Valerie Steele is the Chief Curator of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, and one of the most prominent fashion historians working today. Her exhibition Gothic: Dark Glamour ran from September 2008 to February 2009, and is the first major exhibition to focus on Gothic influences in fashion. An accompanying book, with an additional essay by Jennifer Park, was published by Yale University Press in 2008. I met Steele on 12 February just before the exhibition closed, and talked to her about the process of putting together the exhibition, the popular reaction to it, and about what Gothic in fashion means more generally.