Image courtesy of Les Arts Décoratifs

Fashion Forward: three centuries of fashion at Musée des Arts Décoratifs

To mark the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Musée des Arts de la Mode, founded in 1986 on the initiative of Pierre Bergé and the French textile industry with the support of Jack Lang, then culture minister, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs is paying tribute to this collective adventure and great “fashion moment”. 

 

Image courtesy of Les Arts Décoratifs

 

The “Fashion Forward: Three Centuries of Fashion” exhibition casts a new spotlight on one of the richest collections in the world, freed from its display cases in the Fashion galleries to be shown for the first time in the museum’s Nave. The three hundred pieces, selected from a collection constantly enriched by donations and acquisitions, take us on a journey through time, highlighting the key moments in fashion history from the very late 17th century to the most contemporary creation.   

 

Image courtesy of Les Arts Décoratifs

 

Freeing itself from the dictates of the conservation of works and the stringent conditions of their display, the exhibition is conceived as an ideal museum of fashion, featuring the finest examples of three centuries of reation habitually illustrated in reference books. It also provides a fascinating new insight into fashion’s evolution via its designers, clients and  periods, because now more than ever at Les Arts Décoratifs, fashion is  treated as an artistic field that has wide-ranging echoes in the museum’s other collections.  

 

Image courtesy of Les Arts Décoratifs

 

Fashion is a history of evolving techniques, materials and designs but also a history of changing times and attitudes, a reflection of the art of living. Fashion is even more fascinating when it is not self-generating but dialogues with the arts of its time, as did great figures of Couture such as Charles-Frederick Worth, Jacques Doucet, Paul Poiret, Jeanne Lanvin, Madeleine Vionnet, Gabrielle Chanel, Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent.

 

Image courtesy of Les Arts Décoratifs

 

In a completely novel manner, the exhibition recreates each of these “fashion moments” in its human, artistic and social context, not didactically but via ellipses illustrating fashion’s constant elective affinities with the decorative arts. The exhibition culminates in the effervescence and singular eclecticism of the global contemporary fashion scene, in which the names of the most original creators are now associated with the most ancient fashion houses.

 

Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris
Fashion Forward: three centuries of fashion
April 07 – August 14, 2016

 

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