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 ...

Capitalism

Ending Exploitation in the Fashion Industry

Towards a labor-centered notion of sustainability

July 26, 2022 • by Nandita Shivakumar and Aabid Firdausi

Instead of empty commitments to sustainability that at best result in greenwashing, there needs to be urgent structural transformations in the global garment industry. ...

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

The Arts

The Invisible Labor of Asian Americans in New York Fashion

On the complexity of curating a fashion exhibit around identity

May 9, 2022 • by Shweta Nandakumar

To make plain the fact that there exists no singular Asian American aesthetic, the student organizers of this FIT exhibit made the unusual choice not to make reference to the specific heritages of the featured creatives: “We want viewers to focus on the craftsmanship that goes into the work the ...

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, ...

Art & Design

Archives of the Everyday

Finding what is hidden in the dress archive

April 10, 2020 • by Ellen Sampson

Much has been written in recent years about the role, position and display of dress in museums, about the ways that fashion exhibitions function as manifestations and metaphors for the predominant preoccupations of our times. Less explored, however, are the numerous garments that reside within museums archives, things which are ...

Fashion

The Dharma of Fashion

If you crave fashion, make friends with your desire

March 30, 2020 • by Otto von Busch

It is said that on the eve of his enlightenment, the Buddha sat beneath a tree and was assailed by the demon Mara. Mara is literally “Death,” the personification of temptation and distraction. Using seductive images and ultimately doubt, Mara challenged the Buddha, distracting him from his goal of enlightenment. ...

Fashion

Mnemonics of (Re)Used Clothes

Sustainable fashion requires grappling with the relationships and memories clothing represents

February 14, 2020 • by Sanem Odabaşi

Looking inside my wardrobe, I see a pile of clothes, dresses on hangers, shawls in boxes, and my favorite tote bags. If only they could speak, they would probably tell stories about my past experiences. I am not a collector, nor so attached to artifacts that I must keep them ...