Exhibitions

Dress, Dreams, and Desire: Fashion and Psychoanalysis is the first exhibition to explore the complex relationship between fashion and psychoanalysis. Curated by Dr. Valerie Steele, director of The Museum at FIT, the exhibition will feature approximately 100 looks by designers such as Alexander McQueen, Elsa Schiaparelli, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Gianni and Donatella Versace, John Galliano for Christian Dior Haute Couture, Rick Owens, Thierry Mugler, Vivienne Westwood, and many more. Described by Suzy Menkes as "the Freud of Fashion," Steele has spent more than five years working on this exhibition and the accompanying book, which draws on the evolution of psychoanalytic ideas about sexuality and the unconscious, with sections devoted to themes such as the mirror stage, the skin ego, desire, and sexual difference.

Image: Photograph by Elizaveta Porodina of artist Alisa Gorshenina. Courtesy of photographer.

Art X Fashion is a major exhibition exploring the entangled and shifting relationship between fine art and fashion – typically considered a "decorative" or "applied" art. Curated by Dr. Elizabeth Way, Curator of Costume and Accessories, and featuring 140 garments, textiles, and accessories from The Museum at FIT’s permanent collection, this exhibition traces fashion and art's parallel aesthetics from 18th century rococo to late-20th century postmodernism. Utilizing the theoretical framework developed by art and fashion historian Dr. Christopher Richards, Art X Fashion invites viewers to consider the much-asked question, "Is fashion art?" through historic and contemporary examples. Further themes explore the overlapping art-and-fashion work of artists – such as Salvador Dalí, Sonia Delauney, Kerry James Marshall, Antionio Lopez, and Pablo Picasso – and fashion designers, including Hussein Chalayan, Issey Miyake, Paul Poiret, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Vivienne Tam, as well as the ways artists use fashion to shape their identities and expand their cultural significance.

Image: Wales Bonner X Kerry James Marshall, cotton t-shirt reproducing Lost Boys: AKA Black Sonny (1993) by Kerry James Marshall, spring 2023, museum purchase, 2022.55.1