The Louvre in a new light: ‘Louvre Couture’ is attracting fashion fans to the museum

A museum in vogue: the Louvre in Paris is on the verge of an exciting transformation. In the coming years, the largest museum in the world is to explore new paths. The first step in this direction is ​‘Louvre Couture’ – the first fashion exhibition in the history of the museum.

The show opens with a modest and unspectacular piece: a black mannequin wearing a short, simple silk dress, lavishly embroidered with black flower tendrils, stands on a mirrored platform. It is a design from Christian Dior’s spring/​summer 1949 Haute Couture collection and is actually called​‘Musée du Louvre’.

Why did the legendary couturier choose this name? Nobody knows for sure. But one thing is certain: throughout his life, Christian Dior engaged with the works of art in the Louvre. The museum contains more than 380,000 objects in total, with Dior studying or drawing inspiration from them for his fashion designs. And he was not alone. Over the decades and centuries, the Louvre was a never-ending source of inspiration for the ideas of many fashion designers.

Fashion in the museum?

But there has been no room for fashion in the Louvre, the most famous and most visited museum in the world. That is to say, fashion has not featured in the 70,000-plus square metres of exhibition space, and its collections do not include fashion pieces. So why, you might ask, is the Louvre now staging its first ever fashion exhibition,​‘Louvre Couture’ in it 232nd year?

To answer this question, we first need to understand how important fashion now is in the international museum business, and then also consider the difficult situation in which the Louvre currently finds itself. In a letter to the French Minister of Culture, a copy of which was leaked to the press, museum director Laurence des Cars spoke with urgency of the damage, decay and overcrowding at the venerable institution. The famous glass pyramid by architect Ieoh Ming Pei was designed to receive four million annual visitors, but over nine million visitors now pass through the entrance area every year. If something isn’t done quickly, the Louvre will face collapse, or as the Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote:​“It will go to rack and ruin”.

From the catwalk to the Louvre

President Emmanuel Macron promised a ​‘nouvelle renaissance’ (new renaissance) of the Louvre just a few days after the director’s letter was made public. Even though he did not mention any figures, one thing is already certain: the renovations will be extremely expensive and the Louvre will have to cover a significant portion of the costs itself. But money is only one aspect. Even before the director’s cry for help, experts agreed that the Louvre’s content needed a complete overhaul if it wants to keep pace with its international counterparts, such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London or the Metropolitan Museum in New York (the Met). The latter, in particular, shows what contemporary museum work can look like today and how to keep attracting new and preferably younger groups of visitors to the museum.

How to keep your collections attractive and get the museum into the headlines. An important element here is fashion, which brings us back to our initial question: fashion and fashion exhibitions are increasingly key to sparking the interest of an audience that is otherwise often removed from art. Few people understand this better than Olivier Gabet, who has been Director of the Decorative Arts department at the Louvre for several years and previously led the Parisian Musée des Arts Décoratifs for many years. It was under his guidance that the Musée des Arts Décoratifs attracted large numbers of visitors and dominated many an Instagram feed with its Dior, Schiaparelli and Iris van Herpen exhibitions. ​“Fashion can be a gateway to the world of museums,” he says, and that is precisely the aim of the ​’Louvre Couture’. Gabet has curated this exhibition and it is no coincidence that it spans the entire 9,000 square metres of his department in the Richelieu and (partly)​Sully wings.

Balenciaga, Dior and Fendi: VIPs at the Louvre

The exhibition is designed as a kind of tour through the decorative arts collections. Keeping company with cabinets containing tableware and brass jewellery, opulent historical interiors and magnificent tapestries, the space showcases fashion creations from Cristóbal Balenciaga to Jun Takahashi, the creator of Undercover. Almost 100 items on loan from fashion houses such as Louis Vuitton and Gucci illustrate the connections between fashion and art history in intimate dialogues. A flowing crinoline dress by Yohji Yamamoto (Autumn/​Winter 2015/16) dominates the ostentatious private rooms of Napoleon III, while studded boots by Christian Louboutin (Autumn/​Winter 2007/2008) are smuggled into a cabinet of sacred art. Other highlights include Galliano’s​‘Empress Sisi’ gown (2005) and a pitch-black Balenciaga dress (2020) by Demna Gvasalia in the large dining room, which is decorated with extensive hunting scenes.

Some might fear that an exhibition of this kind could be intellectually overwhelming, but this is not the case. ​‘Louvre Couture’ is an exhibition that relies on visual impact and therefore represents a first step in the renaissance and opening up of the Louvre. Closely tied to this first fashion exhibition in the history of the Louvre, a major fundraising gala took place at the beginning of March – just in time for Paris Fashion Week. Inspired by the legendary Met Gala, widely regarded as the most famous fashion party in the world, the event captivated even those who would not normally set foot in a museum.

Three questions for Olivier Gabet, the curator of ​‘Louvre Couture’

What changes at the Louvre and in society have led to you opening the museum to fashion?

In recent years, there has been a real boom in fashion exhibitions – but only at fashion museums. Other museums have picked up on the idea and have worked more and more with fashion, often only as an accessory. We are currently undergoing major changes at the Louvre, and our director Laurence des Cars wants to open the museum to new audiences. Although we currently have nine million visitors a year, we want to appeal to new audiences and also to the local population.

And fashion is a suitable theme for this?

If you can make fashion speak to people who aren’t normally interested in fashion, then yes! We hope not only to attract new visitors, but also to shine a spotlight on parts of our collection that are less well known.

You once said that the most important goal of any museum must be to attract young people. Does that also apply to the Louvre when we consider that it is already bursting at the seams with visitors?

Absolutely. The Louvre not only needs to become younger, but also more diverse. We want to appeal to a broader audience – without compromising on the quality of the exhibitions. We have to reach out to visitors, for example with simpler texts and more explanation. During my time as director of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, I realised that fashion can be a gateway into the world of museums. Fashion speaks a universal language, it is everywhere, people relate to it automatically, even if they know nothing about art. That is precisely what we should focus on, and that is precisely what we want to focus on.

louvre​-couture​.fr

24 January – 21 July 2025

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