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Silent Models

Performance by Olivier Saillard, with Tilda Swinton

  • Events, Paris
  • Fri 20 Mar → Sat 21 Mar 2026, 21:00
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Olivier Saillard Le Musée Vivant de la Mode 2026 2
Le Musée Vivant de la Mode © Olivier Saillard Photo © Gabriele Rosati

Location

Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain

2, place du Palais-Royal

75001 Paris

Directions

Price

Full price : 15€ | Reduced price : 10€

In shop windows, and as the pedestals of fashion exhibitions, mannequins made from wood or cardboard, plastic or metal, are trying to replace the human body and its movements, which they capture. The abstract reduction of a clothes hanger—a vestige of a neck and exposed shoulders—the naturalism of a 1930s' mannequin head, and the dressmaker's bust devoid of a face and arms, all recount the strange story of the silhouette since the nineteenth century. 

Whether fully embodying the pieces, or conversely, presenting a neutral stance, vacillating between absence and presence, Tilda Swinton initiates a silent dialogue with the commercial sculptures that have been used to display clothing on store racks and in museums. 

During a futile dressing session, she confronts the fragility and vulnerability of clothing with these derisory or sublime pedestals, in gestures that stretch out in the eternity of a pause. 

Olivier Saillard Spectacle 2026 1

Olivier Saillard

Olivier Saillard is a graduate in art history, former director of the Palais Galliera – Paris Fashion Museum, currently director of the Alaïa Foundation and artistic, image and culture director for the J.M. Weston brand. Since then, alongside his work as a historian, he has pursued a poetic reflection presented in the form of performances, the most notable of which, Impossible Wardrobe with Tilda Swinton, inaugurated a ten-year cycle of collaboration. Similarly, Models never talk with a studio of famous models, established a new form in response to conventional fashion shows.

In 2018, he founded 'Moda Povera', a poetic, performative, and pedagogical clothing creation company based on the transformation of ordinary and modest garments, magnified by haute couture knowledge and techniques.

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