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New York Times
25-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Dressing Like an Artist? There's an Art to That.
Fashion and art have long danced a pas de deux, with artists evoking dress in their work and designers referencing art in their creations. But rarely are the two examined together by major art institutions, said Annabelle Ténèze, the director of the Musée du Louvre-Lens, a satellite in Lens, northern France, of the famed Musée du Louvre. 'The intersection of art and fashion speaks to everyone. We all dress every day, which is an act of artistic expression, in its way. I thought, 'Why not look at the history of this relationship, and show how it fits into our lives today?'' Shortly after her appointment to the museum in 2022, Ténèze proposed the long-gestating subject to her colleague, Olivier Gabet, who leads the Louvre's decorative arts department in Paris, and suggested they curate it together. 'I thought it was a fierce and strong idea,' Gabel said in an interview last week, 'because it can be read on so many different layers.' The result is 'The Art of Dressing: Dressing Like an Artist,' an exhibition of 200 artworks and fashion items that explores how these two creative worlds circle, intersect and inspire each other and, at times, meld into one. It opens at the Louvre-Lens on Wednesday and runs through July 21. 'The Art of Dressing' is the Louvre's second exhibition that mixes fashion with art, after 'Louvre Couture,' a show curated by Gabet that opened in January in Paris. For that show, Gabet set contemporary fashion and accessories among the museum's art and furniture collections to reveal a dialogue between métiers and eras. Ténèze and Gabet's show at the Louvre-Lens goes deeper, addressing everything from the influence of Ancient Greece on modern attire to the expression of gender identity through clothes. 'It's a nice change to have the point of view about fashion from a museum that is not a fashion museum,' Gabet said. 'The perspective is different.' 'The Art of Dressing' opens with a large color photograph from 1998 of five models in the Yves Saint Laurent Room, a space in the National Gallery in London dedicated to Rubens which was restored in the mid-1990s, in part through a 1 million pound donation from the fashion designer and his partner Pierre Bergé. In the picture, each woman is dressed in a Saint Laurent outfit inspired by an artist, such as the Mondrian dress from 1965 and the Van Gogh 'Sunflowers' jacket from 1988. Also on display are three looks by Saint Laurent that were inspired by Georges Braque, the celebrated Cubist artist who painted a ceiling in the Louvre in the 1950s. 'We wanted to show that the couturier and the visual artist can be at the same level,' Ténèze said during a tour of the exhibition last week. 'What better way to start than with Yves Saint Laurent?' The exhibition also considers the clothes that artists wore and what their fashion choices reveal about their place in society. 'Artists of the 19th century decided to represent themselves in painting by wearing a black suit, which was the absolutely most bourgeois outfit of that period,' Gabet said, pointing out self-portraits by Eugène Delacroix in 1837 and Edgar Degas in 1855. Before then, as the exhibition shows, artists often portrayed themselves as St. Luke, the patron saint of painters, wearing a collarless tunic. In stark contrast, however, is how artists actually dress when they work: often in paint- and clay-spattered coveralls, like the royal blue ones favored by the 20th-century Swiss painter and sculptor Jean Tinguely. His estate still had one of those garments 34 years after his death, and lent it to the curators for the show. (Linking back to the world of fashion, Tinguely's coveralls are displayed near a 1984 Saint Laurent jumpsuit inspired by the classic French worker's jacket, the bleu de travail.) It was shocking in the 19th century when some women artists donned pants in the studio — as evidenced in Georges Achille-Fould's 1893 portrait of her mentor, Rosa Bonheur, painting a landscape while dressed in brown trousers and a blue smock. 'Women wearing pants was an act disallowed by society at the time,' Ténèze explained. And much later, too: Saint Laurent triggered social outcry in the 1960s with his tuxedo for women, one of which, from 1995, is in the show. 'Because these artists fought social norms, we can dress more freely today,' Ténèze said. Thinking about androgyny led Ténèze and Gabet to look at gender identity and cross-dressing in art and fashion. In the show, there are some expected icons, such as the 19th-century French female writer George Sand, who, like Bonheur, preferred to wear men's clothing — she is depicted at her nattiest in a sepia-toned portrait by Delacroix from 1834 — and Andy Warhol, who, in a series of Polaroid self-portraits, transforms from man to woman through changes of dress and wigs. But there are a few surprises too, such as Louise Abbéma's 'Sur le Lac au Bois de Boulogne,' an 1883 landscape featuring herself, in a gentlemen's suit, and her companion, the actress Sarah Bernhardt, in a pale pink gown, in a rowboat on a park lake. The curators said they wanted to spotlight long-forgotten female artists, such as Abbéma, to revive interest in their work. The show's many threads come together when the curators celebrate the collaborations of artists and fashion designers, such as that of the French sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle and her great friend, Marc Bohan, the designer at Christian Dior from 1960 to 1989. In the early 1980s, Saint Phalle created a namesake perfume with a bottle featuring a sculpted snake; in turn, Bohan made for Saint Phalle a shimmering gold pantsuit and headpiece inspired by her serpent to wear for the perfume's launch event (which Warhol hosted). Both the suit and the perfume's bottle and packaging are in the exhibition; the headpiece, sadly, is long lost, Ténèze said. When museumgoers leave the exhibition, they pass along a zigzag wall of full-length mirrors inspired by the décor from a fashion show by the British designer Alexander McQueen, explained the exhibition's scenographer, Mathis Boucher. 'We wanted visitors to look at themselves in the mirrors and ask, 'Why did I put this on today? What am I trying to say with this outfit?' Ténèze said. 'Like the exhibition, it's a reflection of ourselves, and our relationship with clothes.'
Washington Post
28-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Haute couture is in the spotlight at the Louvre
PARIS — The world's most visited art museum, the Louvre, is making history with its first exhibition on fashion since its creation 232 years ago. On Friday, 'Louvre Couture – Art and Fashion: Statement Pieces' opened with more than 100 couture pieces from over 45 of the world's top fashion houses, including Chanel, Hermès, Christian Dior, Jonathan Anderson, Iris van Herpen and Balenciaga. With this exhibition, Olivier Gabet, director of the Louvre Museum's Department of Decorative Arts, invites visitors to take a fresh look at its collections through the lens of contemporary haute couture designers, with a whirlwind tour through Byzantium, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Second Empire. 'Museums house knowledge but also enjoyment and delight,' Gabet said. Gabet's lighthearted curation places the spotlight on the convergence of haute couture and art. 'The Louvre is a giant mood board, an inexhaustible source of reference and inspiration,' Gabet said. 'As Paul Cézanne once said, 'The Louvre is the book from which we learn to read.'' With 8.7 million visitors in 2024, (averaging a colossal 30,000 per day), the Louvre doesn't need more visitors, but new ones. 'Fashion is very accessible, with no preconceptions. We all wear clothes; we all understand the meaning of a coat or a dress. We're using this accessibility to lead visitors towards other works,' Gabet continued. 'This is the idea behind the mood board, because art is present in couture.' This dialogue between masterpieces of contemporary couture and masterpieces of antiquity offers the visitor a fresh perspective. The seed for the exhibition was sown as long ago as 2009, when Pierre Bergé auctioned the collection of 733 art masterpieces that he and Yves Saint Laurent had jointly amassed over their 40 years together. 'As a museum curator, my background is in history and decorative arts, not fashion, but the more I delved into Yves Saint Laurent's biography, the more I realized how much he had in common with Coco Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld, Jeanne Lanvin and Elsa Schiaparelli. They all shared an intense relationship with art and collecting. At that point, the societal impact of fashion began to intrigue me,' Gabet said. Sometimes a designer's inspiration is evoked subtly: Italian Renaissance for Christian Dior's Maria Grazia Chiuri (a frequent Louvre visitor), suits of armor for Demna at Balenciaga, reliquary busts for Daniel Roseberry for Schiaparelli, Palissy ware for Matthieu Blazy and Alexander McQueen, medieval tapestry for Dries Van Noten, and its craftsmanship for Christian Louboutin. For others, it's more literal. Lagerfeld's obsession with the 18th century is well documented. For his last Chanel haute couture collection in 2019 — the year of his death — he attached a photo of Mathieu Criaerd's blue and white lacquered chest of drawers to his sketch with indications to Maison Lesage to reproduce it in embroidery on the jacket. 'This was a wonderful find from Chanel's archives!' Gabet said. 'It illustrates what I call the genealogy of taste, and this is exactly what we're trying to illustrate through this exhibition.' In the exhibit, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac's Bambi tapestry mini skirt tailleur, accessorized with a fake-fur antler headdress from his 'Go! Go! Diva' fall-winter 2010 collection, is displayed against the deer-hunting backdrop of 'Le Mois d'Août,' one of a dozen medieval tapestries from 1528. 'Having the full suite of twelve 16th-century tapestries is rarissime,' Gabet said. That is the beauty of the Louvre, when a six-meter-wide piece of art is on display, you have the room to focus on it, without being distracted by other objects placed too closely. That's the signature of the Louvre.' 'There's nothing more beautiful than the encounter between a source of antiquity and a futuristic conduit,' de Castelbajac said. 'That's how I create, how I re-create.' In the exhibition, Roseberry's black wool suit worn with a hand-crafted patinated brass mask for Schiaparelli, Jonathan Anderson's sky-blue metal-studded top with copper wings, and Iris van Herpen's 3D Cathedral dress in laser-cut copper stand shoulder to shoulder before a tapestry paying homage to Dante. 'Museums are soothing, restful places,' said Van Noten, who has three pieces in the exhibition. 'One is often surrounded by absolute beauty, sorely needed in today's world.' Van Noten grew up in Antwerp, Belgium, where members of his family were drapers. His men's overcoat is printed with an adaptation of a 17th-century Flemish tapestry depicting Moses being rescued from the waters. It stands in front of a silk and wool tapestry from the Manufacture des Gobelins dated 1689. The pièce de resistance that encapsulates 'Louvre Couture's' concept is the set that unites two black silk-velvet ceremonial robes of the Order of the Holy Spirit, lavishly embroidered with real gold and silver, which are the only garments in the Louvre's collections. The order was established by King Henri III in the 16th century and then abolished by King Louis Philippe in 1830, who returned the objects to the Louvre. The robes are surrounded by three gold and black contemporary creations by Roseberry for Schiaparelli, Olivier Rousteing for Balmain, and Dolce & Gabbana's Alta Sartoria. The plaque of the order was a prestigious honor bestowed upon members of the French nobility. The star-shaped design was embellished with diamonds and the fleur-de-lis emblem of the French monarchy. In the centerpiece of this display is the version Lagerfeld created for Chanel in 1990, replacing the diamonds with rhinestones. The sumptuously decorated 19th-century red velvet and gilt Napoleon III Apartments provides the backdrop for the spectacular, sculptural, black-bonded velvet ball gown from Demna's Balenciaga 2020 spring-summer collection. 'Ball gowns take us back to the early days of Balenciaga, when Cristóbal started designing in Spain,' Demna explained in the exhibition's catalogue. 'He drew this type of silhouette, inspired by Spanish paintings. But we wanted to make sure they were wearable dresses: if you remove the crinoline, you are left with a kind of gothic dress.' A few weeks after the appearance of this piece on the runway, Demna announced Balenciaga's return to haute couture. Equally at home in the Napoleon III Apartments is John Galliano's crimson embroidered moiré and velvet ball gown with ermine trim for Christian Dior's fall-winter 2004 haute couture collection, inspired by the movie 'Sissi – The Young Empress.' 'There is no set itinerary to follow,' Gabet said. 'We wanted the exhibition to be a fluid, leisurely promenade, a kind of time-out for our visitors, just as it allows us to use fashion as a bridge to discovering our collections.'
Observer
28-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Observer
Louvre opens first fashion exhibition after shock memo about decay
The Louvre in Paris opened its first-ever fashion exhibition on Friday, seeking to draw new, younger audiences amid national concern about conditions inside the landmark art destination. The show, called "Louvre Couture", welcomed its first visitors a day after a shock memo from the museum's director about water leaks, building problems and overcrowding made headlines internationally. The exhibition features around a hundred items of clothing by 45 top designers, placed alongside objects from the Louvre's vast collection of decorative artworks, from chests of drawers to armour. In one instance, a Dolce & Gabbana wool dress printed with a mosaic and embroidered with crystals, stones, and sequins echoes the patterns of an 11th-century Italian mosaic from Torcello, near Venice. Louvre director Laurence des Cars said the show demonstrated "a subtle and precise dialogue between creations from the 1960s to today and the collections of the decorative arts department, highlighting the deep connection between art and designers". The world's most-visited museum is hoping to emulate the success of fashion exhibitions hosted by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and London's Victoria and Albert in recent years. A major 2017 retrospective about Christian Dior at the Museum of Decorative Arts, which occupies a wing of the Louvre Palace, led to huge queues and drew a string of A-listers. - 'Not good enough' - The Paris landmark has become a national subject of concern after the revelation Thursday of a confidential memo written by des Cars to Culture Minister Rachida Dati warning about the "proliferation of damage in museum spaces." Des Cars wrote that the museum suffered from leaks and extreme temperatures, and was a "physical ordeal" for some visitors because of a lack of relaxation areas. "Food options and restroom facilities are insufficient in volume, falling well below international standards," she added. In a sign of the importance of a building that is a "source of French pride", President Emmanuel Macron announced a visit to the national monument next Tuesday. "It would be wrong to remain deaf and blind to the risks affecting the museum today," an aide told reporters. The head of state is expected to inspect the galleries personally, having hosted a state dinner there in July for other world leaders on the eve of the Paris Olympics. The Louvre received 96 million euros ($101 million) in public subsidies in 2024. It is hoping for an extra 100 million to cover renovations, a source close the institution told AFP on condition of anonymity. It welcomed 8.7 million people last year -- around twice the number it was designed for. Asked about conditions inside on Thursday, Culture Minister Dati said she wanted to increase prices for non-European visitors to help increase funding. "The visiting and working conditions are not good enough for... the biggest museum in the world," she told reporters. "We need to be innovative, including with financing." The Louvre is set to host a fundraising gala during Paris Women's Fashion Week in March when around 30 tables have been offered for sale, with more than one million euros raised already. "Louvre Couture" runs until July 21. —AFP By Sandra BIFFOT-LACUT and Adam PLOWRIGHT
See - Sada Elbalad
28-01-2025
- Entertainment
- See - Sada Elbalad
The Louvre Hosts Its First Fashion Show
The Louvre in Paris opened ' Louvre Couture, Art and Fashion: Statement Pieces,' the first fashion exhibition at the famed Paris museum in its 231-year history, seeking to draw new, younger audiences amid national concern about conditions inside the landmark art destination. The exhibition, which will run until July 21, 2025, will showcase 70 fashion garments and 30 accessories from 45 fashion houses and designers. Clothing lovers of Dolce & Gabbana, Yves Saint Laurent, and Balenciaga — revealing an unprecedented dialogue between art and fashion from the 1960s to today. They have lent the museum 100 ensembles and accessories, which are arrayed not among the Louvre's famous paintings and marble sculptures but throughout the nearly 100,000 square feet of rooms and galleries. While this is the first time the Louvre has exhibited 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. Two weeks before the Louvre opened its exhibition on January 24, Dolce & Gabbana opened a fashion spectacle of its own: 'From the Heart to the Hands,' in the newly renovated Grand Palais. First opening in Milan last spring, the traveling costume retrospective features more than 200 creations of the house within immersive video installations and elaborate sets. But this is not a museum exhibition. 'This is an experience that is primarily joyful,' said Florence Müller, the creative director of the exhibition. 'It is secondarily intellectual. It is not meant to be in a museum.' Next month, the Musée du Quai Branly, a collection of African, Oceanic, American and Asian works, will open 'Golden Thread,' an exhibition focusing on the art of using gold to adorn clothing and jewelry. In May, the Petit Palais, which belongs to the city of Paris, will mount 'Worth: The Birth of Haute Couture,' a retrospective of the life and work of the British designer Charles Frederick Worth (1825-1895). Two fashion museums, one with collections belonging to the state (the Musée des Arts Décoratifs), the other to the city (Palais Galliera), have long featured dazzling permanent collections and temporary exhibitions. More recently, luxury groups like LVMH and Kering have opened their own art exhibition spaces. Saint Laurent, Dior, and Alaïa have all created permanent spaces to show their work. 'Museums and fashion have been dancing with each other for decades,' said Pamela Golbin, the former chief curator of fashion and textiles at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. 'Now there's a real rapprochement. It is not always a successful pairing, but if it triggers an interest from the public — if it can see the art differently — it's a great way to use the power of fashion.' '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. 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 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. Amidst the Paris Fashion Week, '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.
CNN
26-01-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Inside the Louvre's first ever couture 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. 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. 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.
