What Is Your Clothing Trying to Tell You?

Unlikely Collaborators Hosts Fashion Historian and Author Dr. Valerie Steele for a Spark Salon on Identity, Desire, and the Psychology of Fashion

LOS ANGELES, July 13, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Fashion is rarely just about clothing.

What we wear can express who we believe we are, who we hope to become, who we long to belong with, and sometimes who we are trying not to be.

On Saturday, July 18, Unlikely Collaborators will welcome renowned fashion historian, curator, and author Dr. Valerie Steele for a Spark Salon exploring the hidden relationship between fashion, identity, and the stories that shape how we see ourselves.

Titled Dress, Dreams, and Desire: Fashion and the Unconscious, the evening will feature a presentation by Dr. Steele followed by a conversation moderated by Elizabeth R. Koch, founder and CEO of Unlikely Collaborators, whose Perception Box™ framework explores how our beliefs, experiences, emotions, and conditioning shape the way we perceive ourselves and others.

Together, Koch and Steele will examine clothing not simply as fashion, but as an expression of identity. Why do certain clothes make us feel more like ourselves while others do not? What roles do belonging, aspiration, fear, fantasy, and memory play in what we choose to wear? How much of our wardrobe reflects conscious choice, and how much is shaped by inherited beliefs, cultural expectations, and unconscious narratives?

Drawing from psychology, cultural history, and decades of scholarship, Dr. Steele explores how fashion functions as a language through which people communicate identity, desire, status, and belonging. Koch extends that conversation inward, inviting audiences to consider what their own wardrobes might reveal about the stories they tell themselves, whether those stories still serve them, and how greater awareness can expand the way they see themselves and others.

Rather than asking, "What are you wearing?" this Spark Salon asks a deeper question: "Who are you becoming when you wear it?"

Fashion is often understood as a matter of personal taste or cultural trends. Yet clothing carries profound emotional and psychological significance, influencing not only how others perceive us, but how we perceive ourselves. By bringing together fashion history, psychoanalysis, and the Perception Box™ framework, this conversation invites audiences to look beyond style and trends to explore how clothing can illuminate identity, reveal unconscious narratives, and deepen self-understanding.

The evening will take place in person at Unlikely Collaborators' Santa Monica headquarters and will also be livestreamed online.

Event Schedule

4:00 p.m. — Doors open and reception
5:00 p.m. — Program begins promptly (late entry not permitted)
6:00 p.m. — Reception

Cost: Free (registration required)

Register to Attend in person

Register to join live online

About Valerie Steele

Valerie Steele is director and chief curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she has organized more than 25 exhibitions since 1997, including The Corset: Fashioning the Body, London Fashion, Gothic: Dark Glamour, A Queer History of Fashion: From the Closet to the Catwalk, Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color, Paris, Capital of Fashion, and Dress, Dreams, and Desire: Fashion and Psychoanalysis.

She is also the author or editor of more than 30 books, including Paris Fashion, Women of Fashion, Fetish: Fashion, Sex and Power, The Corset, Fashion Designers A-Z: The Collection of The Museum at FIT, and Dress, Dreams, and Desire: A History of Fashion and Psychoanalysis. Her books have been translated into Chinese, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

Steele is the founder and editor in chief of Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, the first scholarly journal dedicated to fashion studies. Combining rigorous scholarship with a gift for communicating with broad audiences, she has been instrumental in creating the modern field of fashion studies and raising awareness of fashion's cultural significance.

Described by The Washington Post as one of "fashion's brainiest women" and by Suzy Menkes as "The Freud of Fashion," Steele has appeared on numerous television programs, including The Oprah Winfrey Show and Undressed: The Story of Fashion. She has been listed among The Business of Fashion's BOF 500, recognizing the people shaping the global fashion industry.

About Spark Salons

Spark Salons are a signature program of Unlikely Collaborators, the nonprofit founded by Elizabeth R. Koch. These gatherings bring together grantees, researchers, artists, and collaborators for conversations that challenge perspectives and deepen connections. Past Spark Salon speakers have included illusionist Harris III, psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman, PhD, nutrition therapist Kim Shapira, MS, RD, mythologist John Bucher, Harvard Business School professor and author Michael Norton, PhD, visionary violinist Vijay Gupta, chef and entrepreneur Ellen Bennett, artist Candy Chang, digital workplace expert and author Alexandra Samuel, PhD, grief experts Brennan Wood and Dr. Donna L. Schuurman, neuroscientist and best-selling author Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, neuroscientist and NYU Dean Wendy Suzuki, PhD, futures designer Nick Foster, RDI, sleep psychologist Jade Wu, PhD, broadcaster and author Krista Tippett, journalist and author Eliot Stein, medical anthropologist and author Theresa MacPhail, PhD, poet, activist, and author Ian Manuel, psychologist and bestselling author Sonja Lyubomirsky, PhD, pediatrician and bestselling author Cara Natterson, MD, contemplative scholar and author Dr. Andrew Holecek, violinist, author, and Street Symphony founder Vijay Gupta, New York Times best-selling author Katherine Center, and relationship scientist and therapist Dr. Marisa T. Cohen.

Watch the Spark Salons Trailer

About Unlikely Collaborators

Unlikely Collaborators is a nonprofit focused on helping people better understand themselves and each other. Founded and led by CEO Elizabeth R. Koch, the organization is built around the Perception Box™ framework, the idea that our beliefs, experiences, emotions, and conditioning shape how we interpret ourselves and the world around us. By becoming aware of that lens, we create more space for reflection, flexibility, and meaningful change.

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SOURCE Unlikely Collaborators