NEW YORK TEXTILE MONTH: TEN YEARS OF RESEARCH, INNOVATION, AND TEXTILE CULTURE
This year, New York Textile Month (NYTM) celebrates its tenth anniversary, reaffirming itself as one of the most significant international platforms for the study, promotion, and dissemination of contemporary textile culture. From September 1 to 30, New York City becomes the stage for an intense program of about eighty events across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, engaging more than 130 artists, designers, galleries, schools, and institutions in a collective dialogue that bridges disciplines, languages, and traditions. Founded in 2015 by Lidewij Edelkoort, Willem Schenk, and Philip Fimmano, the festival has grown into a privileged observatory of textile art trajectories, consolidating a role that is not only celebratory but also educational, formative, and preservational. Over the past five years, the direction has been entrusted to Ragna Frodadottir, whose vision has further expanded the scope and impact of the project, opening new spaces for dialogue and research.
Through exhibitions, lectures, workshops, open studios, and collaborative projects, NYTM explores the connections between craftsmanship, innovation, and sustainability, building bridges between inherited traditions and contemporary practices, and serving as a catalyst for broader reflection on the meaning of textiles in today’s cultural and social landscape. Over the decade, the festival has become an indispensable reference point for professionals and scholars, attracting an international community of enthusiasts and researchers. Among its most notable initiatives is the Dorothy Waxman International Textile Design Prize, a prestigious award that annually identifies and honors emerging talents in textile innovation. Open to students from more than one hundred schools worldwide, the prize provides a unique platform to give visibility to experimental projects and unprecedented forms of expression.
“New York Textile Month was founded to give textiles the stage they deserve,” notes Lidewij Edelkoort, co-founder of the festival and one of the most authoritative voices in the study of global trends. “Ten years later, it is inspiring to see how the community has grown and how textiles have become such a relevant part of contemporary culture.” Edelkoort’s words encapsulate the philosophy of NYTM, which not only celebrates textiles as a medium but also places them at the center of a wider discourse on sustainability, cultural memory, and the capacity of artistic practice to generate new perspectives for the future.
A central figure on the international stage, Edelkoort founded Trend Union, co-founded the World Hope Forum, and created academic projects such as Polimoda’s “Farm to Fabric to Fashion” program and the Master of Textiles at Parsons The New School. Her work, spanning fashion, design, and architecture, continues to profoundly influence the dynamics of aesthetic research and sustainability. Alongside her, Philip Fimmano, trend analyst, curator, and co-founder of the World Hope Forum, has consolidated with his Talking Textiles initiative a path of awareness that, through exhibitions, publications, and prizes, supports the global dissemination of textile culture.
The artistic direction of Ragna Frodadottir has given the festival a distinctly experimental perspective. An Icelandic artist, curator, and educator with a background in fashion and textile design, Frodadottir focuses her research on the creative process and the use of color, textures, and symbols, with particular attention to the layering of craft and technology. After her early career in Reykjavík, where she founded a studio and led the Textile Department at the Reykjavik School of Visual Arts, she developed an international trajectory that led her to live between New York, Berlin, and the Icelandic capital. She now resides in New York, where she continues her research practice while directing both Edelkoort Inc. and New York Textile Month, reinforcing with her vision the festival’s role as a crossroads of knowledge, practices, and artistic experimentation.
The tenth anniversary of NYTM is not merely a celebratory milestone but an opportunity to reaffirm the urgency of reflecting on textiles as an artistic medium, cultural language, and instrument of innovation.
At a time when contemporary practices interrogate the relationships between memory and future, craft and industry, sustainability and technological research, the festival confirms itself as an indispensable laboratory for understanding the centrality of textiles in twenty-first-century art and design. The full calendar of events is available at www.textilemonth.nyc.
