MoMA PS1 is revisiting New York fashion of the early 1980s in a new exhibition opening on 5 November. New York Fashion at PS1, 1980-1984 runs until 15 March 2027 and looks at a moment when the city's fashion, art and nightlife collided in the same downtown rooms.

Among the works on show is Space City, a collaborative film by filmmakers Robyn Brentano and Andrew Horn, dancer and choreographer Kenneth King, composer William-John Tudor and painter Richard Brintzenhofe. The film first screened at Lincoln Center's Dance Film Video Festival in 1981, and its opening scene was shot in the attic of PS1 itself, giving the exhibition a direct link to the building's own history.

The show also features the work of designer Ronald Kolodzie, who made the costumes for Space City, and whose designs capture the handmade, theatrical spirit of the period. The early 1980s were a time when New York fashion was made in lofts and clubs as much as in studios, and the exhibition recovers that energy through clothes, film and performance.

For PS1, the show is a companion to its other autumn opening, Hard Art, and together the two exhibitions look at the same years from different angles. New York Fashion at PS1 remembers a city where the boundaries between art, dance, music and dress were thin, and where a film shot in an attic could end up in a museum. The early 1980s were a fertile moment for downtown New York, when artists, designers, dancers and musicians shared the same spaces and the same audiences. PS1, then a new institution in a former school building in Queens, was at the centre of that scene, and the exhibition recovers a moment when the museum itself was part of the story.