The Living Museum of Fashion

Recalling the Grands Magasins du Louvre, where the first “robes toutes faites” (ready-made dresses) were showcased, heralding the new era of clothing manufacturing and ready-to-wear, Saillard presents a history of everyday fashion—statutory, poetic, perceptive, and personal, long overlooked by official museums. This narrative of fashion history is told through ordinary and haute couture garments, images, bodies overlaid with texts, graphic documents, photographs, archival and torn garments, as well as bodies in motion. 

As part of the series of art projects presented by the Fondation Cartier in partnership with the RATP in the Galerie Valois, Olivier Saillard extends The Living Museum of Fashion below ground level to the Belle Époque wooden-framed display windows of the Galerie Valois, located in the Palais-Royal–Musée du Louvre Métro station, exit 4. 

Specially designed and imagined for the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, The Living Museum of Fashion is an unprecedented performance through which Olivier Saillard attempts to construct an ephemeral yet attainable edifice.

Over the course of the inaugural weekend, The Living Museum of Fashion is presented in an expanded format, featuring special guests and partners. In collectives, the live models combine speaking and performance at various locations throughout the Fondation.

At the Yves Saint Laurent fashion show preceding his 1971 Spring/Summer collection, Paloma Picasso appeared wearing an outfit combining a turban and a padded-shoulder jacket, leaving a strong impression on the famous designer. Inspired by wartime fashion, Yves Saint Laurent then came up with a collection that allowed those generations who had not experienced the Second World War to discover the remnants of an emergency wardrobe invented by women in the 1940s.

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.