Dress, Dreams, and Desire: A History of Fashion and Psychoanalysis

by Valerie Steele

What can psychoanalysis tell us about the power and allure of fashion? Valerie Steele, author of Dress, Dreams and Desire, was described by critic Suzy Menkes as “the Freud of fashion.” In this pathbreaking book, the first cultural history of fashion and psychoanalysis, Steele does not merely hold a mirror up to fashion's surface, she looks into its soul.

A renowned fashion historian, Steele draws on key psychoanalytic concepts about the body, sexuality, and the unconscious – from the dream theories of Freud and Jung to Lacan's mirror stage and Anzieu's skin ego – to interpret the work of designers such as Elsa Schiaparelli, Gianni Versace, and Alexander McQueen. She explores how fashion is the lens through which we see ourselves – and how others see us. Far from being superficial, fashion can be regarded as a “deep surface” that communicates our unconscious desires and anxieties, with none of us fully aware of what we are "saying" with the clothes we wear.

Genres: Fashion, Theory, Nonfiction

264 pages

Published November 13, 2025

About the author

Valerie Steele is director and chief curator and Melissa Marra is associate curator of education and public programs, both at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York.

Reviews

[Carla Remy]

The study of psychology and fashion seems so interesting, but quickly becomes an analysis of women and gender and sexual differences. I just found it a little depressing.

[Will Leben]

Far more interesting than I expected. There's so much more to how we relate to our bodies than I had imagined. Whether this book touches on it all is hard to say, but it certainly opens up areas that I had never thought to associate with fashion.

A simple example is looking in the mirror as a normal act and as a metaphor for probing deeper levels of conscious. The book opens up vast realms of Freudian associations with designs, fabrics, textures. Feelings of passion, pain, self-revelation related not just to fashion but to body piercing, circumcision, and on and on. Out of context, this begins to sound weird, but the book does a great job of exploring the seemingly bizarre in surprisingly accessible and comfortable terms.

[Edie Lee]

Valerie Steele is one of my favorite writers. I read her books whenever I can. Some are a little offbeat, but that’s the way I like them. However, she can be inconsistent. Although most of her publications show absolutely brilliance and others evoke a snore.

The spotty format features bios of the famous founders of psychology. We learn such info as how Freud liked to dress and how this differed from what Jung wore. She explains the schools of thought of these men and those that follow them. Steele also discusses women and LGBT issues and how this discipline failed them. Somewhere clothes fit in, just not quite in the historical way I expected.

Steele concludes with the revelation that the as a whole psychiatrists don’t know what they are talking about. A lot of their theories are absurd and don’t tie into reality. The same can be said of fashion.