Dress, Dreams, and Desire: Fashion and Psychoanalysis
Exhibit at the Museum at F.I.T
September 10 - January 4, 2026
Wednesday–Friday, Noon–8pm
Saturday–Sunday, 10 am–5 pmLocation: In Person NYC - 227 West 27th Street, NYC, 10001
Source/ Event Link: The Museum at FIT
"The Museum at FIT is dedicated to advancing knowledge of fashion, and psychoanalysis provides important clues about the power and allure of fashion, as well as the ambivalence and hostility that fashion also attracts," says Dr. Valerie Steele.
Organized both chronologically and thematically, the exhibition begins by tracing the historical relationship between fashion and psychoanalysis. The introductory gallery opens with Freud's personal style circa 1900, as well as his radical ideas about sexuality and the unconscious, and his problematic theories about women's "exhibitionistic" and "narcissistic" relationship with fashion. The exhibition then takes visitors through the 1920s and 1930s, when psychoanalysis was popularly associated with sexual and personal freedom, especially for women and sexual minorities. In contrast to Freud, the British psychoanalyst J.C. Flügel envied women's freedom to adorn and expose themselves, whereas Joan Riviere, one of a growing cohort of female psychoanalysts, theorized that femininity was a "masquerade" necessitated by male prejudice. It is widely recognized that by the 1950s, most psychoanalysts, especially in the United States, were virulently homophobic and misogynistic. However, beginning in the second half of the 20th century, some feminists and LGBTQ+ activists stopped rejecting Freud as "the enemy" and instead called for an inclusive, liberatory psychoanalysis.
Following this historical overview, the exhibition continues thematically with various interpretations of fashion through the lens of psychoanalytic ideas about dreams, desire, sexual difference, and death. Freud interpreted most dreams as disguised sexual wishes— visualized by Moschino's chocolate bar dress, evoking the pleasure principle, the drive to seek pleasure and avoid pain. By contrast, Carl Jung interpreted dreams in terms of eternal archetypes from the collective unconscious. While many designers represent the feminine prototype of the queen or lover, Rick Owens created a more esoteric collection dedicated to the "priestesses of longing." Later, Freud would go "beyond the pleasure principle" to include the death drive, characterized by aggression, destruction, and hatred. Josephus Thimister referenced the slaughter of World War I in his collection, "1915 Opulence and Bloodshed," while Jun Takahashi of Undercover created a collection featuring roses and razor blades that could be interpreted as evoking Eros (life and love) versus Thanatos (death and destruction).”