Dress, Dreams, and Desire: Fashion and the Unconscious
Dr. Valerie Steele
Registration Now Open
Attendance is Complimentary. Registration is Required.
Fashion is often dismissed as superficial. But what we wear reflects powerful and often unconscious ideas about who we think we are and who we want to be.
In this Spark Salon, fashion historian and author Dr. Valerie Steele explores what clothing can tell us about our dreams and desires, and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. Drawing from her book Dress, Dreams, and Desire: A History of Fashion and Psychoanalysis, she examines why fashion carries such powerful emotional and cultural significance, and why we don’t always know why we dress the way we do.
Why do certain clothes feel like us while others do not? What role do fantasy, desire, memory, and aspiration play in the way we present ourselves to the world? How much of our style is conscious choice, and how much is shaped by culture, experience, and unconscious beliefs? And how much do we really understand about the messages we communicate and the assumptions we make about others through what we wear?
Looking beyond trends and stereotypes, Dr. Steele invites us to consider fashion as a lens through which we construct a sense of ourselves, express desire, seek belonging, and make meaning. In doing so, she reveals how clothing shapes not only how others see us but how we see ourselves.
4:00 p.m.: Doors open, reception
5:00 p.m.: Program begins promptly
6:00 p.m.: Book signing and reception
In-person attendees will receive a complimentary book.
Bio
Valerie Steele is Director and Chief Curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she has organized more than 25 exhibitions since 1997, including The Corset: Fashioning the Body; London Fashion; Gothic: Dark Glamour; A Queer History of Fashion: From the Closet to the Catwalk; Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color; Paris, Capital of Fashion; and Dress, Dreams, and Desire: Fashion and Psychoanalysis.
She is also the author or editor of more than 30 books, including Paris Fashion: A Cultural History; Women of Fashion; Fetish: Fashion, Sex & Power; The Corset: A Cultural History; Fashion Designers A–Z: The Collection of The Museum at FIT; and Dress, Dreams, and Desire: A History of Fashion and Psychoanalysis. Her books have been translated into Chinese, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. In addition, she is founder and Editor in Chief of Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, the first scholarly journal in Fashion Studies.
Dr. Steele combines serious scholarship (and a Yale PhD) with the rare ability to communicate with general audiences. As author, curator, editor, and public intellectual, Valerie Steele has been instrumental in creating the modern field of fashion studies and in raising awareness of the cultural significance of fashion. She has appeared on many television programs, including The Oprah Winfrey Show and Undressed: The Story of Fashion. Described in The Washington Post as one of “fashion’s brainiest women” and by Suzy Menkes as “The Freud of Fashion,” she was listed as one of The People Shaping the Global Fashion Industry in BoF 500.
Dress, Dreams, and Desire: A History of Fashion and Psychoanalysis