Paris
NCS
—
Throughout his legendary fashion profession, Karl Lagerfeld maintained that “Art is Art, Fashion is Fashion.” But a brand new exhibition, “ Louvre Couture, Art and Fashion: Statement Pieces,” may simply show the late German fashion designer incorrect. Running till July 21, the exhibition options 45 designers — from Chanel and Balenciaga to Versace and Yves Saint Laurent — revealing an unprecedented dialogue between artwork and fashion from the Nineteen Sixties to right now.
Seventy clothes and 30 equipment by a bunch of famend designers are introduced in this landmark present — the first fashion exhibition ever staged on the Louvre — with creations usually hidden among the many museum’s almost 100,000 sq. toes of rooms and galleries.
While that is the first time the Louvre is exhibiting fashion clothes, clothes is omnipresent in its galleries, from Vermeer’s “The Lacemaker” to Ingres’ nude, turban-wearing “Grand Odalisque.” What is worn — or not worn — has all the time been a central part of the creation and reception of artwork.
“It’s very important for the Louvre to continue to open itself up to new generations and to make its own small contribution to understanding today’s world. That is exactly what this exhibition does,” stated Laurence des Cars, the museum’s president, in an interview on the Louvre.
The assortment weaves the threads between fashion and a various array of “art objects” — together with tapestries, ceramics, portraits, sculptures and the format of the Louvre’s galleries themselves. Visitors are invited to flâner — or wander aimlessly, because the French saying goes — by way of the museum and uncover its much less common collections.
“The Louvre is so much more than just the ‘Mona Lisa’,” Olivier Gabet, the museum’s director of artwork objects in addition to the exhibition’s curator, stated with a smile.
While painter Paul Cézanne as soon as noticed that “the Louvre is the book in which we learn to read,” for fashion designers, the museum is the “ultimate mood board,” noticed Gabet. From Lagerfeld to Alexander McQueen, designers have lengthy been impressed by the wealth of collections displayed on the world’s greatest museum. Some, like Christian Louboutin, shared with Gabet childhood recollections of days spent in its halls. Others, like Yves Saint Laurent, had been themselves nice artwork connoisseurs and collectors. For Gabet, the non-public relationship between the designers and the Louvre was the start line for the exhibition.
It’s a connection epitomized by the Dior silhouette that opens the exhibition, stated Gabet. Entitled, “Musée du Louvre,” Gabet stated that, to his information, it’s the “solely piece in the historical past of high fashion to be named after a museum.
The exhibition pays homage to main historic durations, inviting guests to rediscover the Louvre’s artifacts by way of the prism of up to date designers. Highlights embrace a crystal-embroidered Dolce & Gabbana costume impressed by Eleventh-century mosaics from Santa Maria Assunta in Torcello, Venice. A spectacular silk Dior robe that includes a Sun King motif is staged earlier than a baroque portrait of Louis XIV himself.
Iconic items corresponding to Gianni Versace’s 1997 metallic mesh robe — beforehand displayed on the 2018 “Heavenly Bodies” Met Gala exhibition — are additionally on show. The garment took two of the atelier’s seamstresses greater than 600 hours — or 25 days — to sew by hand and is embellished with Swarovski crystals, golden embroidery that includes Byzantine crosses and Versace’s signature draping impressed by Ancient Greek peplum clothes.
The robe impressed each Kim Kardashian’s gold Versace costume on the 2018 Met Gala and Donatella Versace’s iconic “Tribute” assortment the identical yr, which featured 5 of the unique supermodels: Naomi Campbell, Carla Bruni, Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer and Helena Christensen.
Sometimes, designers’ references to things in the Louvre are literal. Karl Lagerfeld’s 2019 assortment for Chanel, as an illustration, featured a placing embroidered jacket whose motif is drawn from an 18th-century blue and white chest by cupboard maker Mathieu Criaerd. Lagerfeld, who thought-about the Louvre his “second studio,” sketched his preliminary designs for the costume on a museum catalog that includes the chest, earlier than sending the ultimate model to the Chanel atelier.
Glamour may even be discovered in the Middle Ages, with armour-style clothes reworking fashions into fashionable Joan of Arcs. French actress Brigitte Bardot was famously photographed by David Bailey in a 1967 Paco Rabanne chainmail tunic, which is featured in the exhibition subsequent to a 3D-printed armour Balenciaga robe.
More usually, the broad sweep of historical past serves as recurrent inspiration for designers, corresponding to Italian Renaissance work for Maria Grazia Chiuri at Christian Dior, Medieval tapestries for Dries van Noten, or 18th-century delicacies evoked by John Galliano and Christian Louboutin.
With Paris Fashion Week across the nook, “Louvre Couture” presents a supply of inspiration for designers and guests alike, illuminating the continuing dialogue between artwork and fashion.
“The exhibition is not here to say that fashion is or isn’t art,” Gabet concluded. “Fashion is about creation. The artistic culture shared between great designers — that’s the leitmotif of the collection.”
And that is only the start of the dialog. In March, the famed Parisian museum will host tons of of visitors for the Grand Dîner, an occasion that’s already being known as the first French Met Gala.