This new exhibit at The Museum at FIT merges fashion and psychoanalysis

"In the year 2025, how we dress is still the highest form of free self expression-and the role that gender plays in fashion has broken norms, especially in the last decade. In a new exhibit from The Museum at Fashion Institute of Technology, the road to this gender fluid fashion is examined, beginning in the 1900s. Explore body image, dreams, desires, sexuality and the unconscious in almost 100 items of dress as part"

"Organized both chronologically and thematically, the museum begins by tracing the historical relationship between fashion and the lifelong process of developing a self-image. The exhibition digs into Jacques Lacan's theory of the mirror stage and Didier Anzieu's concept of the skin ego, or a sense of self formed through sensations on the skin. Another major theme is our collective movement toward nonbinary and gender-fluid ideas and the ability to be open in society."

"For example, as you go through the exhibit, you can see there are no clear lines between what is "masculine" or "feminine" in these dresses. Large spikes and cones protrude from the body of dresses, top hats get a sexy twist and men's jumpsuits that take on feminine qualities. There's even a dress made completely of cohesive, but coarse hair (a possible nod to Victorian traditions of male wigs, or the use of haircloth in garments for women)."

A free exhibition at The Museum at Fashion Institute of Technology presents almost 100 garments spanning the 19th century to the present, tracing the development of gender-fluid fashion beginning in the 1900s. The exhibition centers on body image, dreams, desires, sexuality and the unconscious while showcasing designers such as Azzedine Alaia, Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, Willy Chavarria, Bella Freud, John Galliano for Christian Dior, Vivienne Westwood, Gianna and Donatella Versace, and Alexander McQueen. The display is organized chronologically and thematically and invokes Lacan's mirror stage and Anzieu's skin-ego to link fashion with self-image. The presentation foregrounds nonbinary and gender-fluid ideas by blurring masculine and feminine signifiers through provocative silhouettes and materials, including spikes, reworked top hats, gender-bending jumpsuits, and a dress constructed from coarse hair.

Read at Time Out New York