Can what we wear reveal more than our taste in style? A provocative new exhibition at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology suggests so, linking Freud’s psychoanalysis with everything from top hats to stilettos.
Curated by Valerie Steele, Dress, Dreams & Desire: Fashion and Psychoanalysis gathers nearly 100 pieces across eras and designers, framing clothes as reflections of desire, armour, fantasy, and the unconscious. “Despite all the problems with psychoanalysis, it provides clues to the power and allure of fashion,” Steele explained on a preview walk-through.
It’s not as unlikely a pairing as it first sounds. Freud himself was known for his sharp wardrobe of impeccably tailored English suits, while fashion has long riffed on his ideas. Marc Jacobs released the cheekily named Freudian Slip dress in 1990. John Galliano explored fantasy and fetish in Dior’s Freud or Fetish collection a decade later. Prada even staged a short film at Cannes in 2012, A Therapy, directed by Roman Polanski, where a psychoanalyst (Ben Kingsley) slips into his patient’s fur coat.
Among the highlights is Elsa Schiaparelli’s 1938 Hall of Mirrors jacket, adorned with gold and silver trompe l’oeil panels. The piece has been linked to French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s theory of the “mirror stage,” where identity is shaped by reflection. Schiaparelli’s own complicated relationship with her mother adds a poignant biographical layer to the garment.
Desire also takes centre stage in Jean Paul Gaultier’s iconic “cone-bra” dress — once made famous by Madonna — and in explorations of the so-called “phallic woman,” represented in everything from towering stilettos to sharply structured tailoring. Steele emphasises that Freud didn’t invent these interpretations, but rather drew attention to how symbols of sexuality permeate culture.
The exhibition also considers nudity, modesty, and the “naked dress.” Jennifer Lopez’s unforgettable green Versace gown from the 2000 Grammys is included as a touchpoint for how red-carpet fashion plays with exposure and taboo.
In its final rooms, Dress, Dreams & Desire examines fashion as a second skin: protective, sensual, and sometimes suffocating. Examples range from Issey Miyake’s 1983 red leather bustier to Rei Kawakubo’s architectural designs. As contemporary psychoanalyst Pascale Navarri puts it, “Fashion exposes, simultaneously, our vulnerability about being seen and not being seen.”
Running until 4 January, the exhibition invites visitors to see fashion not just as fabric and form, but as an intimate dialogue between psyche and style.