Fashion Archives - Public Seminar

Activism

Looking Back on the Zapatistas’ Revolutionary Fashion

Liberation movements like the Zapatistas and the Black Panther Party teach us to unite political, artistic, and cultural ideas in how we dress

October 1, 2025 • by Mike Harrington

The so-called “first postmodern revolution,” the Zapatista uprising of 1994, came at a time when the internet was becoming a worldwide phenomenon. And with this Pandora’s box of widely accessible imagery and information newly opened, people were able to witness the uprising in more-or-less real time. Based in Chiapas, the southernmost ...

Fashion

At Parsons, Getting Dressed Is Extra Homework

“What should I wear?”

March 10, 2025 • by Hannah McIntyre

In my first semester at Parsons School of Design, I sat in the library, dazedly looking around at other students’ outfits. I noticed someone wearing a denim beret with a long-sleeved white shirt that had images of bones, forming a skeleton laid on their back. They wore a long black ...

At Parsons, Getting Dressed Is Extra Homework

Body & Mind

The Fashion for Baiting, Brainwashing, and Bullying

How does Brandy Melville continue to tap into the most desperate impulses of being a teenage girl?

December 10, 2024 • by Hannah McIntyre

“From the beginning of the supply chain to the end, we’re all being exploited by the same system” says Chloe Asaam, who represents the Or Foundation. She’s speaking in Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion, an HBO documentary that explores the toxicity of the international brand Brandy Melville. The ...

Fashion

Why Are We Afraid of Flounces and Frills?

An excerpt from Fashion | Sense: On Philosophy and Fashion

September 7, 2022 • by Gwenda-lin Grewal

Why do most philosophers hate clothes—or rather, hate fashion? The majority rule seems to be to treat the outer surface with either ritual formality or complete derision, as if the less you comb your hair the closer you are to truth....

Why Are We Afraid of Flounces and Frills?

Fashion

The Philosophy of Ripped Jeans

An interview with Gwenda-lin Grewal about her new book on the intersection of philosophy and fashion

September 7, 2022 • by Jack Condie, Nicholas Dagher, Gwenda-lin Grewal, Noah Kupper and Quinn Mason

Fashion is always threatening to undermine autonomy but also always presenting you with the opportunity of taking it back. That is what’s lost when you say fashion is just for shallow people, it’s only about appearances, or that it doesn’t have anything to do with reality. I think quite the ...

Fashion

Fashion Sustainability Isn’t the Only Story—In Fact, It may Do More Harm Than Good

An interview with Fashion Historian Sofi Thanhauser

July 20, 2022 • by AJ Morris and Sofi Thanhauser

The system of clothing that we have now has been created by centuries of colonial violence, and decades of trade agreements between the United States Department of State and the Chinese Communist Party. It's not up to people trying to get a pair of socks to fix those things....

Fashion

Masking and Visibility

Performing the pandemic

March 10, 2021 • by Patricia Brien

_____ In his Autumn 2019 collection, Alessandro Michele, creative director of Gucci, sent his models out on the runway covered in clothing and layers of protective gear. He also used many different forms of face coverings and masks (not mouth coverings). He was inspired by Hannah Arendt’s writings on totalitarianism and ...

Fashion

What We Really Wear

The connection between fashion and self

January 29, 2021 • by Manou Messman

I was only 5 years old the first time I wondered about why we wear what we wear. I used to sit in a corner of our living-room so I could observe my parents and their friends. Why did they wear what they wore, and how did their clothes connect ...

Corporations

Fall Fashion

Could the collapse of consumption point to a better future for the fashion industry?

October 28, 2020 • by Otto von Busch

----- Outside the window, it should have been autumn season. With the arrival of more crisp weather, a section of the wardrobe opens for the new possibilities, colors, and textures: jackets and closed shoes, knits and tweed. And layers. Layers force the wearer to think in more complex combinations. With a ...

Fashion

Will Covid-19 Be My Fashion Therapist?

Reexamining the vastness of fashion in the confined pandemic habitiation

October 21, 2020 • by Sanem Odabaşi

We are the beginners of a new life All we know is reforming --Cemal Sureya As soon as the Covid-19 pandemic started, survivability became one of our biggest concerns. We had to welcome all ideas on how to strengthen our immunity, concerning what we had and what "things" might do to us. Covid-19, ...

Fashion

Communities of Cloth and Style

Fashion, women, and collective consciousness during COVID-19

July 23, 2020 • by Hazel Clark

As fashion retail sales decrease in the United States during the recession triggered by pandemic lockdowns, “brick and mortar” stores have closed and some longstanding department stores have declared bankruptcy. We might be forgiven for wondering: Is this the end of fashion as we knew it? But such a question ...

Fashion

Psychology and Fashion

July 9, 2020 • by Carolyn Mair

Psychology is the scientific study of behavior. It is applicable, and valuable, in every context in which people are involved. Psychologists are analysts, trained to synthesize information and conduct analyses to provide deeper understanding of behavior in order to be able to predict it—and where desirable, to change it for ...