Inside the Louvre’s first ever fashion exhibition, with treasures from Versace to Dior

Throughout his legendary fashion career, Karl Lagerfeld maintained that “Art is Art, Fashion is Fashion.” But a new exhibition, “ Louvre Couture, Art and Fashion: Statement Pieces,” might just prove the late German fashion designer wrong. Running until July 21, the exhibition features 45 designers — from Chanel and Balenciaga to Versace and Yves Saint Laurent — revealing an unprecedented dialogue between art and fashion from the 1960s to today.

Seventy garments and 30 accessories by a host of renowned designers are presented in this landmark show — the first fashion exhibition ever staged at the Louvre — with creations often hidden among the museum’s nearly 100,000 square feet of rooms and galleries.

While this is the first time the Louvre is exhibiting fashion garments, clothing is omnipresent in its galleries, from Vermeer’s “The Lacemaker” to Ingres’ nude, turban-wearing “Grand Odalisque.” What is worn — or not worn — has always been a central component of the creation and reception of art.

“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,” said Laurence des Cars, the museum’s president, in an interview at the Louvre.

The collection weaves the threads between fashion and a diverse array of “art objects” — including tapestries, ceramics, portraits, sculptures and the layout of the Louvre’s galleries themselves. Visitors are invited to flâner — or wander aimlessly, as the French saying goes — through the museum and discover its less popular collections.

“The Louvre is so much more than just the ‘Mona Lisa’,” Olivier Gabet, the museum’s director of art objects as well as the exhibition’s curator, said with a smile.

A fashionable exchange

While painter Paul Cézanne once observed that “the Louvre is the book in which we learn to read,” for fashion designers, the museum is the “ultimate mood board,” observed Gabet. From Lagerfeld to Alexander McQueen, designers have long been inspired by the wealth of collections displayed at the world’s biggest museum. Some, like Christian Louboutin, shared with Gabet childhood memories of days spent in its halls. Others, like Yves Saint Laurent, were themselves great art connoisseurs and collectors. For Gabet, the personal relationship between the designers and the Louvre was the starting point for the exhibition.

It’s a connection epitomized by the Dior silhouette that opens the exhibition, said Gabet. Entitled, “Musée du Louvre,” Gabet said that, to his knowledge, it is the “only piece in the history of haute couture to be named after a museum.

The exhibition pays homage to major historical periods, inviting visitors to rediscover the Louvre’s artifacts through the prism of contemporary designers. Highlights include a crystal-embroidered Dolce & Gabbana dress inspired by 11th-century mosaics from Santa Maria Assunta in Torcello, Venice. A spectacular silk Dior gown featuring a Sun King motif is staged before a baroque portrait of Louis XIV himself.

Iconic pieces such as Gianni Versace’s 1997 metal mesh gown — previously displayed at the 2018 “Heavenly Bodies” Met Gala exhibition — are also on display. The garment took two of the atelier’s seamstresses more than 600 hours — or 25 days — to stitch by hand and is embellished with Swarovski crystals, golden embroidery featuring Byzantine crosses and Versace’s signature draping inspired by Ancient Greek peplum dresses.

The gown inspired both Kim Kardashian’s gold Versace dress at the 2018 Met Gala and Donatella Versace’s iconic “Tribute” collection the same year, which featured five of the original supermodels: Naomi Campbell, Carla Bruni, Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer and Helena Christensen.

Details, details

Sometimes, designers’ references to objects in the Louvre are literal. Karl Lagerfeld’s 2019 collection for Chanel, for instance, featured a striking embroidered jacket whose motif is drawn from an 18th-century blue and white chest by cabinet maker Mathieu Criaerd. Lagerfeld, who considered the Louvre his “second studio,” sketched his initial designs for the dress on a museum catalog featuring the chest, before sending the final version to the Chanel atelier.

Glamour can even be found in the Middle Ages, with armour-style dresses transforming models into modern 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 next to a 3D-printed armour Balenciaga gown.

More often, the broad sweep of history serves as recurrent inspiration for designers, such as Italian Renaissance paintings 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 around the corner, “Louvre Couture” offers a source of inspiration for designers and visitors alike, illuminating the ongoing dialogue between art 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 this is just the beginning of the conversation. In March, the famed Parisian museum will host hundreds of guests for the Grand Dîner, an event that is already being referred to as the first French Met Gala.

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