Fashion on the move #2
Palais Galiera, Paris
April 20, 2024 – January 05, 2025

The Palais Galliera will be presenting its collections exhibition Fashion on the Move #2. For preventive conservation reasons and also in order to display new works from the museum’s collections, this second exhibition will present a history of fashion from the 18th century to the present day, while developing a transversal theme on the body in movement.

With Paris set to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in the summer of 2024, the Palais Galliera has selected 300 items from its collections to explore the role of special clothing in physical and sports activities as well as the sociological factors reflected in its development. Garments designed for sports and physical activities such as horseriding, tennis, golf and bicycling, are compared with clothes that were worn about town. This second exhibition provides for a better understanding of the gradual specialisation of sports garments and the arrival of sportswear in people’s ordinary everyday wardrobe.

One section is entirely devoted to sea bathing and swimming, symbolising the democratisation of sport that came with the end of the 19th century. A chance to discover the Palais Galliera’s large collection of bathing suits, swimming costumes, beachwear and related accessories. This bathing section highlights developments in the relationship between the body and its exposure in public, as well as changing notions of modesty and decency. It also reveals shifts in conceptions of beauty, particularly in relation to suntanned skin.

For Fashion on the Move #2, the museum has benefited from exceptional loans from the Musée National du Sport (Nice), the Fondation Azzedine Alaïa, the Bibliothèque Forney (Paris), the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, the Musée Carnavalet-Histoire de Paris, Patrimoine de CHANEL, the Émile Hermès collection and Maison Yohji Yamamoto. These guest items add perspective to the Palais Galliera pieces and the way they reflect attitudes through the ages to physical exercise and sports, whether as leisure activities or in competition.

more. www.palaisgalliera.paris.fr