A stunning new exhibition featuring a curated selection of haute couture statement pieces by some of the world’s leading fashion designers has opened in the Department of Decorative Arts at the Musée du Louvre. “Louvre Couture” is the Musée du Louvre’s first-ever fashion exhibition and is curated by Olivier Gabet.
Designs and accessories from 45 fashion houses are featured including Chanel, Christian Dior, Vivienne Westwood, Versace, Alexander McQueen, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Jean Paul Gaultier, Gareth Pugh, Rick Owens, Givenchy, Thom Browne and Iris van Herpen. The exhibition explores connections and resonances with the Louvre’s collection of masterpieces.
Although we have known since the days of Paul Cézanne that ‘the Louvre is the book from which we learn to read’, this inexhaustible wellspring of inspiration has also nourished one of contemporary art’s liveliest domains: the world of fashion. More and more, research and monographs dedicated to the greats of fashion have boldly begun to trace aesthetic family trees, establishing these figures in a historical and artistic context. The pattern is not merely one of disruptions, with various degrees of radical innovation, or of seasonal changes, but also one of echoes and evocations. The threads weaving their way between the work of great fashion figures and the world of art are almost endless, and the history of art as expressed by the Musée du Louvre, in the depth of its collections and in the ways it reflects the tastes of days gone by, is an equally vast terrain of influences and sources.
In consideration of the Louvre’s encyclopedic immensity, this exhibition follows a methodological approach geared towards exploring the history of decorative styles, art professions and ornamentation through the galleries of the Department of Decorative Arts, where textiles are omnipresent – though generally in tapestries and other décor items rather than in articles of clothing.
Over a nearly 9,000-square-metre space, 65 designs are displayed, along with a number of accessories, newly illuminating the close historical dialogue that continues to take place between the world of fashion and the department’s greatest masterpieces, from Byzantium to the Second Empire. Each of these garments and accessories is on special loan from the most iconic fashion houses, both long-standing and recent, in Paris and throughout the world.
The couture statement pieces are displayed in the Department of Decorative Arts in a way that highlights existing parallels: the department owes part of its collection to the generosity of great fashion figures, from Jacques Doucet to Madame Carven. These countless connections embrace common methodological ground in the fields of art history and fashion: knowledge of ancestral techniques, visual culture and the subtle interplay of references, from the catalogue raisonné of the museum to the mood board of the fashion world. ‘Louvre Couture’ offers a new perspective on decorative arts through the prism of contemporary fashion design.
The couture pieces are situated carefully in the galleries of the Department of Decorative Arts amongst displays of Byzantium artworks and artefacts to Second-Empire France and including precious Medieval miniatures in gold and ivory, Renaissance-era tapestries, opulent 18th-century period rooms and a breathtaking collection of armor.
“Louvre Couture. Art and Fashion: Statement Pieces” is at Musée du Louvre until 21st July, 2025.
