Gary Wassner interview, 2018 May 25, 2018 May 25

In the fashion industry, Gary Wassner, CEO of Hilldun Corporation, known as the company behind many of Seventh Avenue’s most prestigious fashion companies, has provided financing and factoring for many of America’s and the world’s most iconic designer labels. Willi Smith, Derek Lam, Jason Wu, Maria Cornejo, Yeohlee, C.C. Greene, Isabel Marant, Golden Goose, Rebecca Taylor, Tommy Hilfiger, Naeem Kahn, Jonathan Simkhai, Victor Glemaud, Vivienne Westwood, Sacai, John Elliot, Fear of God, Mara Hoffman, Thom Browne, Betsey Johnson and Marc Jacobs are only a few of fashion’s finest that have benefitted from his discerning eyes and business acumen.



Named one of Fashionista’s 50 Most Influential People in Fashion, Gary is also an advisory board member of Fordham Law School’s Fashion Law Institute, a board member of FGI, an instructor for the DENYC program, a board member of the High School of Fashion Industries, a member of FIT’s Social Justice Advisory Council, and a passionate supporter of all causes related to the Fashion Industry in NYC and globally.



In addition to being a force in the fashion industry, he is a well-respected fiction writer and children’s book author. Wassner resides in New York with his wife Cathy and his extended family.

Phyllis Dillon is an Independent Scholar and Consulting Museum Curator. She has worked for over 35 years in the fields of costume and textile studies, and in museums as a textile conservator, curator and arts administrator. She was a textile conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Textile Conservation Workshop. In the 1980s-90s she was a grants officer at the New York State Council on the Arts in the Museum Program. In that position she oversaw the distribution of millions of dollars to Museum’s statewide.



For the last 20 years she has concentrated her research on the history of the Jewish role in the American garment industry and the history of ready-made clothing. She was Main Researcher and Associate Curator of the National Endowment for the Humanities funded exhibit: “A Perfect Fit: The Garment Industry and American Jewry 1860-1960 at Yeshiva University Museum in the Center for Jewish History in 2005 and co-authored the catalogue of the same name. She also had an article in a second book called A Perfect Fit published by Texas University Tech in 2012.



She was Associate Producer and Main Researcher on a documentary film called “Dressing America: Tales from the Garment Center (2014) in collaboration with Pacific Street Films . The film showed in international film festivals and was aired on PBS in 2014 and 2016.



Her latest publication is a chapter co-written with British business historian Andrew Godley about the history of the American garment industry in the book Chosen Capital: The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism from Rutgers University Press (July 2012).



She holds a Certificate in Museum Studies and an M.A. in anthropology from New York University. She was awarded a Winston Churchill Traveling Fellowship to Great Britain in 1981 to study the differences between American and British Art Conservation Services and has lectured widely. Since 2016 she has researched and done selected oral history interviews of senior members of the Fashion Industry for the Fashion Institute of Technology.

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