Kenna Libes

Kenna Libes talks about her book, Fashion’s Missing Masses: The representation of marginalized populations in collections and exhibitions of dress. Book signing to follow!

Thursday, October 15, 2026 | 5:30pm
FIT Library Special Collections and FIT Archive, (Room E435 on the 4th floor)

Fashion’s Missing Masses fills a gap in literature on museums and fashion collections and focuses on the display of clothing and fashion that has historically been left out of the canon. The fifteen essays in this volume span topics on Indigenous and traditional dress; disabled and fat bodies; and queer and ethnic identities. Their authors study the ways that the associated dress materials have been collected, displayed, and passed over across a century and a half of museum exhibitions.

The reexamination of dress history is an emerging topic of interest in the field, and while there have been recent conferences and forthcoming journal issues on the topic, there are no books that specifically and solely deal with representation in fashion museums. This is a new and rapidly evolving area of research, and these chapters provides unique information and perspectives valuable to a wide group of audiences. The authors are curators, conservators, and scholars who study the dress of marginalized populations and believe strongly in diversifying the bodies and cultures included in exhibitions.

This volume touches on practical concerns of exhibition, including mannequin availability and difficulties of mounting dress, as well as broader questions of scholarship and activism that will be key for educators and researchers who wish to stay abreast of developments in this field. Diversity in fashion is a hot topic, and understanding the line between tokenization and representation in spaces of institutional authority is crucial to learning how we can better serve our diverse populations in the teaching of history.