloaded as a PDF.
Explore Data
Information about the events listed in the Fashion Calendar—the who, what, when, where—has been extracted and parsed from each issue. Names and entities in the listings (i.e. designers and brands) have been categorized to highlight gender, race, social class, sexual identity, nationality, etc. The data of nearly 200,000 events can be searched, mapped, and graphed, allowing users to discover rich patterns and threads woven into the history of fashion and the creative industries.
About
In 2020, FIT was awarded a "Hidden Collections" grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources to digitize the Ruth Finley Collection, which is housed in the FIT Library's Special Collections and College Archives. The project culminated in this site, the Fashion Calendar Research Database, a joint initiative of the Gladys Marcus Library and the FIT History of Art Department. Be sure to check out our Instagram for additional content.