A fascinating meeting on the diverse meanings of clothing and fashion accessories in human society took place within the framework of the Cultural Center at the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Library in the University of Haifa on March 18, 2025.

Renana Benit, Art & Fashion history researcher and lecturer and Inbar Goldner, Fashion designer and design researcher, from the Department of Fashion Design at the University of Haifa, presented a glimpse into their new research, which examines social, political, and gender aspects of clothing, as creating together a unique “fashion language” for a specific historical period, geographical region, social movement, and the like.

Renana and Inbar took the audience on a virtual fashion tour to the Palace of Versailles at the time of Marie Antoinette in the 18th century pre-revolution France, through the women’s suffrage movement of the 19^th century struggling for their voting rights, and to the nuances of fashion choices at the last Hollywood Oscar ceremony, which took place in March 2025.

The lecture emphasized the dual power of fashion in the world of women, defining their status in society and reflecting changes in their social and political roles throughout history. On the one hand, clothing and fashion accessories often serve to curb and place various restrictions on women within the public sphere, on the other hand, they enable creation of the secret language, through which women can communicate, convey messages, assume identities, and eventually redefine the power relations between the two sexes on the social and political arena.