LOUVRE COUTURE

For the first time in its history, the Musée du Louvre is hosting some of the biggest names in couture. Azzedine Alaïa, Chanel, Dior, Givenchy, Mugler....70 iconic silhouettes will be on display at the heart of the permanent collections.

The exhibition offers a striking and original dialogue between masterpieces from the museum's Objets d'Art collection and key pieces from the history of contemporary fashion, from the 1960s to 2025, from Cristóbal Balenciaga to Iris van Herpen. For the first time, forty-five of the most famous fashion houses and designers have made remarkable loans. The Azzedine Alaïa Foundation is exhibiting a dress from the Autumn/Winter 2017-2018 Haute Couture collection, on display in the museum's Richelieu wing.

Sculpture was Azzedine Alaïa’s first passion as a young man, but upon arriving in Paris in the late 1950s, he shifted his focus to fashion. His work as a designer was influenced by sculpture which left him with a fascination for the body-its forms and movements, skin and sensuality. He was a regular visitor to the Louvre, and the Egyptian influence on this dress is apparent - less that of the pyramids and pharaohs than the vision of Egypt conveyed by European Classicism: in the Rotonde Jean Boulogne, it echoes the dramatic and gentle lines of the surrounding French Crown bronzes.