About Elizabeth L. Block, PhD
Elizabeth L. Block, PhD, is an art and culture historian, international speaker, and award-winning author of Gilded Age Fashion, Beyond Vanity: The History and Power of Hairdressing, and Dressing Up: The Women Who Influenced French Fashion.
Elizabeth L. Block, PhD, is an award-winning art and culture historian, author, and speaker whose work explores how dress, hair, beauty, and material culture illuminate women’s lives and cultural power. Her research spans Gilded Age fashion, nineteenth-century American hairdressing, and the influence of American women on French couture.
She is a Senior Editor in the Publications and Editorial Department at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She is the award-winning author of Gilded Age Fashion (Hardie Grant, March 2026), Beyond Vanity: The History and Power of Hairdressing (MIT Press, 2024), and Dressing Up: The Women Who Influenced French Fashion (MIT Press, 2021).
She writes the popular Gilded Age Fashion newsletter, runs the Instagram account @elizabethlblock, and invites you all to join her there.
Appearances include National Arts Club, The New York Historical, Museum at FIT, and Winterthur Museum. She is a regular guest on podcasts Dressed: The History of Fashion and The Gilded Gentleman, and provides interviews to BBC, The Guardian, WWD, and Elle.
Her books have been featured in Forbes, Town & Country, The New York Post, Hyperallergic, as well as in academic journals in the fields of fashion history, American history, art history, and business history.
Dr. Block earned her PhD in art history at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, with a focus on 19th-century American painting. She also holds an MA in American Studies from Columbia University and a BA in English from The George Washington University.
Elizabeth lives in New York with her family and within walking distance of six museums.