LOUVRE COUTURE
Art and fashion: statement pieces
24 January – 21 July 2025
Louvre Museum, Paris, France
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 pieces will not be displayed aimlessly throughout the Department of Decorative Arts, but rather will serve as an occasion to highlight 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 moodboard of the fashion world. ‘Louvre Couture’ offers a new perspective on decorative arts through the prism of contemporary fashion design.
Exhibition Curators: Olivier Gabet, musée du Louvre
Find more information online here.
Image: A Dior silk and cut-velvet couture gown with an ermine hem designed by John Galliano in 2004, on display in the apartments of Emperor Napoleon III. Credit: Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times
