As a fashion curator, Tanya Meléndez-Escalante has dedicated her career to building spaces that challenge perceptions of what fashion from Latin America looks like and how it is discussed. 

“Fashion allows us to express allegiance with certain ideas, social or ethnic groups, lifestyles, and even belief systems,” Meléndez-Escalante says. “But it is [simultaneously] idiosyncratic: We assign personal meanings to clothes and adornment.”

Fashion is Individual, Fashion is Communal

Meléndez-Escalante has wanted to be part of the fashion world since she was five years old. Growing up, in Mexico City she was surrounded by fabric and sewing machines—Meléndez-Escalante’s mother taught pattern making to middle schoolers, often with Meléndez-Escalante in tow. Some of her earliest memories blend fashion and education. 

Now working as the senior curator of education and public programming at The Museum at FIT (MFIT), Meléndez-Escalante creates exhibitions and initiatives that focus on intersectionality and the diversity of Latinx fashion. 

A curator and arts administrator, Meléndez-Escalante’s first program at MFIT was “Cross Pollinations,” an international education workshop started in 2009. Still held annually, this initiative partners New York–based students with educational institutions around the world.

“Fashion is a very global, interdisciplinary industry: I wanted to replicate that so students can learn through experience how it is to work with someone who is different and far away,” she explains. 

Meléndez-Escalante’s own exhibition ¡Moda Hoy! was the inspiration for the 2024 collaboration between students at FIT and LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore. Fashion and curatorial students from both colleges engaged in dialogues sparked by the exhibition, fusing different cultures, religions, and aesthetics to address overarching themes. The final fashion pieces were completely new, bridging and surpassing previous cultural boundaries. 

Curating Through Understanding

In 2023, Meléndez-Escalante co-curated ¡Moda Hoy! after traveling to countries in Latin America. She witnessed firsthand the rich array of fashions and traditions unique to each culture. Often, the English-language media views Latin America as a homogeneous and underdeveloped region—but there is no singular Latin American style. Rather, there is a diversity of talent that continues to shape contemporary fashion locally and internationally.

“[By curating these exhibitions], I hope to bring awareness to the fact that not only is fashion a vibrant part of the culture of Latin America, but Latin American countries routinely produce some of the best-known designers globally today,” says Meléndez-Escalante. “Carolina Herrera and Oscar de La Renta, to name a few, are now international names who have paved the way for other Latinx designers to flourish.”

At the heart of her work lies the core belief that intersectionality is crucial to our success. Her contributions to publications like Food and Fashion show how seemingly unrelated disciplines actually share many commonalities like sustenance, pleasure, and identity. “Fashion and food are both moments to connect with people,” Meléndez-Escalante says. 

She notes that her experiences as an immigrant makes her work that much stronger. 

“The place where I now live is very different from the place where I grew up, which are both very different from places I have visited. These experiences cause you to become deeply empathetic,” says Meléndez-Escalante. “This is what drives my work—the desire to create that same level of compassion and understanding for others through fashion.”