Fashion industry legend Fern Mallis (she created Fashion Week in New York City in 1993) is the commencement speaker and recipient of the President’s Award for Lifetime Achievement at the Fashion Institute of Technology today. You can watch the live stream here.

Fern is family to us as the moderator for 92Y’s Fashion Icons with Fern Mallis series, featuring in-depth interviews with Calvin Klein, Norma Kamali, Donna Karan, Tommy Hilfiger, Tom Ford, Michael Kors, Diane von Furstenberg, Polly Mellen, Marc Jacobs, Betsey Johnson, Vera Wang, and Suzy Menkes. Here’s a YouTube playlist of highlights. On June 6, she’ll interview Oscar de la Renta at 92Y.

Congrats, Fern!

Fashion Icon Suzy Menkes offers her opinion about the MET’s Punk exhibit, the Bangladeshi building collapse at Rana Plaza, and the kerfuffle created by her article, The Circus of Fashion. She was at 92Y on May 7 with Fern Mallis, for the Fashion Icons with Fern Mallis series. 

Read more about the evening on WWD, The Daily Beast, Style and Fashionista. Watch more Fashion Icons videos on our YouTube. 

Another installment of our Fashion Icons series, watch live online at 8 pm ET tonight!

Here’s a great clip with Calvin Klein from the Fashion Icons with Fern Mallis series. Calvin appeared in 2011 and Fern asked Calvin if, considering he grew up in the Bronx, was being a designer considered a “gay profession?”

“No,” he told her. “If anything, Ralph Lauren grew up in the same neighborhood and Ralph always dressed in sort of a peculiar way. I was the edgy one, I wanted to look like some tough guy like James Dean, and Ralph looked like he was someplace, some other foreign country.”

Next up in Fashion Icons is Suzy Menkes on May 7 and Oscar de la Renta on Jun 6.

Watch more Fashion Icons videos on our YouTube.

We were once described as “black crows” — us fashion folk gathered outside an abandoned, crumbling downtown building in a uniform of Comme des Garçons or Yohji Yamamoto. “Whose funeral is it?” passers-by would whisper with a mix of hushed caring and ghoulish inquiry, as we lined up for the hip, underground presentations back in the 1990s.

Today, the people outside fashion shows are more like peacocks than crows. They pose and preen, in their multipatterned dresses, spidery legs balanced on club-sandwich platform shoes, or in thigh-high boots under sculptured coats blooming with flat flowers.

Suzy Menkes on The Circus of Fashion in T Magazine.

“Consider it a master class in how to start a media firestorm,” wrote Justin Fenner for Fashionologie.

Suzy Menkes is here on May 7 for Fashion Icons with Fern Mallis. See clips from past Fashion Icons talks, on our YouTube.

Great question for Vera Wang, from Michael Guth. Submit your own question here and it might used on stage when Mrs. Wang is Feb 19 with Fashion Week founder Fern Mallis. 

TUNE IN NOW: Fashion Icons with Fern Mallis: Betsey Johnson, LIVE at 92Y. 

Watch Fashion Icons with Fern Mallis: Betsey Johnson LIVE on 92Y.org/Livecast, tomorrow Jan 16 at 8 pm. 

Have questions for Betsey Johnson? Leave them here and then watch live to see if your question is used. 

This past Wednesday at 92Y, Marc Jacobs talked with Fern Mallis about his life and career for her Fashion Icons series. In this clip, they cover Twitter, being insecure, what’s on his bucket list, advice to designers, his thoughts on critics, and living in the now. 

“Living in the past, or living in the future. Those aren’t real,” Jacobs said. “The moment is now.” 

Look for the full program on SiriusXM Stars, on Fashion Insiders with Fern Mallis.

Marc Jacobs and Fern Mallis. WATCH LIVE TONIGHT at 8 pm. Tweet your comments and questions to #92YMarc.