THIS COURSE TAKES PLACE AT NYU-FLORENCE. The aim of this course is to explore the history of Italian fashion with an interdisciplinary approach focused on social, cultural, economic and political aspects. By focusing on select topics of key interest students will acquire a basic knowledge of the history of Italian fashion from the Renaissance to the present, understand the complex and multivalent clothing codes that help to order social interaction and learn to decode it. These abilities will provide students with a useful basis for understanding the capital role of the fashion of the past both as the origin of a ‘language’ of clothes still in use and as a boundless source of inspiration for contemporary designers. Conducted in English.