On Fashion History and the Human Story

This is our season 4 finale, and we’re taking a look back—not at the history of this podcast, but at the history of fashion, and our guide is a great one.

Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell is an award-winning fashion historian, curator, and journalist and a 2020–21 National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Politico, and The Wall Street Journal, and she is the author of three books, including Worn on This Day: The Clothes That Made History, which had its origins as a Twitter account and was published in 2019 by Running Press.

While we had a lot of questions for her about Worn on This Day—how she found an article of clothing tied to every day of the year, what kind of history this approach allowed her to write, why she picked what she did for the September 11th entry—we also talked about the distinctive role fashion plays in the human story.

We asked Kimberly about her NEH project, as well, and learned a little bit about American fashion designer Chester Weinberg, whom she’s hoping to reintroduce to a large audience. And then there was her most recent book, The Way We Wed: A Global History of Wedding Fashion, a sequel of sorts to Worn on This Day.

Fun fact there: The white wedding dress? Not as traditional as you might think.

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About the Podcast:

“With a Side of Knowledge” is a podcast produced at the University of Notre Dame. It features interviews with fascinating people from both Notre Dame and elsewhere that take place over brunch—or if we’re really in a pinch, coffee.

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