Dress, Dreams, and Desire: Fashion and Psychoanalysis

Dress, Dreams, and Desire: Fashion and Psychoanalysis is the first major exhibition to explore the connections between fashion and psychoanalysis. Curated by Dr. Valerie Steele, director of The Museum at FIT, the exhibition presents years of research analyzing fashion through the lens of sexuality and the unconscious. Steele, dubbed “the Freud of Fashion” by renowned fashion journalist Suzy Menkes, builds on her career-long interest in the evolution of psychoanalytic ideas, bringing them into conversation with the work of designers including Alexander McQueen, Elsa Schiaparelli, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Gianni and Donatella Versace, John Galliano for Christian Dior Haute Couture, Rick Owens, Thierry Mugler, and Vivienne Westwood. An accompanying catalogue delves deeper into psychoanalytic concepts such as desire, sexual difference, mirror stage, and skin ego.