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Leyla Neri.

Faculty members

Leyla Neri

Fashion design, Anthropology

Head of Master of Arts in Fashion Design

Dr. Leyla Neri is a fashion designer and anthropologist. Her research work focuses on fashion design as a driving force for cultural and social change. She holds a PhD in anthropology, an MFA and a BFA in fashion design, and was initially trained in architecture. She started her career at Gucci and worked as a fashion designer in Italy before specializing in design education. Prior to joining Institut Français de la Mode as Head of the Master of Arts in Fashion Design, she served as program director at Parsons Paris, the European branch of Parsons School of Design NYC, where she repositioned the fashion design and strategic design programs, and created the Master in Fashion Design and the Arts. Before the Parsons experience, she taught in various international art schools and universities, and was the founding Director of the Master in Luxury Management at the Geneva School of Business Administration. She was previously Head of Product Design Department and Director of Fashion Design at HEAD, the Geneva School of Art and Design, in Switzerland.

Research Interests

  • Anthropology of Dress and Fashion
  • Anthropology of Art and Design
  • Material Culture

CV

  • PhD Degree in Anthropology and Sociology (2015). With Highest Honors. Faculté d’anthropologie, de sociologie et de science politique, Université Lumière Lyon 2. Dissertation : Fashioning Otherness through Design. Chinese-American Trajectories and Clothes in the Making in New York.
  • Master in Fashion Design (1997), Accademia Italiana Arte, Moda e Design, Florence, Italy.
  • Bachelor in Product and Fashion Design (1994), Ecole Supérieure d’Arts Appliqués, Genève, Switzerland.
  • Preparatory Courses in Mathematics and Architecture (1991), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland.

Publications

Other publicaitons

Articles

Algéroises. Histoire d’un Costume Méditerranéen. Aix-en-Provence, Editions Edisud (1998).
Sensorial Cosmologies: Fashion Design and the Embodied Practices of the Wearer, in H. Jenss and V. Hofmann (eds.), Fashion and Materiality: Cultural Practices in Global Contexts, London & New York, Bloomsbury (2020).
Entangled Styles: Mediterranean Migration and Dress in Pre-Modern Algiers, in E. Fraser (ed.), The Mobility of People and Things in the Early Modern: The Art of Travel, New York & London, Routledge (2020).
Educating the Liminal Imagination of the Designer, in Cultural Spaces and Design: Prospect of Design Education, in R. Halter and C. Walthard (eds), Librum Publishers & Editors, Basel & Frankfurt am Main (2019).
The Transmediterranean Routes of Fashion: Between Material Expression and Artistic Representation, in L. Klich and T. Zanardi (eds.), Visual Typologies from the Early Modern to the Contemporary: Local Contexts and Global Practices, New York & London, Routledge (2019).
Le Showroom de mode comme espace de médiation de la subjectivation matérielle, in Terrains/Théories [online], n° 8, « La Fabrique de la Mode », 2018: http://journals.openedition.org/teth/1306 (2018).
The Design of Pictorial Ontologies: From Unstitched Imaginaries to Stitched Images, in T. Fillitz and P. Van Der Grijp (eds), An Anthropology of Contemporary Art: Practices, Markets, and Collectors, London & New York, Bloomsbury (2018).
A Repository of Mediterranean Memories: How a Ritual Dress Has Become a UNESCO Cultural Heritage of Humanity, in G. Mentges and L. Shamukhitdinova (eds.), Textiles as National Heritage: Identities, Politics and Material Culture, New York & Münster, Waxmann Publishing (2017).
Habits et habitus en héritage: les designers de la diaspora chinoise à New York, in Anne Monjaret (ed.). Mode, codes vestimentaires et pratiques corporelles, Revue Hommes et Migrations du Musée de l’Histoire de l’Immigration, Paris, 2015, n° 1310: 85-90 (2015).
Investigating the Blusa: The Cultural and Sartorial Biography of an Algerian Dress, in Costume. The Journal of the Costume Society of Great Britain, Volume 48, Issue 1: 60-81 (2014).
Greek Dress, in J. Condra (ed.), The Encyclopedia of National Dress. Traditional Clothing around the World. Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO/Greenwood (2013).
Gucci 1921, in F. Giannini (ed.), Gucci The Making Of. New York, Rizzoli New York (2011).

Books

Algéroises. Histoire d’un Costume Méditerranéen. Aix-en-Provence, Editions Edisud (1998).

Programs