Fashion finally finds a home in the best museum in the world

“The Louvre is the best humor pavilion in the world,” insisted the curator Olivier Gabet, while he gave Fashionnetwork.com a personal tour of “Louvre Couture”, the first fashion exhibition within the most famous museum on the planet.

A fascinating exhibition, “Louvre Couture” is a unique visual tour through the Museum's decorative arts department, to illustrate the close links between art, fashion and fashion designers.

Many of the fashion modifiers of the 45 houses represented were frequent visitors of the Louvre, so often that sometimes their fashion works and accessories seem to get out of the paintings or oil upholstery; Or it seems that they had lived in the opulent decorative environments for many decades.

Fashion visionaries such as Karl Lagerfeld, Maria Grazia Chiuri, Azzedine Alaia or Irish Van Herpen, to name just some, have been regular visitors. As is evident of “Louvre Couture, Art and Fashion: Declare Pieces”, to give him his full name.

Part of the strength of the seam of the Louvre is that he has already done so in the a few days since he opened has begun to attract hundreds of visitors more daily to the northern wing of the museum, and their unique decorative rooms, which allows them to discover Notable objects sometimes overlooked.

And not only concentrate his time in the southern wing with his oil paintings, and the most watched art work, the Mona Lisa. Taking fashionists and rookies style on a trip through 9,000 square meters to discover more than 100 exquisite fashion works, placed in the middle of the unique crafts and the most rare ornamentation. A useful brochure lists each fashion object that facilitates the discovery.

Louvre Couture covers the fashion from 1960 to 2025, all the works borrowed from the fashion houses, which go spatially to the Napoleon apartment, where the creations of players such as Jean-Paul Gaultier and Yohji Yamamoto greet you. All are borrowed, except three looks: a trio of ceremonial velvet layers of the early 18th century of the order of the Holy Spirit, founded by Henri II, and abolished in the revolution. Who seemed to have found new friends among the golden works of Balmain and Schiaparelli.

Other designs are naturally at ease, as a splendid silk dress Faille Versace created by Donatella in a collection of tributes to Gianni's prints. In this case, golden foliage and printing leaves are perfectly adjusted to a canopy bed of the second super great empire. While Rick Owens 2020 was divided into Cocoon Crepe of his Tecuatl collection, which combines Aztec and Egyptian elements, fits perfectly with its surroundings, given the Egyptomania that wrapped the France of the early nineteenth century.

Sometimes, it is difficult to distinguish the element of fashion from objects: a Dolce & Gabbana box bag in hand painted pine With the mid -eighteenth century germanic tobacco boxes.

The colors discovered in the filtration of the Louvre to the High Fashion. A 2019 blue and white spring chanel jacket embroidered by Lesage, has exactly the same tones as 1742 Mathieu Cryerd's comode, while a curvilinear moiré dress by Jeremy Scott for Moschino echoes the curves of a Boule Table , and a golden straw of Hubert by Givenchy, a famous furniture collector, has exactly the same brightness as a bronze gold closet.

Another key element is the skillful scene of the Agite Nathalie Crinière, such as leaving a Ottoman silk wedding dress by Yves Saint Laurent in a lovely room by Boiserie sculpted and cut in gold. As if a bride were having a moment of calm and reflection just before making their votes.

Nicolas Ghesquière 2018's Silk and Metal brocade coat for Louis Vuitton finds a happy space between a Louis XIV drawing room, as well as a France in France by Alessandro Michele Flower-Anatole-Anatole.

Other looks restore the reputation, such as the 1997 debut show by Alexander McQueen for Givenchy, which included a ceremonial suit of a tall neck general, which could have been adapted to Napoleon Bonaparte, a portrait of those who hang behind him.

Contemporary designers are well represented: Gareth Pugh, Marine Serre, Hard Olowu and Jonathan Anderson with their dog Bologna by Pearl Glass in a trapeze dress. Or a heroic dries the coat of Van Note Gents that seems to be made of the tapestries of the Renaissance of outstanding witches that is between.

But one feels that the stars of the show are often the favorites of Gabet, such as Karl, Demon and John. Lagerfeld – With multiple creations of Chanel, including his Métiers de Arte Paris -Byzantine 2010 collection, a main theme in Louvre Couture. Foldably, while the museum plans to open a Byzantine division dedicated in the coming years.

The famous medieval collection of Demon, an armor knight, made of coated resin, takes a place of pride in the Arsenal room, while the ghost -ghost of Gallian King Sun. It would be a shame to move it.

In a very real sense, the Louvre has taken to embrace fashion. Always maintaining it along an arm, as an applied art presented within the Museum of Adjacent Decorative Arts (Mad), but never until this month within the Royal Louvre.

Was he asked if he considered fashion as Fine Arts? Gabet lifts an eyebrow, as if a trick question will ask, before answering another question: “I think separating and dividing creativity into different hierarchies is very outdated, right?”

And yes, I suppose it is.

Louvre Couture is open until July 21.