https://fashionista.com/2025/06/how-to-become-a-fashion-historian-career#

In many ways, fashion historians are unsung heroes of the industry. After all, fashion history is incredibly telling about human history in general, and fashion historians get to preserve, interpret and share that," Levi's historian Tracey Panek tells Fashionista. They contextualize dated artifacts whose stories would otherwise be lost, assist curators and researchers on our favorite fashion exhibits and publicize all this knowledge so it'll be remembered for generations to come.

That's quite the responsibility. And yet, fashion historians remain hidden figures. Some exceptions have made names for themselves through press and social media, like fashion historian and costume designer Shelby Ivey Christie, fashion archivist Julie Ann Claus and Chief Curator at The Museum at FIT, Valerie Steele. Still, most outsiders probably can't properly articulate their job specifics.