Dressed: how to think about clothes by Professor Shahidha Bari @INSIGHTSPublicLecturesNCL
Dressed: how to think about clothes by Professor Shahidha Bari  @INSIGHTSPublicLecturesNCL
Uploaded October 2020 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Professor Shahidha Bari, London College of Fashion

Hosted by Dr Martin Farr, with introduction from Dr Matt Davies

The American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once joked ‘there is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it and will not attack you in good clothes.’ However you feel about clothes, is it time to take them seriously? In this lecture, Professor Bari explains how philosophers have thought about clothes and why in an age of ecological and existential crisis, we might gain something from thinking about how and why we dress.

Shahidha Bari's book, Dressed: The Secret Life of Clothes, is available to buy now from our university bookseller Blackwell's: blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Dressed-by-Shahidha-K-Bari-author/9781787331495

Biography:
Shahidha Bari is an academic, critic and broadcaster. She is a Professor at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, and works in the fields of fashion, philosophy and visual culture. She is the author of “Dressed: The Secret Life of Clothes” (2019). Shahidha is also the presenter of BBC Radio 3's nightly arts and ideas programme Free Thinking, and has hosted BBC Radio 4's Front Row and Saturday Review. She writes for The Guardian, Frieze art magazine, and the TLS among others. In 2016, she was the winner of The Observer Anthony Burgess Arts Journalism Prize. She was Chair of Judges for the Forward Prizes for Poetry in 2019 and is currently judging the Baillie Gifford Non-Fiction Prize.

Live Q&A:
The lecture will be followed by a live Q&A with the speaker. You can submit a question during the event using YouTube Live Chat, via Twitter @InsightsNCL or by sending an email to public.lectures@ncl.ac.uk.
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Dressed: how to think about clothes by Professor Shahidha Bari

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