Fashion educator and marketing expert Catherine Trotin explores how fashion history, social media, and culture shape what we wear—and how you can develop a personal style that feels truly yours.

In Episode 2 of Our Pandora's Box, your elder millennial sister host, Maria Eliades, sits down with My Fashion Stories Box host Catherine Trotin to unpack why even what we wear is not outside of the influence of politics.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Whether personal style can still be original in the age of TikTok and social media
• The connection between history, politics, and what we wear
• Their own stories about navigating fashion in Moscow, Istanbul, France, and the U.S.
• How to develop a personal style that reflects who you are instead of simply following trends

Whether you're passionate about fashion, curious about history, or trying to build a wardrobe that feels more like you, this conversation offers a thoughtful look at how style becomes part of the stories we tell about ourselves.

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Follow Our Pandora's Box for new episodes every other week.

Understand that it's not as easy to define what is fashion today as it was for the past,

where you had, a particular style, okay, you can say it's the 1920s,

it's the 1930s, and then it's the 1980s, it's the You can say that.

But can you say it's the 2020s? It's the 2010s? fashion is a cycle.

It always feeds itself with the past and regurgitate it with today's society.

And what is today's society? Internet. ​ When I think about fashion,I think about my grandmother,

and I think about how careful she was about what she wore,

how it fit, and I also think about how she passed that down to me.

So for this episode, I wanted to get into fashion today, why we wear what we wear,

what the history of it is, and how you yourself can decide

what it is that you want to experiment with. Because for me,

my clothing is everything from comfort to a pep talk. It is often the one thing I can

control in the morning, and so when I set out for the world,

for a job, for a lecture, for even a recording like this,

I think about what will make me feel the most confident. I mean,

that's true for going out on dates, too, and having fun with friends.

You know, it's practical as well as joyful. So that's why I wanted to get into it in

this episode, where I'm very lucky to bring on a very special guest to _Our Pandora's Box_.

Her name is Catherine Trotin. She is an old friend of mine from my days in Istanbul,

and she knows not only about the history of why we dress the way we do,

but also she has a very international perspective on developing a personal and professional style.

She is a marketing

expert, a host of the bilingual fashion podcast, My Fashion Stories Box,

as well as an instructor of fashion marketing and history at IFA Paris,

an international fashion and design business luxury school based in Paris and Istanbul.

So I'm very excited today to welcome on Catherine Trotin to the show,

so let's welcome her. ​ Catherine Trotin, welcome to the show. We're so happy to have you here.

Thank you, Maria, for inviting me. So we're talking today about fashion,

and Catherine, we met actually because of fashion. You reached out to me,

for some content writing back when we were living in Istanbul. Exactly.

I was working for a Turkish footwear company, and, the director was looking to translate the website in

as many languages as possible. And in fact, it's him who found you,

and then after we were exchanging,

messages because he put me in contact with you so that I can do,

the follow-up and basically... it's Istanbul and it's fashion. We can say that like that.

Why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourself? Aside from having been involved with the

shoe company in Istanbul, how would you describe yourself? I'm Catherine. I don't like to say that I'm

French because this is not how I want to be defined. I don't consider myself as someone coming

from one country. I've been living abroad for almost the majority of my life.

I would say that, I'm a person who is curious, who has been traveling,

who has been learning, and still is learning, regarding history and more like focusing on the past,

try to understand the present and try to, not to guess, but maybe to anticipate what could happen,

in the future. I've been working in marketing for a good part of my time,

in Moscow first and then after when I moved to Istanbul,I started to work in fashion.

And what got you

interested in fashion to begin with? Chance. I didn't have a big interest straight from the beginning.

When I see my students, they are like, 18 years old, sometimes 17 years old,

and, "I want to work in the fashion industry. I want to be a designer.

I want to be this and that." I wasn't like that. I discovered this field,by chance,

honestly. So I was not interested in all the glitters and glamours that you can findon social media,

that you can see on fashion shows. I was more into what's happening behind.

What are the skills, what are the people who are involved into creating these beautiful artifacts,

these beautiful garments that people will wear, will copy? You have after all the process that we see

pretty well. And by starting teaching for this fashion school in Istanbul,

I've, also been asked to teach a fashion history class. I never taught fashion history.

I never taught

history. I was more a marketing person, I love history. it's a topic that I like very much.

Fashion I started to understand and so I said, "Why not? Let's try." And I discovered,

in fact, a big passion for me. It led me to do more research to work not just

on the history and how practices evolved from centuries to century I also wanted to learn about the

influence of the society. How the structure of the society, how the religion,

how the cultures, how the beliefs, how the position of men, women,

young people, older people influenced the way people were dressed and what was important for them to communicate

about. So this non-verbal communication aspect linked with fashion and the sociologyof fashion was what really started to

interest me and still is nowadays. I'm excited to get into all of

that, because this is why we're talking. But I always ask the guests this question at the start.

If you could go back in time to your late 20s, what advice would you give yourself?

I would say "Don't pay attention to what people think of you." Because "when I was,

uh, younger, and still a bit nowadays, I was really looking forward to have a validation from the

others. It was a kind of reassurance that I was on the right tracks,

that I was doing everything correctly. But, in the end, you understand that you don't need that.

But I was really looking to have people agreeing with me, to have people not judging me.

And I would say that, "Yeah, pay attention to them. This is not the most important.

They are not the one living your life. You are the one living your life." And this would

be the advice I would give younger self. It can take a moment to get there.

Speaking of, making your own decisions, you know, as you mentioned earlier,

you moved to Moscow and then you moved to Istanbul. And fashion varies so much country to country,

and what we wear has a big signal on who we are to other people,

and as you've said, the sociology of it. And we've both experienced this.

How did you manage either maintaining or creating a personal and professional style as you went from Russia

to Turkey and also back to France? When I was a student,

I just didn't pay attention what I was wearing. It was not important,

and because we didn't have money to spend on cool stuff, so it was,

hand-me-downs. It was secondhand. It wasvery cheap clothes because we didn't have the money to do in another

way. So I was not really putting efforts on how I would dress.

It started to change when I moved to Moscow Oh I was

working for the French office of a big French group, which had its headquarters in Paris,

and I was working for the office in Moscow. And the marketing and communication director from Paris started

to regularly come to Moscow because I was there to implement the marketing and communication.

And one day, she started to, you know, look me up and down.

And, just for the context, you have to imagine this, very posh,

Parisian woman, very small, very thin, with heels, and she looked at you very judgmental,

And she was, "You know, Catherine, you have to work on your dress code." And I did some

efforts on how I would look like, and it seems that it was not sufficient.

because I knew she was coming, and she was Parisian, and I don't come from Paris,

so you know, you have this kind of, we don't like Parisians,

Parisians don't like us. So she left, and then after I went to see my managing partner,

I said, "Oh, you don't know what she said to me. She said that I need to do

some efforts

because I don't dress well." And my managing partner was, "Hmm, you know,

you do have to do some efforts. You're not a student anymore.

You are a young professional. You are a representative, not just from France,

but you're also a representative from a French company," because I was going out a lot,

for networking events. So she said, "She's right. She was right to tell you that." And it started

to change, in fact. But did I work on a personal/professional style?

Not really. I was just copying. I was just taking inspiration from my colleagues,

from my managing partner, to try to fit, you know. Uh, that's why I would say that my

style was more like a kind of chameleon style, and as my personality is,

in fact. You adapt. At least this is how I function. I adapt,

I copy, I take inspiration. Well, I think a lot of us do that anyway.

It's very natural. As human beings, we wanna feel

like we belong, and then especially if you're someone who thrives in living outside of your country of

origin, we are people who are absolutely chameleons. That's how we survive.

That's how we manage it. But I think it's interesting, it sounds like that moment,

that really harsh truth telling Really harsh. You can't really imagine how I was,

like, starting I can. I was, grrr. No, I can, for sure But then after I developed a

kind of passion, I would say. I loved, going shopping with my girlfriends,

starting to take an interest into appearance, how Russian girls, women were dressed,

when we are going out, to parties, to clubs, and how I wouldn't dress that way.

But still, even if it's more unconscious level, you want to blend,

so you copy. I started to wear short skirts. I started to wear high heels.

In Istanbul I wouldn't wear that. In France, I could wear high heels,

it's just that it's not practical. I walk a

lot. But in Moscow it was fine because it was, you know,

how girls my age were dressed, so I just copied. Yeah. And we have to make two points,

I think, about why don't you wear high heels in Istanbul, or rarely.

A), the hills, which makes it impossible. You will kill yourself. And two,

maybe some unwanted attention. There are certain venues in which you could wear high heels,

but usually you see someone, or I remember seeing people with heels,

and they almost always came in a taxi or with a chauffeur Exactly.

It's true that moving to Istanbul, and I'm pretty sure you also experienced that,

completely changed the way I was dressing. All the miniskirts, short skirts,

heels that I was bringing with me, I would wear them very occasionally if I would be picked

up by taxi, if I knew I wouldn't have to cross a conservative part of the city.

Depending also if it was more an international crowd or more

Turkish crowd.You adapted because, again, you have this notion of culture that's different.

In Moscow, usually in Russia, it's fine. Women would dress, at least when I was living there,

maybe it changed but nobody was looking at you. Men were at some point either too drunk or

not truly interested because, there, there is a shortage of men, so it's not the men running after

you women. It's more the women were running after men in Russia.

The demographic situation is a bit different. I had never had problems.

On the contrary, you had even grandmothers telling me, "Oh, you need to wear heels.

You need to dress up in order to find good husbands," and blah,

blah, blah. You would never see a Turkish grandmother telling you need to wear short skirts and high

heels, because it makes you look more beautiful and more attractive to men.

The position women have in the society, how they're perceived, and how they

can also express their femininity, and it really differs from country to country.

It's not even the same in France and even in Europe. If you compare,

London, Paris, or Milan, it's not gonna be the same thing. No,

it's fun sometimes to take inspiration from the different ways that people do it and express it.

There are ways in which I'm honestly very grateful that my years in Turkey influenced my style.

There's some beautiful ways of drape and color and the little details that Turkish women like to wear,

especially back in the 2010s when we were there, um, that I really love and I really grew

to appreciate certain femininity that they had. So obviously women's style around the world has drastically changed over

the centuries, and you've been studying this. When would you say a modern style period began,

and what has that meant for women dressing for different occasions from work to play?

I would say that there was one

particular century that needs to be pinpoint in order to understand what has been happening during the 20th

century and what's currently happening during the 21st century. It's the 19th century.

The 19th century is really a turning point in the way, particularly when it comes to women's fashion,

in the way things started to change for different reasons. The first one is that at the end

of the previous century, you had a political event that everybody knows about,

the French Revolution. So we could think that the French Revolution was just for France.

But it did have some impacts also abroad in Europe.What happened during the French Revolution apart from beheading,

the king and the queen in this order, is that you had the abolition of privileges,

and a as part of that, you had the abolition of the sumptuary laws.

These were laws which would say what you could wear, what kind of fabrics,

what kind of embellishments you could have depending of

your social belonging, depending on your status and quality as they say usually in the laws.

So if you were part of the elite, if you are part of the aristocracy,

and again, depending on which level of the aristocracy, you could have access to silk,

you could have access to brocade, to gold thread embroideries, and so on and so forth.

If you are belonging to the bourgeoisie, if you are belonging to the working class,

you didn't have access to this because at some point these laws were here to reinforce the social

recognition through garments. As I told you a bit very briefly at the beginning,

fashion and the way we dress is a non-verbal communication. Consequently, they could already guess who you were

and how they could also address to you. The French revolutionaries, what they wanted to achieve in fact,

is to make sure that equality was for everybody, not just equality when it comes tobelongings,

but also when it comes to how you dress. What they did do for women

was to get rid of the corset. They got rid of, the pannier,

this kind of big structure which would give, the characteristic shape of the Rococo dresses,

the French-style dress. You also had the Polish-style dress. You had alwaysa kind of understructure.

Yeah The French revolutionaries said, "No, we don't want that anymore because it's preventing freedom of movement." So

you still have this notion of freedom, which was important, though you are a woman.

But it's interesting. If you look at the beginning of the 19th century,

fashion for women is very comfortable. Yes. So instead of these big pannier dresses,

to help us imagine if you haven't seen these types of dresses --what did it start to look

like? They're, you know, like you said, they're these cages, right? Well,

if you look at the beginning of the 18th century pre-French Revolution,

you need to imagine Marie Antoinette. She's everywhere in France currently. There are at least two exhibitions,

if I'm not mistaken, even three exhibitions going on the 18th century.

You have this very beautiful movie from

Sofia Coppola. Yes. So you will have the understanding of how women would dress before the Revolution.

Beginning of the 19th century, to give you an idea, you need to look at Bridgerton,

even it's not, like, 100% historically accurate in terms of costume designs,

you have the idea. It's high-waisted dress. if you look at the fashion history from the French side,

we would say it's Empire dress because it correspond to the First Empire and Napoleon Bonaparte.

If you look at the English side, it's the Regency dress, because corresponds to the Regency period.

But still, the dress is the same. You have a very high waist dress.

You don't have any volumes. It's very lean. You had a kind of rigidity at at the breast

level. It's not really a corset, so don't get, abused by people showing you corsets in Bridgerton for

the beginning of the 19th century because it's not accurate. Here you don't have understructure.

Sometimes it was even so transparent that people were complaining, "Oh, look,

we see.

Ooh, we need to hide." So that's how you have the first bottom undergarments But then it started

to I was I was gonna say, we don't stay that way though,

because you're describing the pannier, yet I'm like, "Oh, but wait, but it comes back in a different

shape," right? This period lasted 15 years roughly. And then after slowly if you look at portraits,

if you look at fashion magazines, engravings, you see that slowly fashion started to become more and more

rigid, more and more voluminous. And here have to thank the Industrial Revolution.

Really? So what happens? You had entrepreneurs, in the steel industry who wanted to earn a bit more

money. You produce, you want to make sure that people were going to consume and to come back

consuming. So they did three things which led to the comeback of items,

particularly in the women's wardrobe. One of them, is linked with the

corset. Before, in order to fasten your corset, you didn't have a steel round to make sure that

the fabric won't tear. So one genius said, "Oh, but let's put eyelets in metal in the corset.

So this brought back the corset. The heels also tended to disappear between the end of the French

Revolution and the 1810s. Again, a person said, let's put, some metal heels I see.

And now the crinoline. So usually when we think about the 18th century,

we have these big, voluminous dresses coming in mind. You can think about Queen Victoria,

Empress Eugénie. The Victorian era most of the time is associated with the crinolines.

And why did we have the comeback of this understructure? Again, still entrepreneurs says,

"Okay we need to find ways to sell more." So you're telling me capitalism is the reason for

this fashion style, the lobster tail fashion style that we see in 1890s into 1900s dresses?

Yeah, in particular, starting from the mid of the 19th century, you can definitely,

draw a parallel between the boom of capitalism and production and the complexification of females' wardrobe.

It's not the only thing. This is also during that period that fashion started to be considered superficial

in a sense. If you compare men and women during that period,

men it's very boring. It's black. It's very simple. It starts to be very comfortable also for them.

And for women, it starts to be complex because women were used by men as a way to

display their wealth, and if the crinoline started to reach crazy volumes,

it was also, "Look, I have the money to make sure that the women of my family can

wear all these crazy garments," because it cost a lot of money to have to pay

for these fabrics and to have these voluminous dresses. And it's not over.

Oh boy. What else? It's not over because indeed, during the 19th century,

women had to change several times particularly when it comes to the bourgeoisie.

I was going to say probably depending on their social class. If they were higher up,

they probably had to change multiple times. So what were the modes of the day in which they

had to change what they were wearing, and what would they wear?

You had to change at least five times a day. Not counting sports activities because also during the

19th century that sports activity started to rise and to be more and more practiced.

I was thinking this is a very lucrative trade to have housemaids and ladies' maids and all of

these different servants to help you get in and out of these garments,

especially if you have these hooks and all the different pieces to them and things like that.

But to think about changing five times a day... Was this again,

was this capitalism at play? Was this

sociology at play? Who started this notion, and when did this start to fall apart?

Because how long were people still having five different outfits a day?

Maybe not five. Okay. This practice of changing, honestly, I also had it in my family.

When I was going to school, I was dressed a certain way.

When I get back from school, I had to change in another type of outfit.

If there were people coming over for lunch or for dinner, you would dress up a bit.

If you are going to the cinema, if you are going to the theater,

you would dress up also. So you would adapt, in fact, the way you dress depending on the

activity, not to the extreme of what was happening for women during the 19th century.

But I was born during the 1980s. I was raised like that,

and it's true that when I am at home, I'm dressed more relaxed.

If I need to go out, I would change. In Greece, it's quite common to wear pajamas at

home. And I grew

up with a notion also of home clothes, and we would do the same thing.

We'd change out of whatever clothes we wore at school into something that was not as nice and

whatever over the weekend. But I say this as knowing that I don't actually know what the typical,

and I say this in air quotes right now, American experience is or Western European experience is,

because I recognize that I'm, my family has its own microcosm and bubble that is a window into

another part of the world. No, but it's true that I would say that it's European because even

the home clothes are not pajamas. You would dress after for the night,

which was completely different way of dress. So I guess we still kept that.

It's not something that is common nowadays. It depends on the people.

It depends on also on your own behavior. I know that I like to dress differently depending on

the occasion, Me too. depending on the type of people, depending on what I will be doing.

But it's not necessarily the

case for everybody. And this practice of changing depending on the occasion went on throughout the 20th century.

At the beginning of the 20th century, it was still pretty common before the First World War,

But already we start to see, that there is a simplification of dress.

Here you have take into consideration that during the 19th century you have sports activities which would develop

both for men and women, in fact. Nowadays we do see the difference between like sportswear and like

day wear, and we tend to dress during the day with sportswear.

But back in the time, I wouldn't say that it was necessarily a more comfortably cut or something

like that. It was just, okay, these are the pants for hunting,

for playing golf. And this influence of now we call it sportswear,

but this influence of sports activities became stronger and stronger throughout the 20th century.

And of course, the end of the 20th century, it was the reign of sportswear,

and nowadays it's

streetswear. If you look at the last, Louis Vuitton's fashion show, it's for men,

it's completely sportswear. So we've gone into, in the 20th century, it's very unstructured,

and also I'm assuming women's roles in society and what they're doing and the emergence of-- is it

actually the emergence of more women working outside the house? N- no,

because women were working this whole time. Women were working, but what happened with the 20th century is

that more and more women started to work, and it's not just working class women.

You also had women from higher social groups who would start working.

Before working for women was a sign of poverty, but during the First World War in Europe,

men were mobilized. They were fighting on the fronts, and women stayed in the back,

and they, in fact, run the countries. They run the companies that their husbands or all the men

left. And after that, they understood that they could be independent, and they didn't need a man to

support them financially.

So it was a big discovery. Not discovery, but a big realization,

"Okay, I can do it myself. It's not because, I'm poor, am I coming from poor background that

I need to work. It because by working, I can also gain independence from men." And throughout the

1920s, the 1930s, you have more and more women, in fact, taking on,

positions, because they had to necessarily, but because they wanted to, because it brought them a certain level

of independence. And this is interesting also to notice throughout the 20th century in Western Europe,

I would say in Western Europe because this is what I'm more familiar with,

but in other countries, in other regions, something that you can also notice.

But women were working. They were more independent financially, and you can also notice that the dresses became

simpler Freedom of movement again. Again. Again, the French revolutionaries were on something.

And then we have, of course, after World War

II, the New Look and a return to a more structured look for women.

Yeah, it's interesting to compare. it's Christian Dior who launched the New Look,

in 1947.And, it's interesting because also to understand why he brought back these crinoline-inspired dresses,

because they were inspired by the crinoline. You have different elements to take into consideration,

all linked with also the personal history of Christian Dior. Christian Dior was born at the beginning of

the 20th century in a wealthy family in Normandy, with flowers, with his mother,

his sister, and wasinfluenced by this kind of romantic era, the past is beautiful.

Then after his his family went bankrupt, he started to work for different designers during the war.

He would work Lucien Lelong, who would after train many designers who would start in the 19 50s.

And he also had a

sister, Catherine Dior, who was part of the French Resistance. And, his sister got arrested by the Gestapo

during the very last days of the war. weeks before the liberalization of Paris.

And she got arrested, she got tortured, she got sent to a concentration camp.

It was the last convoy which went there. So he was very afraid of never seeing his sister

again, so finally, it was, with the Red Cross, they managed to find her.

She was alive. And when he learned when, she would arrive in Paris,

so he waited for her, and he was just with a big bucket of flower because he was

raised like that. And he didn't know how to react because you can imagine she spent months in

the concentration camp,she had many health issues. When he saw her looking like a skeleton,

he got scared. And many people, in fact, got scared by seeing what was happening plus the fashion

during the Second World

War for women, which was not feminine at all, very much inspired by the military uniforms.

Sohe was reacting to this by saying, "Okay, let's bring back femininity.

Let's bring back women as flowers," as it was during the 19th century.

And that's why you had the bar jacket, the full skirts. It was for him a way to

bring back this notion of sweetness, of calmness, Of comfort. Exactly. It sounds like...

nostalgia. Exactly. It was completely nostalgia for him. I think we have to talk about fashion today.

We had a conversation before this formal interview about how it seems at the moment that fashion doesn't

have a cohesion to it, or there are many different trends that are happening at once.

We haven't even talked about fast fashion. You mentioned it with the Industrial Revolution of making it easier

and quicker for people, but now, it's indisputable. It's at a fever pitch of how quickly

fast fashion turns out different trends and designs, and then it's gone.

So what do you see going on right now? Understand that it's not as easy to define what

is fashion today as it was for the past, where you had,

from decade to decade, a particular style, in fact. okay, you can say it's the 1920s,

it's the 1930s, and then it's the 1980s, it's the 1970s. You can say that.

But can you say it's the 2020s? It's the 2010s? It's another question.

Fashion is a cycle. It always feeds itself with the past and regurgitate it with today's society.

And what is today's society? Internet. The rise of social media. A faster communication,

a faster production also. So you see more and more practices from the 20th century and any kind

of

decade, like from the 18th century, even like from the 16th century,

coming back and being, given another shape. And this is what is fashion.

So the way we communicate, the speed that we have to produce,

maybe also at some point the impact of climate change, the geopolitical events which are very strong for

the past years also impact fashion. The fact that you don't have just one center of fashion,

which was Western Europe, but you have now different hubs with their own identity,

with their own culture from former colonies, and they want to also be part of the discussion.

So when I ask students what is fashion? How do you describe fashion today?

They say, "Oh yeah, we take it- We blend it and we give it some...

We give another shape." And it changes almost every day because of social media,

TikTok, for example. when it comes to, new trends and being adopted,

by billions of people, it's on TikTok. I've seen this as an accusation online or indictment online that

no one has original style anymore because everyone is copying each other from social media,

rushing from, to copy it literally from head to toe. And we said earlier in this conversation,

our styles are in some ways are still about blending in. Some people dress to stand out,

but generally as people, as societies, that's what we do to feel like we have some sort of

in-group or that we belong. So do you think it's true that there's no originality anymore,

or is this a moot point? We need to define what is originality.

Originality in 2026 might not be the same as it was at the end of the 20th century.

If I say to my fashion students that their style is not original,

while I do see that they put efforts to stand out, I will

be killed. I mean, I would be beheaded. Honestly, they would put a guillotine in the campus.

They will come for me. So what is originality? Because maybe originality for them is not the same

as what it is for me and for you. Maybe for them originality is to bring back,

I don't like it, but say, "Yeah, it's vintage from the 1990s." And I was,

"No, it's not vintage. I'm not vintage." You have the fact that the,

this new generation, the Gen Z, and then you'll have Gen Alpha,

they don't live on the same time zone, I would say almost,

than we do. Oh, absolutely. We all grew up through very different historical events,

and so that has absolutely influenced it. I mean, the '90s, I think about,

my own antipathy to it is that in the 1990s I was an adolescent,

so I see those clothes, and for me it evokes the emotional reaction I was the most awkward

during that time period. So I see them and I'm like, "Oh no,

we're not doing this again," even though I am not that person anymore.

Yep. But it's different. I love

1960s, '70s clothes. I never lived through that time period, but because I didn't,

I just see the clothes as how cool they are. And that's why it's,

it's difficult for me to do fashion history for today because, you know,

I was born in the 1980s, so I saw the last decades of the 20th century.

I saw the turning to the 21st century, and I'm gonna live for another few decades of the

21st century.It's easier for me to look at my mother's time, at my grandmother's time,

because indeed, as you said, I wasn't born. Absolutely. But to come back to today's fashion and how

to define fashion, fashion is linked with society. And for that, there is a quote from Gabrielle Chanel

that I like very much, and I wrote it down. She says that,

"Fashion is not something, that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in,

the sky, is in the street. Fashion has to do with ideas,

the way we live, what is

happening." And she was true. It's what is fashion. So when you want to understand a certain practice,

you need to see society at large. So if we try to understand what's happening today in fashion

and why we have all these things going together, we don't know where it goes.

Are we tending towards something gender-free? Something where everybody will be dressed the same way?

And as we are internationally connected, that's pretty new in human history to have so fast connections where

look, you are in the States, I'm in France. So it's the beauty of technology.

Of course, it makes fashion even more faster. And when it comes to fast fashion,

this is also, something that we didn't really talk about. I would love to have you back on

to talk about fast fashion and sustainability and, climate change We could do,

and we should do, a whole episode on that and how much I find in looking

at these big questions, it feels like there's a big tension between how much we can do as

individuals and how much the onus of this is on corporations and governments.

I would love to have a big discussion about all of those things.

So yes, not today for fast fashion, but yes, fast fashion is another aspect of talking about this.

I've got a listener question for you. Oh, sure. Hi, Catherine. My name is Afton.I graduated with a

degree in art history, and after looking at all of your experience,

I'm just, in awe. You've done so much research and work with women around the world from all

different backgrounds, all different cultures, all areas of the world, and I'm just curious to know if you

see a common theme that ties all of us women together and how we can really,

use that information to keep evolving as the next generation of women in the world today?

Fashion

is something that is so unique to every person, but I'm curious if you found any common themes

of what truly ties us together as women around the world. Thank you very much for for your

question. It's a very interesting one. You know, what I've noticed, no matter the period of time,

no matter the century we're talking about, no matter the culture, no matter the country of origin,

there is indeed one thing that link women together. It's the wish to be beautiful.

And beauty can be translated in so many ways. Of course, 16th century beauty is not the same

as 21st century beauty. But the notion of I want to feel beautiful,

I want to show off who I am or what kind of person I want to be perceived.

I think that wishing to be beautiful is the common thread that we all have as women.

So I've got two more questions to close this out, One, how can people develop their own style?

And

two, in order to do that, what do you recommend people read,

watch, listen to, and go see to learn about fashion history? For the first question,

which was on how to work on one's personal style. What I would like to answer is really

to be open to inspiration, to allow ourselves to be inspired. As a starting point,

to experiment, to see what are the people around you wear, and to try on what fits,

what feels natural to your personality, to your body type also, and what doesn't,

so that after you can select, okay, this is what I want to keep,

this is what I don't want to keep. I'm not gonna tell you need to wear such and

such brand because it's not relevant for me. because brand is not style.

But if you want to really work on your personal style, get inspired.

Then after when it comes to reading recommendations.

So of course you have Auguste Racinet. It's maybe one of the first...

19th century historian, so you need to take some distance, but still it's a starting point.

From the 1960s, where you had a revival of fashion as a sociological topic.

So you had, James Laver and, François Boucher. These two people wrote fashion history books.

And after, if you are more into the uh, semiology of fashion,

you have, again, a sociologist from the beginning of the 20th century who discoursed about what is fashion.

What's his name? Daniel Roche. He wrote a lot about the cult of appearance starting from the 18th

century, and of course he will talk about, the 19th century. Then what I would encourage you to

do is to read biographies and autobiographies of designers from the 20th century,

because this is where you start having people writing about themselves. You have an insight about their

lives. You can understand what makes their houses so important even nowadays,

and you also have an idea about the time in which they were living and how they reacted

to that time. I would also recommend to watch documentaries. There is one that I like to watch

with my fashion marketing students, It's a documentary on Diana Vreeland. So Diana Vreeland is the first Anna

Wintourr. And, she put Vogue on the radar. She put the Met Gala.

You will watch the documentary. You will have an idea about her personality.

She was crazy, but sometimes you need this type of crazy people.

And also she was born at the beginning of the 20th century,

and she died at the end of the 20th century. It gives also an idea about what kind

of society influenced her and how she was able after the second half of the n- 20th century

to influence the society. And you have podcasts. I have my own podcast.

It can be interesting for you also to listen

to it. There are also two fashion historians having their own podcast.

it's called, Dressed: The History of Fashion. Love it. Then you have,

the Museum at FIT, and they also have a very interesting podcast.

They have a YouTube channel. Most of the time it touches on,

more modern fashion history, I remember one day they did,a YouTube online,conference on sneakers,

for example. I will gather all this information, for you to be able to consult after on the

Substack. Fantastic. I think this is a treasure trove of resources to go into and fun things to

see. I think I've seen that documentary on Diana Vreeland and very much enjoyed it many years ago,

so I think the listeners will as well. And I wanna thank you for coming on _Our Pandora's

Box_ today. This has been, for me, a really lovely discussion, a lot of fun.

I love clothes. I love looking not just at what they actually look at and,letting the eye travel

as Vreeland would say, but also getting

to touch the garments and touch the accessories and describe them as I did earlier in my career

when I was doing some of that writing. Thank you very much,

Maria. It was really a true pleasure to be here. Thank you very much for,

having thought about me, and I hope that this episode will be useful for your audience.

And, I'm looking forward to talk to you again. Thank you. Me too.

​ Thank you all for listening today to this episode of _Our Pandora's Box_.

I hope you got as much out of it as I did.

I had a lot of fun both in reminiscing and delving into our Istanbul days,

as well as learning aboutthe impacts of business on the things that we wear.

You can continue learning more about the conversation that we had today on Substack,

where we have an amazing list of resources that Catherine hinted at.

So come over there, have a read, leave a voice note, or,

tell us what you think so we can shape future

episodes. _Our Pandora's Box_ is a Pantelic Productions podcast that was created,

hosted, produced, and edited by yours truly, Maria Eliades. Thanks again for joining us,

and don't forget to stay hopeful and stay curious. I'll see you soon on the next _Our Pandora's

Box._ ​