‘Clothes make the man’, this popular saying directs attention to the signifying function of clothes, pointing at once to fashion and to identity fashioning. Moreover, this saying reflects ideational and ideological stance that see the body in terms of empty vessel, or tabula rasa on which meanings are engraved. Although the objectifying of the body was criticized in the last decades this attitude persists and is still present in cultural discourses. The course aims at surveying different approaches, within both cultural theories and artistic practices, to the body as a product of social construction and cultural making. While focusing on the presentation and representation of the dressed body and nudity, we will seek to get at the deep structures of body and identity politics.