The major exhibition "Look ! 40 ans de mode au musée" reveals the know-how and gestures of fashion, which, from couture workshops to the museum's behind-the-scenes areas, transform clothing into a work of art. The exhibition invites visitors to follow the two lives of a garment, before and after its entry into the collections. From the initial sketch to the runway, and from fashion photography to the museum's storerooms and the exhibition itself, it unveils the stages of creation, conservation and restoration that keep this exceptional heritage alive.
Visitors can thus discover the beauty of the works and objects that take part in the invention of a fashion piece: drawings, embroidery samples, patterns, model deposits... Sublimated by photography, worn by models of growing fame, the garment becomes the star of runway shows now conceived as true artistic performances.
Présentation
An immersion in the museum's behind-the-scenes areas reveals the spaces and know-how of the true artisans of fashion's memory, who work to document, package in storage, restore and display on mannequins a heritage destined to be passed on to future generations.
Enriched by the extraordinary holdings of the Union française des Arts du Costume (Ufac), and rich in donations from many designers, these collections are shown to the contemporary public through major exhibitions. Forty iconic silhouettes, magnified in the museum's nave, offer a walk through four decades of exhibitions that have contributed to the sanctification of fashion. From "Moments de mode" to "Christian Dior, couturier du rêve" or "Les Mondes surréalistes d'Elsa Schiaparelli", from "Jouer la lumière" to "La Mécanique des dessous", they illustrate the diversity of the museum's approaches, which celebrates the masterpieces of haute couture as well as emerging creation, while questioning the social and cultural role of clothing.
Through this original exhibition, the musée des Arts décoratifs celebrates at once the anniversary of the musée des Arts de la Mode, the gift of the very rich Ufac collections, and forty years of dialogue between creation, heritage and society. In charge of the national fashion collections, it reaffirms its mission: to preserve.