Low-key, one of my favorite museums in the city is the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. It is a hidden gem in New York, the kind of place you stumble upon and never forget. MFIT exhibitions are always extraordinarily curated, with receipts to prove every point, and Dress, Dreams, and Desire: Fashion and Psychoanalysis is no exception.
From the moment you enter, the show feels like a labyrinth. Windows cut into walls allow you to peek at garments from unexpected angles. You turn corners and the space shifts like a dream. Because of its psychological framing, this is not just another fashion exhibition. It is one of those rare paradigm-shifting experiences, the kind that changes how you think. There is a before you go, and an after.
I was fortunate to preview the show with the press, guided by Dr. Valerie Steele, MFIT’s Director and Chief Curator. Steele, often called “the Freud of Fashion,” has spent five years researching and shaping this project. What follows is our conversation, her insights unlocking the labyrinth she built.
Photo by Casper Kofi, courtesy Viktor & Rolf.
In Conversation
Amon Focus: Back in 2013, I stumbled into Shoe Obsession at MFIT, which showed me shoes could be a canvas with infinite possibilities. What did you carry from that show into this one?
Valerie Steele: With this exhibition, I wanted to create that sense of wonder. The little windows you peek through, the hidden views, those were deliberate. It was perfect for a psychoanalytic theme. I wanted the whole thing to feel like a labyrinth, because the mind itself is a labyrinth. You cannot see it all at once. You have to wander, maybe even feel a little lost.
Amon Focus: Those windows really stuck with me. Seeing a piece from the back tells another story.
Valerie Steele: Exactly. Some pieces may never be seen unless you circle around. I wanted to create that dreamscape quality, where something half-hidden suddenly reveals itself.
Amon Focus: You broke the show down so conversationally during the press preview. But for someone walking in with no background in psychoanalysis, how should they approach it?
Valerie Steele: Do not be intimidated. You do not need to know Freud to connect. Just look at the clothes and trust your associations. A snakeskin dress might suggest second skin, reptile, or even Adam and Eve. At the same time, it is sexy. That is already psychoanalytic thinking. I wrote a lot of text, maybe too much, but I want visitors to follow their own responses.
Amon Focus: Reading Stephen King’s Apt Pupil recently, I was struck by how clothing triggered dreams in fiction. Can you speak to the role of dreams here?
Valerie Steele: Freud thought dreams were all wish fulfillment, but trauma complicates that. Veterans returned from war with recurring nightmares. That is not desire, that is pain repeating. Personally, I used to control my dreams as a child. I would tell myself what to dream about and then I would. I have lost that ability, but it shows how fascinated we are with our dream lives.
Amon Focus: You worked on this for five years. How do you sustain focus on a project that long?
Valerie Steele: It is like long-distance running. You have to keep pace. I wanted to challenge myself by writing the entire companion book rather than dividing it up. The first draft, my husband told me, was boring. I was furious. But he was right. People expect me to weave designers like Mugler, Gaultier, Galliano into the theory. Finding that balance was the hardest part.
Amon Focus: And the biggest lesson?
Valerie Steele: That you need a great team. Putting on a show like this is like making a movie. Our architect was fantastic, but so was every person in the exhibitions department. They all contributed ideas. Their enthusiasm made the project what it is.
Amon Focus: I have to ask. Is that the real J.Lo Versace dress?
Valerie Steele: No, it is a replica Donatella made after the original was named Dress of the Year in Britain. The Museum of Costume in Bath owns it and generously loaned it to us.
Fashion is not superficial. It is a deep surface. It communicates our unconscious desires and anxieties, with none of us fully aware of the messages we send.
Dr. Valerie Steele
Steele has organized more than twenty-five exhibitions since 1997 and authored over thirty books, including Paris Fashion and Fetish: Fashion, Sex and Power. She has been instrumental in building the field of fashion studies, blending scholarship with accessibility in a way few curators can. With Dress, Dreams, and Desire, she has taken psychoanalysis, from Freud and Jung to Lacan and Anzieu, and made it tangible through nearly one hundred looks by Chanel, Schiaparelli, McQueen, Owens, Mugler, Versace, and more.
Walking out of the exhibition, I understood what she meant. The show does not just ask us to look at clothes. It asks us to look at ourselves.
Exhibition Info: The Museum at FIT. Dress, Dreams, and Desire: Fashion and Psychoanalysis. On view September 10, 2025 to January 4, 2026. Admission is free. Visit the museum website for hours and updates.
