Dressed: The History of Fashion · Dressed Media

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March 18, 2026·32 min·2 clips

Schiaparelli started licensing deals in America just a year after opening her fashion house, a fact missing from her memoir.

1. Dressed: The History of Fashion hosts April Callahan and Cassidy Zachary release a brief off-season teaser to announce season nine and preview recent teaching and research work. 2. April Callahan and Cassidy Zachary are co-hosts and friends who describe themselves as fashion historians; no guest appears in this episode. 3. The episode's purpose is to maintain listener connection during a break, announce upcoming content, and promote the Paris tour and online courses available at dresshistory.com. 4. April received an advance press copy of the Victoria and Albert Museum's Schiaparelli retrospective book, approximately 300 pages, ahead of an upcoming exhibition at the V&A. 5. A key discovery from the V&A book is that Schiaparelli established licensing deals with American companies as early as 1929, just two years after opening her business without formal fashion training, and this American trip does not appear in her memoir. 6. Cassidy taught a class called 'What Women Wore to the Revolution' covering 1770s-to-1840s fashion through the lens of Marie Antoinette, Jane Austen, and young Queen Victoria, with Queen Victoria highlighted as fashionable and in conversation with fashion for roughly her first 20 years as Queen before adopting lifelong mourning dress after Prince Albert's death in 1861. 7. Dr. Hilary Davidson's book decoding Jane Austen's fashion letters is cited as a key research source; Davidson identified 'list slippers' as shoes woven from fabric selvedge (leftover trimming edges) that servants would bring for guests to change into after dancing. 8. The word 'gown' in Austen's era could mean either the finished dress or the length of fabric itself, used interchangeably, illustrating how much 200-year-old fashion vocabulary has been lost. 9. The Paris trip is confirmed for August 30th through September 6th, with a possible second departure September 13th-20th if the first sells out. 10. Paris itinerary highlights include the Dior Museum in Normandy, the Azzedine Alaïa Foundation, and the Palais Galliera, which hosts a new exhibition called 'Weaving, Embroidering, and Embellishing' tracing French fashion handcraft from the 18th century to the present. 11. An exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs titled 'Royal Thai Dress from Tradition to Modernity' will focus on Queen Sirikit, the former Queen of Thailand who died in April 2025 at age 93 and who used fashion diplomacy with Pierre Balmain to promote Thai heritage and French haute couture simultaneously. 12. Jim Thompson, described as a CIA operative who fell in love with Thailand during World War II, is mentioned for his role in reviving and modernizing the Thai silk industry post-war. 13. The Paris tour also includes a private after-hours tour of the Palais Garnier opera house with access to the ballet costume shops, a walking tour of Rue de la Paix covering the House of Worth and other historic luxury houses, and a full-day visit to Versailles with a group lunch on the Grand Canal. 14. A behind-the-scenes visit to Auversois, described as the oldest operating silk manufacturer in France now in its sixth generation of family ownership, is included and is not open to the general public. 15. Season nine launches May 6th with Schiaparelli episodes expected to open the run. 16. Confirmed upcoming episodes include Palestinian embroidery, the Antwerp Six with Momu curator Kat Debo, fashion beyond the binary, and a new Ben Hollingham episode on Guinness World Records' film costume records. 17. April is also preparing an episode with Eleanor Hewton about her biography of Charlotte Brontë that uses Charlotte's surviving garments as 'witnesses' to construct her life story. 18. The hosts speak in a relaxed, warm conversational tone typical of off-season check-ins, with numerous personal asides and friendly humor throughout. 19. Fashion historians, podcast listeners interested in fashion history education, and those considering Paris fashion tours will find this episode most useful. 20. Listeners looking for deep-dive content episodes with expert guests and historical analysis should wait for the May 6th season nine premiere instead.

As heard by us

A warm preview connects Queen Sirikit's diplomatic wardrobe to Dressed's next fashion-history path.

Dressed: The History of Fashion uses this brief check-in to catch up with April Callahan and Cassidy Zachary before setting up where the show is headed next.

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You get a gentle Dressed pop-in before the new season officially returns.

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