FASHIONISTA'S HOLIDAY HAPPENINGS (c) By Polly Guerin

The glitz and glamour of fashion steals the holiday spotlight bringing with it a chance to take a diversion and revisit fashion at various venues around town. It’s the Best of New York, my friends, the very best!!! Here’s the scoop!!!!

FASHION and TECHNOLOGY A new exhibition in the Fashion and Textile History Gallery at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (MFIT) presents a fascinating review of how fashion has engaged with---and been altered by---technological advancements throughout history. Spanning 250 years, the exhibition is displayed in chronological order with a focus on technological innovations that had had an impact on the production, materials and function of fashion. The exhibit includes objects as diverse as an afternoon dress, circa, 1860, produced using synthetic dyes that resist fading, and Pierre Cardin’s seamless dress from 1968 that showcases his pioneering ‘Cardine’ textile. Also on view is Jean Paul Gaultier’s 1996 jumpsuit that utilizes the aesthetic of the “Cyber Age” as a decorative motif, and the LillyPad Arduino circuitboard, which allows designers to push the function of clothing further by integrating smart electronics directly into their garments. Free and Open to the Public. On view through May 2013. At 27th Street & Seventh Avenue. Image: Jean Paul Gaultier, jumpsuit, mulicolored nylon and spandex with Op-Art cyber graphic print, 1996, France.

125 ICONS Celebrates the work of Pratt alumni and faculty staged at the school’s Manhattan location at 144 West 14th street, and covers the past 125 years dating back to Pratt’s inception. Fashion’s favorites include snapshots of Norman Norell’s designs, as well as actual ensembles by Betsey Johnson and Jeffrey Banks. It was Pratt alumni, Kermit Love, who dressed Big Bird by figuring out the feather application for Jim Henson’s big-beaked friend. You’ll also see images of cartoon characters Betty Boop and Tom and Jerry, a 1995 Ford Thunderbird, Charles Lindberg’s ‘Spirit of St. Louis’ airplane and the Chrysler Building among the Pratt-related designs on display. More on view include Vera Maxwell’s ultrasuede dress, a “Fantasia” video with Bill Garrity’s sound engineering. The venue tells the history of art, design and architecture in America, just with the creations that Pratt produced. Worth your time! Ongoing.

DESIGNING TOMORROW: America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s Breadlines and raging unemployment were a hard reality during the height of the Great Depression, but the world’s fairs of the 1930’s provided a spectacular diversion. Six American world’s fairs presented streamlined cars, models of skyscrapers, electric toasters, nylon stockings, and television, providing a vision of a brighter future for tens and millions of Americans. Visitors to the exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York will see sleek, modern furniture and appliances, vintage footage from the fairs, and futuristic drawings of the New York World’s Fair buildings, both built and proposed from advertising to architecture and domestic innovations and furnishings, all of the fairs’ most popular and recognizable attractions. Samples of tubular steel furniture, models of streamlined buses, and image of cities filled with light and color all illustrate the creativity and hope these fairs came to represent. At the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) 103rd St and 5th Ave. Opened Dec. 5.

THE EVENT OF A THREAD is Ann Hamilton’s large-scale interactive installation at the Park Avenue Armory where visitors will be able to hear live performers reading aloud, or listen to the sound on portable radio transmitters as they walk through the armory. Inside the Drill Hall take a leap into the future and hop onto swings that hang from the trusses of the cavernous space; your movement swill rustle a giant piece of fabric, generating a massive kinetic sculpture, a flock of homing pigeons, spoken and written texts and transmissions of weight, sound and silence weave through this expansive space to create a fabric of experience. Open to the Public till January 6 at Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave., at 67th street. Admission $12/$10 for students, Seniors, Groups. Tues.-Sun. 12pm-7pm. Closed Mondays, except December 24 and 31.

Ta Ta Darlings!!! It’s time to hop on a swing at the Park Avenue Armory. Fan mail welcome at pollytalk@verizon.net. Polly’s Blogs are best accessed at her website pollytalk.com. Just click on the link in the left-hand column for visonarymen, womendeterminedtosucceed, poetry or fashion.