A Dior silk and cut-velvet couture gown with an ermine hem designed by John Galliano in 2004, on display. Photo: The New York Times
Sixteenth-century ornamental timepieces frame a crystal-studded metal bodysuit by Thierry Mugler. Gilded silver reliquaries with sculpted hands stand next to a pair of Hermes gloves. A ceramic hand warmer from Faenza, Italy, that looks like a book is twinned with a Chanel clutch that looks like a book.
This is “Louvre Couture”, the first fashion exhibition at the famed Paris museum in its 231-year history.
The last time haute couture caused so much excitement at the Louvre was in 1957, when in the film Funny Face, Audrey Hepburn posed in front of the Winged Victory of Samothrace in a strapless red Givenchy gown and rushed down the Daru staircase, lifting a matching chiffon scarf over her head.
Forty-five fashion houses and designers – from Cristobal Balenciaga to Iris Van Herpen – have lent the museum 100 ensembles and accessories dating from 1960 to 2025.
They are arrayed not among the Louvre’s famous paintings and marble sculptures but throughout the nearly 100,000 square feet of its decorative arts department.
The department, whose unwieldy collection ranges from the Middle Ages to the early 19th century, is crammed with thousands of objects: medieval armour, Renaissance tapestries, carved ivories, bronzes, ceramics, imperial silverware and furniture.
“It is not easy to enter our museum, especially our collection,” said Olivier Gabet, director of the decorative arts department.
“Our objective is to make more people, different people, younger people, happy, free and relaxed when they come here. We say to them: ‘Okay, you love fashion. Fashion is a bridge to us.’”
With this exhibition, which opened Friday (Jan 24) and runs through July 21, the Louvre joins the ranks of institutions that have discovered how to use the popular culture of dress as a gateway to the world of art. And, more than ever, fashion is seducing French museums and artistic spaces.
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Two fashion museums, one with collections belonging to the state (the Musee Des Arts Decoratifs), 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. And 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, former chief curator of fashion and textiles at the Musee Des Arts Decoratifs.
“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.”
The defining example of this approach is, of course, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where the Costume Institute’s blockbuster shows are among the museum’s most visited every year.
In acknowledgment of fashion’s ability to lure visitors, the Met is in the midst of a renovation that will relocate the fashion department from the basement, where it has historically been situated, to the former gift shop in the Great Hall, the majestic main entrance.
The Louvre, with 8.7 million visitors in 2024, doesn’t need fashion to boost attendance.
On the contrary, it has capped its daily attendance to 30,000 to reduce overcrowding. Only 23% of visitors to the Louvre are French; the rest are foreigners. And 66% of its visitors are first-timers, almost all of whom line up to see the “Mona Lisa”.
Since Laurence Des Cars became the museum’s director in 2021, she has struggled to woo returning visitors, a younger crowd and more Parisians to the Louvre.
She has opened the museum on some evenings, organised concerts and theatrical performances, and experimented with a dance-and-exercise circuit. The new fashion exhibition fits neatly into this strategy.
Indeed, Des Cars expresses so much admiration for the Met’s initiatives that some of her curators complain that she is Met-obsessed.
It is no accident that the Louvre – perhaps in a faint echo of the Met Gala – is twinning the new fashion exhibition with a fundraising gala, Le Grand Dîner Du Louvre, during Paris Fashion Week in March.
Dinner will be served among the marble sculptures in the glass-roofed Cour Marly and will be followed by dancing under the pyramid. More than 30 tables were put up for sale, and the fundraising goal of €1mil (approximately RM4.6) has already been exceeded, the museum said.
The Louvre can never match the Met when it comes to fashion. Unlike the Met, the Louvre is not a private museum but a hierarchical, state-run institution with a limited budget that takes its orders from France's culture ministry and, ultimately, the French president.
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And the Louvre has no clothes. The cruel irony is that France’s national textile collection belongs to the Musee Des Arts Decoratifs, which is housed inside the sprawling Louvre structure but is independent of the museum.
In a confidential memo to French culture minister Rachida Dati this month, Des Cars condemned the disastrous physical state of the museum, including water leaks and temperature variations that endanger artworks, overcrowding, insufficient toilet facilities and poor signage.
Even the glass pyramid showpiece designed by IM Pei and inaugurated in 1989 was “very inhospitable”, according to the memo, excerpted Thursday (Jan 23) in the Le Parisien newspaper.
But for now, at least, the Louvre’s decorative arts department has one of the best stage sets for showing fashion – namely, the apartments of Emperor Napoleon III. The 40-foot-high Salon-Theatre oozes magnificent excess with crystal chandeliers, a fresco-filled ceiling and gold-leafed stucco ornamentation with vases of flowers and angels playing instruments.
A mannequin wearing an embroidered red silk and cut-velvet ballgown with a deep ermine hem designed by John Galliano for Christian Dior is set in the centre of the Salon.
The gown matches the Salon’s red cut-velvet upholstery and drapes perfectly. She looks right at home. – ©2025 The New York Times Company
