Valerie Steele


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

Biography

As director and chief curator of the museum, Steele has curated more than 25 exhibitions over the past twenty years, including Gothic: Dark Glamour; Love & War: The Weaponized Woman; The Corset: Fashioning the Body; and Femme Fatale: Fashion in Fin-de-Siècle Paris.
In addition Steele is the editor-in-chief of Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, an academic journal which she founded in 1997. She 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 and Women of Fashion: 20th-Century Designers.
She gives lectures frequently and has appeared on many television programs, including The Oprah Winfrey Show. After she appeared on the PBS special, The Way We Wear, she was described in The Washington Post as one of “fashion’s brainiest women.” Often quoted in media, she was herself the subject of profiles in Forbes and in The New York Times as well as being listed in the New York Daily News “Fashion’s 50 Most Powerful.”

Selected works