Valerie Steele

Who is Valerie Steele?

Valerie Fahnestock Steele is a fashion historian, curator, and director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York. She was appointed director of the museum in 2003.

Biography:

Valerie Steele is Director and Chief Curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She has curated more than 20 exhibitions in the past ten years, including Gothic: Dark Glamour; Love & War: The Weaponized Woman; The Corset: Fashioning the Body; London Fashion; and Femme Fatale: Fashion in Fin-de-Siècle Paris.

Editor-in-chief of Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, which she founded in 1997, Dr. Steele is also the author of numerous books, including Gothic: Dark Glamour; The Corset: A Cultural History; Paris Fashion; Fifty Years of Fashion: New Look to Now; Fetish: Fashion, Sex and Power; and Women of Fashion: 20th-Century Designers. She was editor-in-chief of the three-volume Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion. Her latest book was Isabel Toledo: Fashion from the Inside Out, which she co-authored with Patricia Mears, in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name. She is currently working on a book and exhibition, Japan Fashion Now.