Broadway Costume Designer turned Harvard Historian
I write about fashion. I see fashion not just as clothing, or trends, but as a gendered form of power that has been designed to resist serious analysis. Clothing is also a kind of knowledge, or a way of knowing, much like language, literature or art.
Prior to becoming a scholar and a writer, I was an artist and a maker. I learned clothes by making, studying, designing, and dressing them on a wide variety of bodies. I spent many years as a costume designer, envisioning, shopping, making, and dressing clothes for Broadway musicals, Shakespeare, new plays, and downtown experimental dance theater. My knowledge of dress is embodied, active, and material. I brought this knowledge into the historical archives, and in my writing I ask the kinds of questions that are relatable to everyone who wears clothes.
My academic training shows the multidisciplinary analysis that I use to think about how fashion works in the world. I graduated in 2023 with a PhD from Harvard University in American studies, with secondary concentrations in archaeology and gender studies. I hold master’s degrees in history (Harvard), fashion and textile studies (Fashion Institute of Technology), and design (Yale School of Drama). In 2022-2023, I was an Interdisciplinary Dissertation Fellow at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University. In 2020-2021, I was the Joe & Wanda Corn Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Museum of American History. My research has been supported by the American Antiquarian Society, Huntington Library, Monticello, Mount Vernon, Winterthur Library, Weatherhead Institute of Gender Inequality, and the Fulbright Program. I have been teaching since 2006, at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Parsons the New School of Design, Reed College, and the Harvard Precollege Program. I teach classes in history, gender studies, anthropology, fashion, and design.
I am at work on my first book project, about the origins of the modern suit.
email: chapinc@g.harvard.edu
Academic advising for creatives: www.thresholdadvising.com
- Front Page Images:
- Gentlemen’s Opera Dress, Gentleman’s Magazines of Fashions (May 1, 1829). British Library.
- The Paracas Textile, 100-300 C.E. (Nazca / south coast, Paracas, Peru). Brooklyn Museum.
- The Man-Monster, Peter Sewally, alias Mary Jones, H. R. Robinson, 1836. New York Historical Society.
- Pendant made from giant sloth bone, circa 27,000-25,000 YA. (Santa Elina rock shelter, central Brazil).
- George Catlin, Wi-jún-jon, Pigeon’s Egg Head (The Light) Going To and Returning From Washington, 1837-39. Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Mary Edwards Walker, c. 1912. Library of Congress.
- Billy Porter, 2019 Oscars.