About

Aurélie Van de Peer is a researcher, writer and lecturer with a special interest in fashion as a philosophical concept, cultural phenomenon and industry.

She lectured on Fashion Theory at the Fashion and Textile Design department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague, the Netherlands and is currently affiliated with the Master Critical Fashion Practices of the ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem, the Netherlands.

Her current research examines the temporal structure and politics of fashion and the ways in which restructuring fashion’s relation to time underpins a more humane fashion system for both consumers and fashion professionals.

Her writings on the subject appear in academic and mainstream thought-provoking publications such as Vestoj, Metropolis M, Cultural Sociology and Fashion Theory.

Aurélie earned a PhD in Philosophy at Ghent University, Belgium (2015) and a PhD in Social Sciences (Sociology) at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium (2015). Her dissertation explored the changes in the evaluative criteria leading fashion journalists relied on to judge fashion collections between 1950 and 2010.

After five years of studying fashion writing, she decided to pick up the journalist’s pen herself. Aurélie now contributes to the growing community of independent fashion writers who seek to critique fashion as a phenomenon and creative industry instead of merely praising it into cultural irrelevance. Between 2014 and 2019 she served as the 'fashion doctor' of Charlie Magazine, a Belgium-based independent feminist publication.

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Aurélie does not care what you wear. But she does care to offer you the conceptual tools to consider why you think this question matters and who benefits from your fear to look old-fashioned or your pleasure to look on point. Because to change the fashion system, you first have to understand how it operates. 

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She lives in Ghent, Belgium.