co-sponsored by: The Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute
Fashion and Psychoanalysis
Presenter: Valerie Steele, PhD
Tuesday, September 22, 2026, at 7:00 – 9:00 PM Central time
By ZOOM ONLY
Photo by Bennett Raglin/Getty Images for FIT
Speaker:
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 and Power, The Corset, Gothic: Dark Glamour, Dress, Dreams, and Desire: A History of Fashion and Psychoanalysis, and Fashion Designers A-Z: The Collection of The Museum at FIT. 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.
Steele combines serious scholarship (and a Yale Ph.D) 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 the Business of Fashion 500: (2014 to the present).
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Description:
We tend to focus on the spoken word when listening to the unconscious. This presentation illuminates another modality, fashion, as an expression of the unconscious. Utilizing images from the exhibit “Dress, Dreams, and Desire: Fashion and Psychoanalysis” (September 2025 to January 2026 at MFIT), Dr. Valerie Steele will draw on psychoanalytic concepts using ideas from Freud, Jung, Lacan and Anzieu to interpret the work of several well known designers.
Agenda:
In the first hour the presenter will discuss her topic with both lecture and slides and the second hour will be time for audience discussion.
Learning Objectives
After attending this session, participants should be able to:
- Describe how fashion can be understood as a “deep surface” unconscious communication that speaks about feelings, desires and identities.
- Describe how Lacan’s theory of the mirror stage and the vulnerability of being seen and not being seen can be understood through fashion. Describe how the French analyst Didier Anzieu’s theory of the metaphorical skin-ego can be utilized to understand fashion as a ‘second skin’ that reinforces feelings that can both comfort and protect.
- Describe how change in fashion can reflect transformation as similar to the psychoanalytic ideas of the ever-changing self and larger societal paradigm shifts in attitudes about topics of sexuality and gender.
Continuing Education Credits are offered exclusively to Society members in all membership categories and those intending to join.
The presenter, Valerie Steele, PhD, and the organizer, Lisa Karaitis, PsyD, have no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to report.
Participants are asked to be aware of the need for privacy and confidentiality throughout the program.
ACCME Accreditation Statement: This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) and the Chicago Psychoanalytic Society. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
AMA Credit Designation Statement: The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this live activity for a maximum of 2 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
Disclosure Statement: The APsA CE Committee has reviewed the materials for accredited continuing education and has determined that this activity is not related to the product line of ineligible companies and therefore, the activity meets the exception outlined in Standard 3: ACCME's identification, mitigation and disclosure of relevant financial relationship. This activity does not have any known commercial support.
Accreditation Information for Professionals Other Than Physicians. The Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute maintains responsibility for this program and its content, in relation to accreditation for CE credits for non-physicians. CPI is licensed by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation to sponsor continuing education credits for (license numbers in parentheses): Social Workers (159.000122), Professional Counselors (197.000202), Marriage and Family Therapy Therapists (168.00204), and Clinical Psychologists (268.000091).
Eligible professionals will receive 2.0 continuing education credits for attending the entire program. To receive these credits an evaluation form must be completed online. Learners must claim the amount of time spent in the educational activity and that will be the amount of credit they will earn.
