Chloe Chapin

Chloe Chapin is a PhD candidate in the American Studies program, with an AM in History and secondary concentrations in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Classical Archaeology. In her dissertation, “Tailoring America: Masculinity in the Early Republic,” she explores how the sartorial conformity of the modern suit worked to materially link democracy, modernity, and authority to white masculinity. This work also seeks to address the reasons why fashion and clothing have been coded feminine and frivolous, despite their importance to the project of being human. Before returning to graduate school, Chloe spent twenty years as a professional costume designer. She holds an MFA in Design from the Yale School of Drama, and an MA in Fashion and Textile Studies from the Fashion Institute of Technology, and has taught at FIT, Parsons, Reed College, and for the Harvard Precollege program. She has published articles in Dress and Fashion Theory andhas been a MacDowell Fellow and a Fulbright Scholar. Her research has been supported by the Weatherhead Institute of Gender Inequality, American Antiquarian Society, and Winterthur Library. Most recently, she was the Joe and Wanda Corn Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Smithsonian National Museum of American History.