Valerie Steele is director and chief curator of The Museum at FIT in New York City, where she has curated more than 25 exhibitions in the past 20 years, including 'The Corset: Fashioning the Body', 'Gothic: Dark Glamour', 'A Queer History of Fashion', and 'Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color'. 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.