Items: Is Fashion Modern? explores the present, past, and future of 111 items — garments, accessories, and accoutrements — that have had a strong impact on history and society in the 20th and 21st centuries, and continue to hold currency today. Among the 111 will be designs as well-known and transformative as the Levi’s 501s, the Casio watch, and the Little Black Dress, and as ancient and culturally charged as the kippah and the keffiyeh. Each item will be displayed in the incarnation that made it significant in the last 116 years — the stereotype — along with contextual materials that trace back to its historical archetype. In some cases, the item will also be complemented by a new commission — a prototype. Items will thus invite new generations of designers, engineers, and manufacturers to respond to some of these “indispensable items” with pioneering materials, approaches, and techniques — extending this conversation into the near and distant futures, and connecting the history of these garments with their present recombination