Alexander Vasiliev in Cologne. "Sex and Fashion: from Diaghilev to the Madonna" 22 May 2026

• What tricks, hidden and obvious, do we all resort to in our clothing to please the opposite sex?
• How did changes in the perception of sex affect the development of fashion in the 20th century?
• What canons of male and female beauty existed in the last century?

In his speeches, Alexander Vasiliev touches on such delicate and at the same time brutal topics as sex, eroticism and the relationship between the sexes. How religion, philosophy, cultural and sexual revolutions, and the evolution of gender relations influence the formation and development of fashion.

• What is fashion in this context: subterfuge, subterfuge, seduction?
• How have feminism and machoism of all times influenced the development of fashion?

Alexander Vasiliev offers a new perspective on fashion - that of a careful and experienced historian through the prism of twentieth-century social mores.