Dress, Dreams, and Desire

What can psychoanalysis tell us about the power and allure of fashion? Valerie Steele, author of Dress, Dreams and Desire, was described by critic Suzy Menkes as “the Freud of fashion.” In this pathbreaking book, the first cultural history of fashion and psychoanalysis, Steele does not merely hold a mirror up to fashion’s surface, she looks into its soul.

A renowned fashion historian, Steele draws on key psychoanalytic concepts about the body, sexuality, and the unconscious – from the dream theories of Freud and Jung to Lacan’s mirror stage and Anzieu’s skin ego – to interpret the work of designers such as Elsa Schiaparelli, Gianni Versace, and Alexander McQueen. She explores how fashion is the lens through which we see ourselves – and how others see us. Far from being superficial, fashion can be regarded as a “deep surface” that communicates our unconscious desires and anxieties, with none of us fully aware of what we are “saying” with the clothes we wear.

Author Biography

Valerie Steele is Director and Chief Curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, where she has organized more than 20 exhibitions, including The Corset: Fashioning the Body and A Queer History of Fashion. She is also the founder and editor-in-chief of Fashion Theory, and the author or editor of 30 books, including Fetish: Fashion, Sex, and Power (1996), which has been translated into French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Russian.