The Louvre Is Hosting Its First-Ever Fashion Exhibition
The world’s most-visited museum is spotlighting clothing and accessories from 45 fashion houses and designers
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The Louvre is hosting the first fashion exhibition in its 231-year history.
Called “Louvre Couture,” the new show features apparel and accessories from 45 designers, including well-known fashion houses like Chanel, Givenchy, Dior, Louis Vuitton and Balenciaga.
The pieces, which all date from between 1960 to the present day, are interspersed among the thousands of artifacts in the museum’s decorative arts department.
With the exhibition, the famed Paris institution hopes to attract new visitors—including younger guests, Parisians and fashion aficionados.
Fashion is “a major means of artistic expression today,” says Olivier Gabet, the director of the Louvre’s decorative arts department, to Vogue’s Tina Isaac-Goizé.
“Even if we are talking about haute couture and extravagant prices, fashion is part of today’s popular culture, of visual culture,” Gabet says. “Lots of people feel in phase with fashion, and this is a way of inviting them in and letting them discover that they’re in phase with the museum, too.”
The Louvre does not have any fashion pieces in its collection. But the exhibition’s curators wanted to explore how the Louvre’s 32,000 art objects may have influenced haute couture and inspired fashion designers over the years. For example, the last couture collection of late German designer Karl Lagerfeld is reminiscent of a blue and white lacquered commode from the 18th century, Gabet tells Vogue.
“Sometimes, the interpretations are freer … but you can see that designers are interested in moments in the history of objects,” he adds.
The Louvre is not the only museum dipping into the world of high fashion. The Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, also in Paris, recently debuted a new exhibition called “Golden Thread” that explores the use of gold in textile arts throughout history. That exhibition, on view through July, was created in partnership with Chinese fashion designer Guo Pei.
“Gold is malleable, gold can stretch, gold does not oxidize, so it’s an extraordinary material that has played a very important role in the history of humankind,” Hana Al Banna-Chidiac, the exhibition’s curator, tells Women’s Wear Daily’s Joelle Diderich.
Later this year, the Petit Palais will open “Worth,” which explores the life and legacy of British fashion designer Charles Frederick Worth. Meanwhile, from now through March, the Grand Palais is hosting Dolce & Gabbana’s traveling costume exhibition, “From the Heart to the Hands.”
In 2022 and 2023, the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London mounted a show titled “Africa Fashion,” which featured garments from 45 designers from more than 20 African nations. The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) also recently organized an exhibition that explored how Islamic art influenced the French fashion and jewelry brand Cartier.
And, in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute regularly hosts fashion exhibitions, ranging from Chinese aesthetics to American femininity.
“Museums and fashion have been dancing with each other for decades,” says Pamela Golbin, the former chief curator of fashion and textiles at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, to the New York Times’ Elaine Sciolino. “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.”
“Louvre Couture” is on view at the Louvre through July 21, 2025.
