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Leyla Belkaïd Neri, PhD.

Faculty members

Leyla Belkaïd Neri, PhD

Fashion Design | Anthropology of Art and Design

Head of Doctoral Studies Program in Fashion Design

Leyla Belkaïd Neri is a designer and anthropologist. Her research focuses on fashion design as an anthropological practice and a driver of social change. She holds a PhD in Anthropology as well as a Master’s and Bachelor’s degree in Fashion Design, following initial studies in architecture. She began her career at Gucci and worked as a designer in Italy before specialising in teaching and developing higher education fashion design programmes. She joined Institut Français de la Mode in 2021 as Director of the Master of Arts in Fashion Design (MAFD), and in 2026 became Director of the Doctoral Studies Program in Fashion Design (DFD).

Prior to joining IFM, she was Academic Director at Parsons Paris, the European branch of Parsons School of Design and The New School in New York City, where she repositioned the Fashion Design and Strategic Design programmes and subsequently created the Master in Fashion Design and the Arts. Before that, she launched and headed the Master in Luxury Management at the Geneva School of Business Administration. Earlier in her academic career, she also redesigned and led the Fashion, Accessory and Jewellery Design programmes and the Product Design Department at HEAD – Genève, Geneva University of Art and Design.

CV:

  • PhD in Anthropology and Sociology (2015), Mention très honorable avec félicitations du jury à l'unanimité. Faculty of Anthropology, Sociology and Political Science, Université Lumière Lyon 2. Doctoral thesis: Le design comme fabrique de l'altérité. Sino-American trajectories and clothing in the making in New York
  • Master in Fashion Design (1997), Accademia Italiana Arte, Moda e Design, Florence, Italy.
  • Bachelor's degree in Product and Fashion Design (1994), Ecole Supérieure d'Arts Appliqués, Geneva, Switzerland.
  • Classe Préparatoire en Mathématiques Spéciales and Classes Propédeutiques en Architecture (1991), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland

Research areas:

  • Fashion Design Studies

  • Anthropology of Art and Design

  • Fashion Design Practice and Theory

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).