Peter McNeil

Emeritus Professor Peter McNeil FAHA is an award-winning design historian who worked at University of Technology Sydney for 20 years. He continues to research there and is currently a Chief Investigator on a major funded project on the department store David Jones and design diplomacy. Prior to this he was Head of Art Theory at UNSW. He is Co-editor of the leading journal Fashion Theory. He launched Fashion Studies as a topic in the Taiwanese university system and visited there for a national lecture series in 2026. For a decade he was also Professor of Fashion Studies at Stockholm University where he worked to establish the dignity of this topic in the European university system. He was Academy of Finland (FiDIPro) Distinguished Professor, Aalto University (2014-18) for ‘Costume Methodologies’. His many publications include the award-winning ‘The Fashion History Reader: Global Perspectives’, 2010 (with G. Riello); and ‘Fashion: Critical and Primary Sources, Renaissance to the Present Day’ (4 Vols. 2009). His monograph ‘‘Pretty Gentlemen’: Macaroni Men and the Eighteenth-century Fashion World’ was published by Yale University Press in 2018: Marina Warner named it a ‘Book of the Year’. McNeil writes for major exhibitions including Sydney Jewish Museum (‘Dressing Sydney’), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (‘Reigning Men’) and Kunsthaus Zurich (‘Fashion Drive’). He won a UTS Human Rights Award in 2018 for his work on LGBTQI visual culture. He is Past President of the AAANZ representing Art History in the region. He has published 21 stories for The Conversation, the most popular being on Marie-Antoinette's retreat; the Surry Hills factory fire; and the legacy of Carla Zamatti. He promotes First Nations fashion design by writing here with Dr Treena Clark.