“FASHION | SENSE is Gwenda-lin Grewal's brilliant meditation, deeply erudite but also playful and full of wit, on clothing as disguise, revelation, acquiescence, transformation, identity, and second self, as the ‘bodies we put on.’ In Grewal's hands the ‘age-old argument’ between philosophy and fashion, the things of the mind and the things of the body, is scintillatingly renewed.”
―Salman Rushdie
CONVERSATION, COCKTAILS & COUTURE
Join us Saturday, March 16 as we explore Fashion | Sense, the book designed to explode philosophy and fashion, with author Gwenda-lin Grewal and none other than Valerie Steele, fashion historian, curator, and director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
Grewal and Steele will discuss fantasies of nudity and death, dress codes, lifeless prose, and smart people who fear the “f-word.” The evening will unite philosophy and fashion, both alike in their efforts to adorn the human experience, for a conversation that goes deeper than our second skins.
Following the talk, we will enjoy refreshments and hors d’oeuvres while celebrating the polymathic brands of Risen Division, Worth & Worth, and SteamLine Luggage plus the ties of Monsieur Luxe Privé. With the opportunity to shop, guests will experience a stylish immersion in a Gotham turned fashion house for the day.
Entrance is $25/per person and includes one hour of complimentary hors d’oeuvres following the talk.
THE PROGRAM
—3-3:30pm: Arrivals and refreshments
—3:45-4:30pm: A conversation and Q&A with Valerie Steele & Gwenda-lin Grewal
—4:30-5:30pm: Couture cocktails & canapés*
*The canapés are our compliments alongside the cash bar. Advance reservations for dinner following the reception are recommended. The book event is included with your dinner reservation. Stay for jazz by Darrell Smith on drums, David Kingsnorth on bass, and piano/vocals by special guest Kelly Green from 6-10pm.
ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS
Gwenda-lin Grewal is Onassis Lecturer in Ancient Greek Thought and Language at the New School for Social Research. Her work includes two books, Fashion | Sense (Bloomsbury) and Thinking of Death in Plato’s Euthydemus (Oxford), as well as translations and articles on ancient Greek philosophy and literature. She occasionally writes about pop culture, most recently on Barbie and death for Public Seminar. In addition to teaching, she has been a Blegen Research Fellow, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, and a visiting scholar at Harvard University and the American Academy in Rome. She is currently writing a book about chance and fate in Homer and online.
Valerie Steele is director and chief curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she has personally organized more than 20 exhibitions since 1997, including The Corset: Fashioning the Body, London Fashion, Gothic: Dark Glamour, Shoe Obsession, Daphne Guinness, A Queer History of Fashion, and Dance and Fashion. She is also founder and editor in chief of Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, the first peer-reviewed, scholarly journal in Fashion Studies.
Steele is author or co-author of more than 20 books, including Fashion and Eroticism, Paris Fashion, Women of Fashion, Fetish: Fashion, Sex and Power, The Corset: A Cultural History, Gothic: Dark Glamour, Japan Fashion Now, The Impossible Collection Fashion, The Berg Companion to Fashion, and Fashion Designers A-Z: The Collection of The Museum at FIT, as well as contributing essays to publications, such as Fashion and Art and Impressionism, Fashion & Modernity. As author, curator, editor, and public intellectual, Valerie Steele has been instrumental in creating the modern field of fashion studies and in raising awareness of the cultural significance of fashion.
MORE PRAISE FOR FASHION | SENSE
“This rich, knowledgeable, variegated book challenges easy assumptions about fashion's modernity. Grewal juxtaposes contemporary manifestations of fashion with situations and characters from ancient literatures in an expert pursuit of fashion-thinking, where “fashion-thinking” means philosophy's engagement with dress, but also fashion's own mode of reflection.”
―Nickolas Pappas, Professor of Philosophy, The City University of New York Graduate Center, USA
“A fascinating book by a great new talent which wholly successfully drags philosophy out the closet. In writing that is at once clear and deep, classically informed and very funny, Grewal makes a wholly convincing case for the kinship of philosophy and fashion. Highly recommended."
―Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor, The New School for Social Research, New York
“Fashion | Sense: On Philosophy and Fashion by Gwenda-lin Grewal explores how philosophers underestimate fashion's power in their search for the naked truth. Mercifully devoid of academic jargon and pomposity, the book is studded with brilliant and often witty observations on the unexpected parallels between philosophy and fashion.”
―Valerie Steele, Director and Chief Curator, The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, USA
"Gwenda-lin Grewal’s Fashion | Sense should be read more than once, for it moves conceptually, on multiple levels, and stylistically on many others. If you read it for its insights into Ancient Greek philosophy, you will find yourself returning to it for its sharp criticism of contemporary society—mores and looks. On a third time, you may want to reread it just for its prose."
―Laura T. Di Summa
"Fashion | Sense: On Philosophy and Fashion is a brilliant book... [T]he book is extremely original in writing and thinking. Grewal has style in spades, and this style creates (or rather is) her considerable substance. The book thrums with energy and wit, and it was an absolute pleasure to read. It took my breath away."
—Jeffrey DeShell for Fashion Theory
