Fashion and Freud? From top hats to stilettos, bustiers to bullet dresses, what we choose to put on our backs is interpreted through the lens of psychoanalysis in a new exhibition five years in the making.
Valerie Steele, director of The Museum at the New York-based Fashion Institute of Technology, curated nearly 100 designer pieces to offer a road map of sorts between fashion and such things as the unconscious mind, the need for armour and the pull of desire.
And she notes, during a walk-through of the show, that Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, himself was a fashionista, in rigidly conventional English-style suits made of the best materials and tailored to perfection.
“Ever since I was in graduate school, when I started to focus on the history of fashion, it seemed to me that despite all of the dead ends and real problems with psychoanalysis, it did provide clues to explaining the power and allure of fashion, as well as the hostility that is addressed to fashion,” she says.
Held at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s museum, “Dress, Dreams and Desire: Fashion and Psychoanalysis” will run until January 4, 2026. Steele has written a companion book that is scheduled to be out in November.
