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Leyla Neri.

Faculty members

Leyla Neri

Fashion design, Anthropology

Head of Master of Arts in Fashion Design

Leyla Neri is a fashion designer and anthropologist. Her research focuses on fashion design as a driver of cultural and social change. She holds a PhD in anthropology, a Master's degree and a Bachelor's degree in fashion design, and trained initially in architecture. She began her career at Gucci and worked as a designer in Italy before specializing in teaching fashion design. Before joining the Institut Français de la Mode as Director of the Master of Arts in Fashion Design, she was Director of Education at Parsons Paris, the European subsidiary 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. Prior to this, she taught at various art schools and international universities, and launched and directed the Master in Luxury Management at the Geneva School of Business Administration. She was also pedagogical director of the Fashion Design programs and head of the Product Design department at HEAD - Haute Ecole d'Art et de Design in Geneva, Switzerland.

Research areas:

  • Anthropology of clothing and fashion
  • Anthropology of art and design
  • Material culture

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

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).