It’s an endless conversation, the one between art and fashion, and it takes so many forms. Just now in New York City, the Frick has an exhibition that looks at the way Thomas Gainsborough used fashions of the present and the past to illuminate the character of his sitter. And at the Museum at FIT, “Art X Fashion,” curated by Elizabeth Way, is showing designs that actively engage with the Rococo and Surrealism, the radical modernism of Piet Mondrian and postwar Conceptual art. During the Belle Époque, artists who wished to show their subjects as progressive took them out of fashion, and dressed them in kimonos and Fortuny. And what did it mean when Gianni Versace took a page from Andy Warhol and screened a 1991 suit with the faces of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean? As for the question “Is fashion art?,” the exhibition’s 140 garments, textiles, and accessories should help viewers decide for themselves. —Laura Jacobs