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Quote by Valerie Steele

“I think that a lot of our fashion history shows do touch on important issues. Fashion and Technology obviously does, because technology is impacting fashion in so many ways, from computer-assisted design to the way we actually purchase clothes online.”

Quote by Valerie Steele

Author

Valerie Steele
Valerie Steele

Valerie Steele is a renowned historian known for her research on fashion history, particularly in the areas of 19th and 20th-century women's fashion. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and has held teaching positions at various academic institutions and museums, including the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. more

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“Fashion has been collected and exhibited for many years. People were picking up clothing of famous individuals, like Marie Antoinette's shoe or Napoleon's hat. That part of the resistance to having fashion in museums had to do with it being associated with femininity, and with the female body. Yet, as early as the 18th century, some people were recognizing that just as you collected art, you, might think about collecting fashion for museums, because it would provide insight into the way people thought about their lives and, and the way they envisioned themselves.”

“Fashion museums think the more you know about the significance of clothes culturally, the more interesting they are. We certainly don't neglect the aesthetic aspects of clothes. But, I feel that what sets us apart from social, economic, and even aesthetic, or art historical context is that we are not only talking about clothes as kind of art objects created by an artist designer, but also we're talking about the various meanings that clothes have in the world, and how that changes and how we kind of create meanings around clothes.”

“Sculpture, for me, provides that environmental discipline where you actually move in and around it. And if you have a good collaboration with an architect, to combine those aspects of color - I'm talking about color becoming a form within the building - that is a very different approach. I love contemporary architecture, which makes collaboration more interesting-and you have to be able to collaborate. It's like making a film, in a way: Everyone is a part of the team.”