T5. Ep 4 Dressing Woman - Theorizing Fashion (with doctor Valerie Steele)

The English segment of this podcast, Dressing Woman, aims to create discussions and bring voices that specialize in the critical study of fashion and aesthetics. In this episode, writer Vanessa Rosales interviews the incomparable and iconic pioneer, scholar and historian Valerie Steele. Doctor Steele founded Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture in 1997 and is also the director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. She has written on a vast array of subjects - the corset, Paris, heels, gender, Chanel, the 70s, power, femme fatales in nineteenth century and has lead innumerable exhibitions on a myriad of topics, from punk, to queer fashion and weaponized femininity. In this conversation they discuss contemporary definitions of fashion, the growing unrest towards its darker neoliberal and capitalist aspects, as well as the timeless repudiation towards the topic and of fashion's paradoxical nature. They discuss the shifts in the field of fashion studies - where doctor Steele has been a witness and shaper - they touch upon fashion as social innovation, decolonization, inclusion, power, fashion and feminism, and the future of fashion education. There's also a reflection on the ways in which Colombia and Latin America can think and theorize fashion it the specificity of context. An episode that's meant for anyone who is interested in the critical thinking of fashion, featuring one of its most illuminating and pioneering voices.