VALERIE STEELE is an internationally renowned authority on the history of fashion and the director and chief curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Described in The Washington Post as one of “fashion’s brainiest women,” she is a prolific author, combining serious scholarship with a rare ability to communicate with the general reader. She is the author of more than a dozen highly acclaimed books, including Shoe Obsession; A Queer History of Fashion: From the Closet to the Catwalk; The Corset: A Cultural History; Fifty Years of Fashion: New Look to Now; Fetish: Fashion, Sex & Power; y Women of Fashion: Twentieth-Century Designers.She is also editor-in-chief of the three-volume Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion. Dress, Dreams, and Desire: A History of Fashion and Psychoanalysis (Bloomsbury Visual Arts) is her latest book.
